Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

Sisu (2022)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

You know that bit at the start of There Will Be Blood (2007), where a silent, grizzled man is digging into the earth – eventually striking oil? Okay, good. Now, let’s shift things to WWII-era Finland; here’s another grizzled, silent prospector, wandering the landscape alone – only this guy is looking for gold, not oil, and he finds plenty. With me so far? Now imagine someone, director and writer Jalmari Helander perhaps, who lingered on that title – There Will Be Blood – and thought to himself, ‘Imagine If There Really Was Lots and Lots of Blood? That would be amazing.’ From prospecting, to war, to ultraviolence, in one balletic move.

That’s Sisu (2022), essentially, and it’s completely marvellous. The year is 1944 and, after the signing of the Moscow Armistice, the country’s Nazi occupiers are being expelled. They are withdrawing extremely begrudgingly, operating a scorched earth policy as they go. Finland was at this point extremely fatigued by its role in the War, fighting defensively first against the Soviets, then against the Nazis. Our prospector (Jorma Tommila) has all the appearance, on a personal level, of that fatigue, and he is not minded to engage with the retreating Nazis he passes on his travels. He, his horse and his dog simply pass by a small company, who are by now on the road towards Norway. However, these Nazis, not quite drunk with power but still in the bravado stage of the hangover that goes with it, have other ideas. And, when they discover that he is carrying a not insubstantial amount of gold, they decide to relieve him of it, and to kill him. It will provide absolutely no spoilers to say, that doesn’t quite go to plan.

What ensues is a blistering, brilliantly choreographed run of pursuit and vengeance; it turns out that the prospector is far more than just that, and that his time in the wilds panning for gold was something of a career change (Tommila looks like an authentically tough bastard, by the by, which helps the whole thing to land so successfully). The remaining Nazis, led by the equally savage Commander Bruno – though not, unless I’m mistaken, called by his name during the film – now want the man’s scalp. Bruno (Aksel Hennie), who is slightly less thick-as-pigshit than his men, and a strangely calm sadist, has some innovative ideas to catch his prey.

When it’s not a cascade of flying limbs and ripping flesh, Sisu resembles something from the old Wild West, and clearly channels this genre with some glee; as in those particular films, too, the baddie(s) get put through their paces until their calm demeanour gets picked apart. One of the film’s greatest pleasures is watching Bruno getting steadily unnerved. He goes from strangely mesmerising gestures, as he calmly directs his men to their certain deaths, to rising, self-serving panic. Bravo, incidentally, to Hennie, who is a superb lead antagonist here, and a worthy quarry for ‘Aatami’. Hennie does enough to build his character, but keeps himself straightforwardly easy to hate. The back story, of course, is history overlaid with fantasy, but it’s still a fantasy homage to some of the WWII Finns more than capable of superhuman feats; hell hath no fury like Simo Häyhä, for example, who killed hundreds of Soviets single-handedly, and may be the greatest sniper of all time. No wonder the Finns need the untranslatable word ‘sisu’ for such people. (It’s also worth pointing out that Aatami kills hundreds of Soviets, too, even if that happens beyond the bounds of Sisu: acquisitive political systems which seek to swallow up independent nations are all monstrous. For all the fantasy, there’s a kind of defiant catharsis here.)

Sisu is adeptly paced, with incredible SFX and a wide range of inventive scenes (one scene, let’s just codename it ‘the water scene’, made both me and a total stranger at the cinema double with disbelieving laughter at exactly the same point). It has enough historical grounding to keep the right balance of grit and gore, and no matter how gritty/gory it gets, it resonates with a weird kind of …joie de vivre; it’s hard to describe it any other way. It’s also hard to conceive of a film as purely, gratuitously enjoyable as this one; even if you don’t particularly like grisly cinema, it feels like Sisu could win you over. From the director of Rare Exports (2010), it’s another imaginative piece of work but, when I saw Rare Exports, I felt that it lacked a truly convincing, punchy conclusion. No such concerns here; Helander has utterly nailed it. It was nice, by the way, to see Rare Exports actors and real life father and son Jorma Tomilla and Onni Tomilla back on screen together; little Pietari is all grown up! Now go and see Sisu; it’s an absolute tonic, and certain to be a favourite film of this year.

Sisu (2022) is on limited theatrical release in the UK now.

Unwelcome (2022)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Irish folklore about the ‘other crowd’, or fairy folk, remains ripe for use by horror cinema. Far from our modern cultural understanding of fairies as Disneyfied, benign, pretty little entities, the Irish stories hang onto a notion of the little people as ambiguous at best – malevolent at worst. Their hill forts, their meeting places and their attempts at striking deals with mankind always seem to lead to a bad outcome – for us. Of course this can – and has – already led to great films. Sadly, Unwelcome (2022) isn’t amongst them. Its unclear tone and accumulating minor errors make it a difficult film to read, much less really enjoy; it tries to engineer a big shift a significant way in, but ultimately, it just cannot work by that point. It’s shot its bolt.

The film has a busy, rather blundering start which, to be fair, does establish what it maintains throughout. A woman, at first nameless, is sat on the toilet with a pregnancy test (and not for the first time; the sequence is repeated moments later). News of her pregnancy results in a minor flicker of curtailed masculinity from husband Jamie (Douglas Booth), as we’re about to see. The happy event also signposts to us that living in an urban area is immediately unpalatable; Jamie pops to the shops to get some celebratory alcohol-free Prosecco, has a minor run-in with some hoodies, and they follow him home, turning the film momentarily into a home invasion as they kick the door in and kick in both Jamie and Maya (Hannah John-Kamen, who is back in the jacks by then.)

Elsewhere, in rural Ireland: Jamie’s aunt dies and leaves them her house. After the shock of the home invasion and the violent attack, they’re glad to take it – though, this seems to have happened about, ooh, nine months later, so there’s a massive and unfilled narrative gap regarding how they got on with things until the new house became available. Anyway, they relocate, and local woman Niamh (Niamh Cusack) is on hand to explain to them that Jamie’s Aunt Maeve believed in the ‘old ways’. This means a daily blood sacrifice for some fairy creatures nicknamed the ‘Redcaps’; it can be some chopped liver, that’s fine, but something with a bit of blood in it is expected (hang on – daily?! That’s inflation for you.) Niamh says that she’s happy to take care of it; Maya demurs, on the basis that she’s unhappy about having anyone coming into her garden, and that she’ll do it.

Maya and Jamie get settled in, with Maya forgetting almost instantly about the blood sacrifice thing to go to the pub. With their priorities in such order, and with plenty of objectionable idiocy on display, you can feel more than happy that the Redcaps are going to come along, and are going to do something to these two; well, if they are left to go hungry on what seems like Day One, then it’s clear that these little folk are going to expect something in return. Factor in a family of anti-English, bullying roofers (headed up by Colm Meaney, who out-acts everyone here) threatening their own brand of home invasion, and the little folk may just end up involved sooner rather than later. Now, whatever could they want? What is being so heavily signposted from the opening seconds of the film, that it might turn up to carry a large share of the plot?

Excuse the somewhat sneering attitude, it’s nothing to be proud of, but it’s hard not to feel a little aggrieved when things are dragged under your nose so clumsily as they are here. There are big issues with this script, and as a result of the script, big issues with key characters. And so on. Douglas Booth comes off particularly badly, as Chris is given to hyperbole, awkwardness and unsuccessful, matey maxims; his deliberations on What Maketh a Man are not good. An experienced actor, he doesn’t seem wholly comfortable with this, and the well-handled physical aspects of his role can’t quite wash away these other issues. But the script overall is very wearing. Its humour is strained, and there is a lot of simplistic backfilling to bring the story together which doesn’t sound or feel convincing. It’s all just a little too serious to cross into overblown comedy – even when it finally tries – yet too trite to come together as a convincing horror. It’s a particular shame, as lots of the this film looks great, with outside shots nicely framed, lit and presented, and the more supernatural scenes evoking the uncanny rather well. There are a range of shots used, the music works well – then someone opens their mouth, and we’re back to square one.

It’s surprising that Northern Irish director Jon Wright – who directed the eminently enjoyable horror-comedy Grabbers a decade ago – has dredged up a rather unpleasant batch of Irish stereotypes here. The Whelan family with their thievery, lechery, laziness, multiple mentions of ‘Cromwell’ as shorthand for hatred of all English ‘c*nts’, I mean come on. The fake Celtic tattoos were advised by someone, too; do we need all of this? This is a British-funded project, though, so assumedly Irish viewers would have some issues with the story arc for other reasons. See also ‘Mama Bear’ Maya, who has at least one hand clamped to her extraordinarily massive pregnancy bump throughout the film. We also get to see her eating Marmite from a jar with her bare hands, because cravings. Rumours persist that pregnant women are in fact normal people, still capable of behaving normally. In horror films, they apparently can’t.

By the time Unwelcome finally seems to have decided on comedy – a mode which does, to be fair, work well – it’s too late. The film feels entrenched. The best way to have a good time with this film is, with hindsight, to determinedly treat it as a comedy from the very beginning, even when this means doing some work to make it fit. The creature design is excellent, the shooting style for these sequences ingenious. It’s just that the key components are not there, and can’t support the rest of the good ideas. Now, go and read some Eddie Lenihan. You’re welcome.

Unwelcome (2023) is available on Shudder from Friday, June 23rd.

Sight Extended (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Sight Extended (2023) starts out looking like a space-set sci-fi; it’s only when you look closer that you realise you’re looking at a much more familiar, convex shape – a lens, specially-adapted to allow a person to access all of their push notifications, calls, maps, you name it, with a mere, literal blink of an eye. As such, the film is more about inner space than outer space, and the resulting story is a sad, often subtle exploration of a world of possibilities which is oh-so near now.

Gamer Patrick (Andrew Riddell) lives vicariously through his gaming persona. An agoraphobic young man, highly anxious, he’s a shut-in with only aspirations of a normal life; interactions with the opposite sex, for example, are on-screen only, with an early scene crossing quickly and disconcertingly into the Uncanny Valley. He even gets mistaken for a bot as he works, and of course he’s a WFH guy; how else could he work? Even his support group is accessed virtually. His sister Angela stops by on occasion, but she (Deborah Aroshas) treats it as a largely transactional thing, filling her pockets with his pills and furnishing her bank account with his money. His life has ground to an unsatisfactory, unsettling halt.

An invite to a high school reunion sends Patrick, if anything, into a bigger spiral of panic and self-doubt. He makes the mistake – though the mistake is easily made – of looking up some of his old classmates, and lo and behold, they are all (seemingly) doing great. True dystopia is often about such tedious self-owns, as well as the bigger, bolder picture; his feelings escalate, and this leads him, in his ineffectual anger, to rage-quit the support group which now seems to him to be nothing but a waste of time, keeping him back rather than helping him out. Fortunately for Patrick, a new option comes along quickly; another of the group’s attendees, a man called Alex, seeks him out and offers him a new kind of support via a new app.

What if – Alex suggests – Patrick could bring all of his confidence as a gamer to real-life situations? The app – called Refresh – can apparently blend both worlds, turning social events and situations into a fun, levelling-up situation as he engages with elements of various games (think Pokémon GO for melancholics). With nothing to lose, Patrick tries it out and, lo and behold, it works for him. It lures him out of the door. It gets him exercising. He even starts to enjoy himself.

You don’t really need telling that things don’t stay this positive – otherwise this would be a heart-warming tale of the benefits of tech, and not many films which come the way of this site qualify for that, all told. This is, and stays, a very personal, character-focused narrative, although Patrick’s experiences with the bigger picture of technology will chime with many. You can certainly see Patrick’s story as representative of something bigger beyond him, too. The world offered by the film, in terms of how tech is overlaid on the real, is only a touch more sophisticated than what we currently have; it’s certainly not a million miles from the roaring hive we’ve already built, either. It notes the worst aspects of social media and AI – it’s inescapability, its ubiquity, its irritating, matey tics – and escalates them, but only by a touch. The results look and feel very intrusive: it genuinely creates a mild feeling of panic. Other scenes, such as those which occur outdoors, look a little like updated takes from Blade Runner (1982), albeit in disarmingly broad sunshine. Gamers will also recognise some of the borrowed visual aspects, too – such as Patrick’s potential to ‘level up’, which looks awfully Bethesda, with a map of traits to navigate, XP to collect.

There are lots of these kinds of films around now, and as AI gets far more into its stride, no wonder (as I saw someone opine recently, we now have AI creating art and poetry while humans continue to do menial work. That feeling of things being out-of-kilter isn’t coming from nowhere.) Although some aspects of this film feels like a super-adroit update of The Lawnmower Man (1992), particularly around Patrick’s compelling transformation, it is much more a film for our times, with most in common with the excellent Black Mirror TV series. This film is engaging because it only-just exaggerates the world we already live in, where human interactions are compartmentalised into likes, interactions and comments. It also offers interesting comments on masculinity, and all of its attendant pressures and concerns. In fact, Sight Extended successfully blurs the edges of Patrick as a character; where does he end, and app begin? Is this all what he wants, or what he thinks he’s supposed to want? These are already recognisable concerns and flashpoints, explored successfully by this restrained and savvy film.

Sight Extended (2023) will be available in the UK from June 12th 2023. *Updated: for details on how to watch, please click here.

Invoking Yell (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Invoking Yell (2023) is clearly a film that likes to layer its influences, giving us a grab-bag of themes and styles. These chiefly being: found footage; 90s-style analogue cameras; the EVP phenomenon and the film’s biggest, boldest theme – 90s black metal. By way of some on-screen text at the start, the film explains that, when the second wave of black metal started to break in the 1990s, bands needed to constantly think up new ways to distinguish themselves from the now-burgeoning scene. The film starts from this point and, actually, turns out to be more a kind of time capsule of this point in time than a straightforward horror film, but the end result – a look at how obsessions and mythologies overlap and establish themselves – is quite interesting on its own terms.

In the world of the film, female Chilean two-piece Invoking Yell have the answer (the band plays Depressive Suicidal Black Metal, by the way and yeah, DSBM is an actual genre.) Band member Andrea (María Jesús Marcone) – who takes all of this really seriously – has started to use a blend of field recordings and EVP to flesh out the band’s early demo recordings. She refers to this as psycophony, and not only does it sound pretty cool, but it makes their music authentically evil: what could distinguish them more than that? Together with bandmate Tania (Macarena Carrere) and Ruth (Andrea Ozuljevich), a-girl-with-a-camera who is interested in joining the band, they are on a mission to head out into the woods to the site of an accident, where a bus careered off the road and flipped, killing a number of children travelling inside.

As far as Andrea sees it, this is a good thing: if she can capture the tormented screams of the dead, that will really push the envelope on their four-track, because it will be an authentically cursed artefact. Whilst they’re in the woods, this is also a good opportunity to make an Immortal-style promo video. The girls have rented a cabin: they head there first of all, settle in (with a little squabbling over bedrooms) but before long, they’re at work, making an excursion out to what they believe to be the haunted site.

There’s the standard lull at this point, the one which typically comes between ‘meeting the characters’ and ‘something spooky happening’. Invoking Yell affords time to the girls talking about their musical influences, the ‘scene’, and perhaps most importantly, how they see what they are doing as authentic ritual, which later necessitates actually holding a ritual. There’s some justifiable teasing of the black metal ethos here, capturing some of its absurdities and po-faced posturing, though it has to be said: it’s all knowing enough to feel properly in earnest, rather than a laugh from a complete outsider which misses the mark. Other than that, the film spends time capturing something of that weird significance you grant to things which exist outside your comfort zone, perhaps especially when you’re young and retain more imagination; abandoned buildings, graffiti, lost objects, these can all take on terrific and onerous meanings. But on the other side of that coin is the way the young often display bravado when it turns out they’re somewhere with a disturbing history; Andrea and Tania like to giggle and posture in locations they believe to be multiple death sites. Black metal can’t quite account for all of that attitude; it’s elsewhere too, but it tends to be a youth thing. Older people don’t court it in the same way, for the most part.

For once, the shooting style – the now-ubiquitous fantasy of ‘snow’, static and other analogue features – isn’t such a bother, because within the timeframe chosen and the musical genre which pins things together, it’s a more authentic-feeling thing. The shifting frame is a little irritating, alright, but not out of place. Ruth openly threatens Super 8 coverage, and we have a Polaroid camera in-shot a lot of the time; consistent enough. It’s explained as the girls want to get that visually-appealing lo-fi look. In-between, you actually get to see some impressive filming locations, though not for long. There is also a lot of dialogue here; it is a film busy with dialogue, with acres of chit-chat on bands, genres, interpersonal issues. Again, no plausibility issues with this, but as a non-Spanish speaker, it’s quite a read.

What you may notice from this review so far is a lot of attention being paid to the film’s technical aspects – shooting style, dialogue, location. The reason for this is that there is very little plotline to really discuss; what you already know, you know. It’s an immensely simple set-up in any case which looks to be heading in one kind of direction, but ultimately, it only tantalises at those kinds of scares. This is a shame – the phenomenon of EVP has the capacity to trample my rational thoughts into mulch within minutes – and by its end credits Invoking Yell turns out to have been far more of a glimpse at the 90s black metal scene than a straightforward horror film. This it does better than the likes of Lords of Chaos, mind you, so there’s much to be said for it. Here’s a film which uses aspects of horror as much as it is a horror, and it may be lost on complete outsiders in some respects, but it’s appealing and evocative in plenty of ways.

Invoking Yell (2023) premiered at PanicFest and will be hitting its festival run later this year.

Roadkill (2022)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Roadkill (2022) has the good sense to let its outback shooting location figure highly throughout its running time, almost making the hostile environment one of its one of its core characters. In fact, it makes more sense as a character than some of the actual characters on offer. The film overstretches itself in its plot direction and its character development, and both suffer as a result. We open with a young man in the Outback, Connor (writer and director Alexander Whitrow), reclining on his beat-up old red sports car, on the phone to his girlfriend. He’s promising her that before long they’re ‘outta here’, which never bodes well in a ‘last day as a detective’ kind of way. After the call, we see him flagging down a passing car; ah, so he’s stuck out here? Nope – it’s a trick, and he’s about to rob this family – though why he gets the robbed couple’s baby out of the car, to hand it to them, to drive off and leave them and the car intact is a mystery. Still we’re given enough to deduce that Connor is a career thief, but not a monster.

There are monsters out there, however. We cut to a pair of detectives, thankfully neither of whom is planning a retirement that day, discussing a totally different crime scene. A young woman has been murdered, and there are indications that there’s a serial killer on the loose. As the detectives second-guess where their killer may go next, our roadside robber and his wholly unsuspecting girlfriend Lucy are reunited, discussing in more detail about how they are planning on escaping this neck of the woods. Things falter a little here – there’s a family visit and a meal to get through, and you know how those are – but wouldn’t you know, Lucy’s uncle is one of the hard-bitten detectives from the serial killer case. And there is a suggestion that the robber and the serial killer’s worlds are about to collide too – first with a visual clue, and then with a sudden escalation of events where mistaken identity, the redoubled efforts of the police and Connor’s determination to get away, the film nails its colours to the mast as a revenge-pursuit film.

That last few sentences condenses down the key set-up here, but be warned: it isn’t quite that pithy in the film itself. Roadkill‘s biggest error is in trying to do too much – the cardinal sin of so many first-time feature directors – but in so doing, it actually feels strangely diffuse, rather than overloaded. It pauses to offer us character development, and it rushes a small crowd of characters onto our screen in places, but in some respects this only underlines more questions than it ever answers. Our key cast needs to be refined down and made the sharp focus – nothing and no one else. Lucy (Sarah Milde) is a bit of a prop, sorry to say, seemingly doing nothing except hovering around her and Connor’s modest home, and then re-emerging as a kind of spiritual presence; it’s both a lot, and too little to ask. Similarly, the film really should have given us more on our antagonist (Edward Boyd), who is often peripheral, with a shifting modus operandi and just not enough to work him up into a truly menacing figure.

So, without question, there are issues in this film. But there is the germ of a great idea here, and the film wants to be great, even if it’s hamstrung by budgetary restraints which emerge as pulled punches – the ultraviolence and speeding cars which you may expect often happen off-screen, when a bit more of this would have redeemed things. The Oz location looks great in a ‘wouldn’t want to be stuck out there’ way, and there are some moments where Whitrow is clearly channelling the grand old tradition of Ozploitation: the Oz flag being used as a face covering keys into this nicely. The colouration, the music, these are better than your average indie. Plus, there’s also a variety of camerawork, some decent attempts at action and a decent attempt to bring things together for a finale. There is talent here.

Whitrow clearly has an interest in the Outback as a setting for pursuit and fightback – his first short film, Hunt in Red, renders the formula down to thirty minutes as two teens flee a cannibalistic killer. So he has form, and he has the wherewithal: the recommendation has to be, then, to kill the filler, keep it linear and go all out. The sorts of audiences who would be drawn towards a film set in the back of beyond in Australia and titled ‘Roadkill’ would be likely to want more high action than we see here, so a more streamlined, pared-back storyline would do just the job, if the director has any plans to come back this way.

Roadkill (2022) gets a UK release on 29th May 2023.

Influencer (2022)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Influencer (2022) starts by showcasing its often non-linear, inventive time structure, opening on the vision of a young female body, face down on an otherwise picturesque island beach. We then zip to something else: a motivational speech from a young woman, a social media influencer called Madison (Emily Tennant). Ah, this is content for her channels; she’s travelling solo in Thailand, talking about how good travel is ‘for the soul’ and how people need to ‘surrender to the moment’. Thing is, her demeanour off-camera doesn’t quite mirror those feelgood platitudes. She seems bored, miserable even. What is the deal? In fact, you won’t be able to do anything but wonder – who was the young woman lying dead on a beach at the very beginning? Was it her? Was that Madison?

What we are clear on is that Madison is starting to have doubts about the whole online career thing. In a chat with a friend back home, she says she’s starting to rethink it, aware that it has a really short shelf life anyway – even if it does, temporarily, grant her access to aspirational products and a very receptive audience. Neither does it protect her from the usual issues of fending off the unwanted attentions of men who feel that any solo woman owes them conversation and company, as we see at her hotel bar. Luckily for her, she runs into another young woman called CW (Cassandra Naud) who helps her make her excuses; after that, they become close friends.

The trip gets instantly better; it almost matches up to the claims Madison has been making about it all along. But of course, this is the high point before the film’s first sinister turn. Madison and CW get back one evening for Madison to discover her room has been burgled; her passport is gone, meaning she has to rely more and more on the (unusually generous) kindness of strangers while she sorts out a new one. But she is not well-equipped to deal with problems like this; she’s young, naïve, and it turns out that the whereabouts of her passport is just the first big question raised by the film, in an intriguing succession of questions.

If you feel that, early on, you get a strong sense of where all of this is going – if you’ve seen enough films about what befalls a stranger in a strange land that you feel you can confidently predict the outcomes – then it’s almost certain that the film will nonetheless be able to surprise you, you jaded horror viewer you. It has an incredibly deft touch, happy to subvert audience expectations (in fact, the opening credits roll at 25 minutes in, which shows how carefully and unusually this film is constructed). That deftness also imbues the film with a feeling of queasy disorientation, especially as its twisting, shifting timeframes kick in. It’s a massive risk when a film opens with a dead body – how are we going to meaningfully link back up to that scene? – but, as it turns out, the film is able to handle it very cleverly. It’s also impressive how effectively Influencer can raise your heartbeat; at certain points, it’s almost unbearable.

The film knows its subject matter; it has captured the modern tendency to photograph first, experience later. It also debunks questions of entitlement as it picks away at the disconnect between manufactured self and ‘real’ self. Of course, there’s always been a divide there, but it’s been granted vast new levels of reach by the rise of social media, together with the deluded levels of self-importance which often accompany it. But it’s aspirational because the influencer lifestyle can, even for a short blaze of glory, grant immense power and wealth. These are interesting times indeed, ripe for filmmakers to exploit. Alongside all of this, the Thailand locations are beautifully filmed, offering wide open space and unbearable claustrophobia in turn. There are some great roles for women here too, which riff on another bunch of cultural expectations. All in all, the film’s cast of flawed, often painfully naïve but often belligerent characters works very well.

If there’s any point when the film’s premise begins to strain at all, then it’s towards the end, which is perhaps unfortunate – though, against the film as a whole, it’s pretty minor. Ultimately, when the end credits roll, you have to ask: could the film have done better? I’d say, no. This is an often ingenious, deeply unsettling, very modern horror. Influencer perfectly captures a moment in time. Ten years from this date, we’ll be vastly unsettled by something else; Kurtis David Harder’s film captures terrors which are only possible, like this, right now. It’s immensely, impressively done.

Influencer is available on Shudder from today: 26th May 2023.

The Wrath of Becky (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Have you noticed that people are getting tied to chairs, or tormented with household tools etc. a lot less frequently in horror nowadays? You could be forgiven for assuming that gratuitous ultraviolence is dead – or at least taking a break. That’s not so in The Wrath of Becky (2023) however: whilst the tone is a long way away from the ordeal horrors of the Noughties, this film is certainly a grisly revenge story which strikes a good balance between cartoonish improbability and more plausible elements – its characters, plot and narrative. It’s a sequel to Becky (2020), but it stands on its own perfectly well, so if you haven’t seen the first film – don’t worry. You’ll get it.

We do get some back story first of all, however: Becky is just a regular teenage girl whose family were attacked by a band of violent Neo-Nazis whilst weekending at a picturesque lake house; said Nazis were in dispute about a mysterious key, which they were searching for there. A case of mistaken identity, sure, but this didn’t stop her father losing his life in the attack – an attack which triggered something in Becky (and we see a bit of that in flashback). Post-ordeal, Becky has got into a pattern of faking saccharin repentance which gets her warmly accepted into foster homes, which she then flees. The attack has turned her into something of a worst-case scenario prepper, perhaps understandably: she spends her time not sleeping, training and setting traps. But Becky has finally found some stability living with Elena, a landlady who has become a friend. The young woman also has a job at a diner. Life certainly isn’t normal, but it’s consistent in ways it hasn’t been for a while.

Things are about to get a lot more interesting, though – if that’s the word for it. Yeah, actually it’s a pretty serviceable word for it. A group of men calling themselves The Noble Men (the thinnest pastiche of The Proud Boys you are ever likely to to encounter) are rolling into town ahead of crashing a local political event, seemingly with nefarious purposes. A small number of them choose Becky’s workplace for a preliminary meet-up and one coffee-based altercation later, they – assuming they have the whip hand in this situation – follow her home to frighten her, but here, things spiral rapidly out of control. Still, thanks to the fact that they have accidentally chosen a very damaged, very dangerous young girl, it doesn’t end with Becky getting a sizeable new dose of trauma. Putting her array of aggressive skills to the test, she tracks them down, not least because they have made off with her beloved dog Diego (credited on IMDb under the name, and this is real, Pac Williams).

This is a bright red laugh-scream of a film, with a great raft of set-ups and set pieces. It’s graphic and bloody, with lots of practical SFX, but the whole film has a consistently knowing but lively feel which comes across via its fast edits, brash but entirely suitable music, quick-changing camera work and a highly colourised, slick overall appearance. The cartoon which accompanies the opening credits does a good job of establishing what this film is going to be, and what it’s going to be like; similarly, Becky’s voiceover, though used sparingly, invites the idea that she, and the filmmakers, are having fun with us – even occasionally at our expense, which also feels fine. Becky confides in the audience, but messes with us too, getting us on side but reminding us that she may be giving us set-ups which aren’t going to unfold the way we predict. It’s another excuse for a fast edit when it happens, and it works well, moving things along at pace. Becky is a de facto unreliable narrator, but the whole film is an array of competitive violence and one-upmanship, so it’s all good.

If it’s like anything else, then perhaps it’s You’re Next (2011): similar pace and tone, similar mash-up of home invasion, survivalism and splatter, similar hard-as-nails female protagonist. By the way, how refreshing that we’ve moved on rape/revenge, to just revenge: once upon a time women rarely became capable of such superhuman horrors without having been sexualised and abused first; aside from some charming epithets thrown her way, Becky’s revenge is an entirely desexualised thing. It’s not a totally desexualised film – the Noble Men mention Parler and 4Chan as they casually chat about their misogyny – but it’s not a central plank here, other than the script using it knowingly to flesh out these characters as bad’uns. The script on the whole is consistently funny and knowing, too, and the very minor lulls are only there to give us just enough character info to make sense of what happens next. The Noble Men are to an extent overwritten and overdrawn, sure, but this isn’t a deeply philosophical work; the point is to justify Becky’s vengeance (though, all told, the second they threaten the dog, most people will be fully on board anyway. Kill them!)

The Wrath of Becky is a crowd pleaser, full of OTT rough charm and gratuitous just desserts; it’s hard not to love its boundless energy. And yeah, there is a bit of retro tied-to-chair action going on, but it works in its place. Everything here works just fine, and it’d be great to see Becky again some time.

The Wrath of Becky (2023) arrives in cinemas on 26th May, 2023.

Mad Heidi (2022)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Thanks to the magic of crowdfunding, there’s now a breed of film made by fans, for fans which doesn’t really seem to see itself much beyond the film festival circuit. If you aren’t there with all of the other contributors to see your name on the credits, has it really happened at all? Mad Heidi (2022) is one such film, proudly championing its crowdfunder credentials right from the moment we first see its faux-grindhouse opening credits, and a film full of the kinds of schlocky gore, whoop-inducing in-jokes and ringing one-liners. Now, there’s nothing wrong with any of this, but it begs the question: how well does all of this work once the festival season is over, and you find yourself watching Mad Heidi alone, on a sofa?

The basic answer to this is that, for the first thirty minutes or so, it’s infuriating; after that point, because it lags its way to the inevitable showdown and takes a while to really drive at its conclusion, it kind of wins you over via its determination to please genre fans with its ‘throw enough mud at a wall’ ethos. However, all things considered, it can’t quite hang together as it must have been intended to do so, not for a home audience at least. The recommendation would definitely be to see it on the big screen, something which is possible as – at the time of writing – we’re a few weeks away from a limited theatrical run in the US.

Anyway, what happens is this: Switzerland, in the world of the film, has turned into a cheese-based authoritarian state where all dissent is crushed. What do we mean by a ‘cheese-based authoritarian state’, exactly? Well, it seems to be Switzerland’s chief industry, and also the source of a lot of its patriotic fervour; the country, under the sway of its dictator (Casper Van Dien!), is also working on a version of Swiss cheese which is going to dominate all the countries of Europe, because of reasons which we can’t go into here.

We’re told that twenty years go by between the opening scene and the next (why?): after a literal roll in the hay, we meet Heidi, all grown up and fraternising with one Goat Peter, a relationship which is of concern to Heidi’s grandfather/only living relative (David Schofield!), as it’s rumoured that Goat Peter has some dicey interests which risk bringing him to the attention of the regime. Any cheese-related insurgence will draw down the wrath of the state – as it does, bloodily, with Goat Peter.

Her subsequent grief brings the bereft Heidi into the firing line, too, and she is subsequently jailed; via a bit of ‘women in prison’ homage, Heidi must turn into a kick-ass heroine to avenge those she loves: she must track down those responsible and make them pay. It takes rather too long to get to this point – directors Johannes Hartmann and Sandro Klopfstein know their fan base and linger in the girls’ cells for a little too long – but the film does have the good sense to save some of its most full-on, crowd-pleasing scenes for later on in the film.

It tries very, very hard to tick every exploitation box you can get away with ticking today. The problem with all of this is that, at this point in time, it always feels a little strained: we’re self aware about genre and film history in ways which can’t but add in a dash of cynicism to proceedings. But this doesn’t stop the film showing a certain, commendable dedication to what it’s doing, even in all of the clutter. ‘Swissploitation’ is coined and namechecked a number of times during the film; this is, by the seems of it, its first outing, and no one can deny that it takes aim at pretty much every Swiss stereotype there is, right down to giving us a death by fondue. There is love here.

Mad Heidi is clearly a low budget film, but no one can deny that it’s actually pretty technically sound, even if you can almost feel the budget straining around the edges of every scene. The lead actress – Alice Lucy – gets fairly stuck onto her role, too, which is very physical in places. She does it all in earnest, which is the only real way to do it, and she is one of the key reasons that the film – sort of – wins you over by the end. It’s probably a film which depreciates in value as the number of viewers declines, but by and large its ardent enthusiasm carries it through the ninety-minute running time enjoyably enough.

Looking at the bigger picture, now that we’ve had Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey (a film I personally vetoed for the site) and Mad Heidi, it’ll be fun to guess what other beloved children’s characters are out of copyright and ripe for a horror treatment. My money’s on Pippi Longstocking – I think one book’s public domain now – so watch this space, maybe. Stranger things have happened.

Mad Heidi (2022) will be available is selected US screenings from June 21st 2023.

Motion Detected (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

There have been, in recent years, a number of imaginative explorations of the role of technology in our lives. It’s a diverse topic, ripe for horror: the increasing levels of control we afford to tech, as well as the importance we attach to apps and platforms, have made for some great films – some scary, some funny, and some a blend of both. Unfortunately, Motion Detected (2023) won’t be joining those ranks anytime soon. It’s too diffuse, too confused and has no pertinent social comments to make. Tech framework or not, this is thin gruel.

We start with a little girl lying in bed; she wakes up to see something static or akin to a glitching screen, almost creeping around her door. She sees ‘it’ at other times, too: when playing outside, she sees something at her window, and heads indoors to take a look. An antsy home security system chunters “Motion detected” as she heads upstairs, before – she’s gone. Literally gone. It seems that she hears her mother’s voice, and is fooled into heading into the big red cloud of electrical static accordingly.

The same house now being available to lease – not a great sign – we cut to a clearly wealthy married couple (albeit no wedding band for her), hoping to move in. The agent showing them around discloses that the last tenants ‘just vanished’, taking it oddly well, given they must have owed the company money. Here’s something else odd: the house’s owner has his own glowering portrait hanging on the wall. Heavy foreshadowing right here – and now that we’re on that subject, the fact that the overzealous home security system is called Diablo is not the best of signs either. Anyway, Eva (Natasha Esca) is enthused about the house, odd portrait and all, because of its state-of-the-art security. She recently survived a run-in with a Mexican serial killer at their old place in Mexico City, and wants the peace of mind. They sign up, just in time for husband Miguel to head back to Mexico City, and their old house, for ‘work’, which seems to be a perpetuity of client dinners. Nice work if you can get it.

This (in)conveniently leaves Eva alone in the new house, with no idea how to work the new security system. You’d think that at the very least the property people would have provided basic instructions, but then that may impede it continually going off. And go off continually, it does. Creepy, unseen triggers set it off. Boundaries are disrespected, weird, hooded figures seem to be menacing the area, and Eva is having a dreadful time of it – as often refracted through a home security eye’s view, with Motion continually Detected. Is this some kind of haunting? Is she being menaced by very earthly figures? Or is this all in her head?

There’s great scope here for a commentary on how our homes are scarily out of our control – or else, on how neighbourhood reliance on messageboards and apps can breed absurd situations, or even on how past trauma can create hallucinations which simply make tech part of their modus operandi. None of these, really, comes to the fore in this film. Eva sadly comes across as an unpleasant character: peevish, argumentative and needy. She is supposed to be deeply traumatised by her past encounter with a killer, but this gets only the sparsest of treatments, and isn’t plausible. There was space and time to do more, but unfortunately Esca’s character as-written instead has to loll about being ‘sexy’ with a disproportionate and pointless number of outfit changes and yoga sessions, not to mention another boundary-defying character (the Diablo technician, no less) who openly ogles her on two occasions, almost as much as the camera seems to peer down her top on a regular basis.

None of this contributes to the storyline. To be fair to this actor, she has to do most of the work alone, as she’s the only person around. But the exposition is clumsy, eventually handed over to one neighbour character who trots out the elements of the house’s mystery ad hoc, whilst this seems to mean Eva has ample time to get drunk and dance solo. I’m also unsure how Mexican viewers will respond to Eva, by the way, a woman who is at first outraged by the stereotyping of Mexicans, but out of nowhere becomes a hard drinking devotee to Santa Muerte. These two things are a little hard to consolidate.

Again, none of this really builds tension or suspense. Jarring edits between Eva’s nightmares and real life are clumsy; the film repeats itself, with the 6am wake-up call over and over, ‘lights out’ over and over, and only the barest, bluntest link between tech and ‘something evil’ being introduced. If this is meant to hint at the inescapability of Eva’s situation, then it doesn’t feel earnest. Even at just 1 hour and 20 minutes long, it becomes difficult to follow, and by the end it had scuppered any impetus it might have had. Unable to fully suspend disbelief, it became difficult not to yell, ‘Just go elsewhere for a while!’ Too many plot points are left dangling whilst these feelings build. Hey, it’s a shame. But as technological horror grows and grows as a genre, there are bound to be more films like this one – a swing and a miss.

Motion Detected (2023) is available from May 19th, 2023.

Peppergrass (2021)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

We know that attempted home invasions can often flip on the perpetrators; the likes of Don’t Breathe (2016) and before it, Livide (2011) serve as reminders that, once you’re in someone’s home, you are very definitely at a disadvantage. Peppergrass (2021) sounds for all the world like it could be another one of these films: the press release states that, in the film, ‘a pregnant restaurateur tries to rob a priceless truffle from a reclusive World War 2 veteran’. However, this is no expected horror-heist, not in execution. Peppergrass has a kind of strange, often calm power, which is a strange thing to think or say, given its often brutal moments. But it feels incredibly confident, lining up its little clues, cues and plot points before gliding through them – moving through different horror and thriller elements as it goes. It may be too polished, maybe too calm in what it unfolds for some viewers, but this is certainly an engaging, often quiet – if at times underplayed – kind of chaos.

“Make sure that’s locked,” says one masked person to another, when she arrives outside the bar to find this guy has been laid on the floor, bored asleep, or else an opportunistic napper. Hang on, are they robbing this establishment, or..? The man has the keys and lets the woman inside. It’s not immediately clear, but they’re clearly planning something nefarious; the film may be set during the grim heights of the Covid pandemic, but they aren’t equipped with just regular face masks.

As they talk – or as they squabble, more rightly – it turns out that these two, Morris (Charles Boyland) and Eula (co-director Chantelle Han) both work in the hospitality trade, a trade which has been decimated by the pandemic. Times are tough. In their desperation, they are planning to steal something very specific but potentially lucrative, something which they know about given Eula’s work in her restaurant. Eula’s grandfather, also the original founder of their restaurant, has recently passed away: this has triggered a memory for her of driving out into the middle of nowhere to meet with an old service buddy of his, a Captain Reuben. Reuben farms truffles, keeping pigs specially for the purpose; if they can just find his land, and get a hold of the most expensive white truffles, they can sell it, keep afloat. It’s a crazy idea, but needs must.

Finding Reuben turns into a time-consuming affair; Eula is trying to do this by memory, but as she hasn’t been to see him since she was ten, it’s not easy, and Google Maps is little to no good if you don’t know where you’re looking for. More by luck than hard judgement, the two eventually track down a roadside stall whose proprietor – barking demands that they stay two metres distant – tells them that they are close to Reuben’s land, but to go careful: he won’t let anyone in after dark. They have to park up as close as they can, anyway, and here’s where the film segues into its first horror phase, all spooky light and forest mist. Oh, and a huge, tusked Iberian pig, roaming free. Let’s take a minute here to appreciate the role of pigs in horror; from the use of pigs’ shrieks in The Exorcist (1973) via Evilspeak (1981) to Hannibal (2001), these are mean, scary, clever animals. A large pig can devour all but the largest bones in the human body in around six hours; just saying. The femurs they’ll keep to nibble on a while longer. Morris and Eula are terrified by this creature jumping up at their car, and they should be.

Still, when they find Reuben – or more accurately, when he finds them – things get stranger still. They follow him through the woods, as he seems to require them to do: Eula speaks first, mentioning their connection. But thanks to Morris and his coked-up impulse management issues, the already tense situation quickly escalates, spinning out of control.

We’re moving from classic horror tropes, to something akin to a slasher (in terms of the antagonist) but Peppergrass also adds survivalist horror to its range. What unites all of these is the precarious situation of a stranger in a strange land (Canada or not, it almost doesn’t matter if civilisation is just within your grasp, if you can’t quite get there). The film focuses hard on Eula, in a sober and often character-centred turn of events. This is often aimless, because that’s how people are in these situations; nonetheless, it’s this section of the film which will probably draw its toughest criticism. It’s often largely silent here, too, playing with stillness, quiet and open spaces. Sometimes the trees seem to hem Eula in; sometimes the sense is of a vast, ungovernable wilderness, but neither of these are places to be, at least not like this. What definitely lends itself to the final act is Eula’s growing sense of desperation; we believe she could attempt anything. We also find out more about the film’s title, which is all about the cynicism, duplicity and error which govern the film as a whole.

Peppergrass is a film set against the pandemic in a meaningful way, rather than a film made simply to triumph over its adversity, getting it made no matter what. Its closed businesses, its desperate, often paranoid people; its designation of places according to whether they ‘have the virus’ there or not – these frame the film usefully, begging the question of whose behaviour is really the most destructive here. All in all, this is a thoughtful, capable piece of film, where all of the elements are woven together meaningfully, leading finally to a harsh, darkly witty conclusion.

Peppergrass (2021) will be available on digital platforms from June 16th, 2023.

Casting Kill (2023)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The casting call provides fertile ground for the topic of a film, particularly one looking at its pitfalls. It is, after all, a profoundly vulnerable place for actors: all that pressure, that power imbalance, and the fact that actors are often fairly itinerant, desperate to work and to get their ‘break’. From Mulholland Drive to Starry Eyes, it’s been used as an engaging setting and theme which leads us into something far, far bigger. Now there’s Casting Kill (2023), which uses that same setting to paint a picture of corruption, secret organisations and hidden identities. The casting couch is shown to be a dangerous place from almost the opening scenes; the end result is a kind of Hitchcockian vision, done on a restricted budget, but confident enough to make good use of its ideas.

We start with what seems to be a blend of know-it-all smarm and genuinely unhinged behaviour from one Arthur Capstone (Rob Laird), casting CEO of Scotsville Studios. We’ve just seen him during a rather shadowy meet-up with another man which intimates some sort of deal or arrangement, and now here we are: as he rattles through his spiel on character motivation and the process, we quickly get the idea that he isn’t all that he seems – this isn’t a regular casting situation, and he’s labouring under some very particular delusions. But then we see something a little more conventional from him, with a legit queue of people all eager to make a call-back. He treats them with a blend of hostility and disinterest, but then, when he does find someone he likes, that seems to be a distinct dose of bad luck, not a positive. There will be no call-back for his chosen actors.

The casting is not done there, however: cut to the next day, and there’s another pair of contenders: Dom (Jack Forsyth-Noble), who’s actually rather good, which seems to offend the CEO on a visceral level, and Ruby (Rachel Chima), an old friend of Dom’s. They chat outside the casting venue, and then again later, when they’ve each had their strange, discomfiting experience with Capstone – and they decide to investigate him, each in their own way.

Casting Kill loses some of its forward impetus at this point, though it is wise enough not to overstay its welcome; the running time here is a modest eighty minutes (or just shy of that). However, it is driving at something, leaving room for a decent finale and giving over some more welcome space to Xander (Ian Renshaw, who is immensely enjoyable in even this small role). Capstone himself is an interesting character too: he’s delusional and overblown, but overall, fun, even if the violence he is supposed to be capable of is largely intimated, not shown to the audience.

This fits in with the film’s deliberate channelling of Hitchcock visual tropes and, to an extent, characters: by its nature, this film is rather low key and small scale, but within its limits it has a keen eye for camerawork, very deliberately composed and framed shots and best of all, a superb score which is fully interwoven with the film, not simply overlaid. It’s a great fit and shows great attention to detail. There are some moments of cruel wit, too, which ultimately poke fun at the process of filmmaking – and all that goes along with it – from the perspective of an insider, showcasing just a little frustration with the whole thing from that point of view. Well, they do say you should talk about what you know; you have to laugh at the alleged big-time CEO of a Hollywood Studio preaching the sanctity of his profession whilst robbing cash from those auditioning, for example, but knowing how hard it is to get film projects funded, perhaps this is just a bit of verisimilitude.

There are a couple of issues – little errors, which stem from the fact that filming on this was over and done inside six days. That said, some Americanisms creeping into the very British dialect of two of the main characters is a little jarring; there’s a very noticeably breathing ‘corpse’, and do the bank notes have ‘specimen’ written on them? Things must be even tougher for actors than expected. Overall, though, despite these few rough moments, the film has enough ambition to keep things going, and even if the film doesn’t necessarily see every idea or plot device through in full, it does still come across as a wry take on the filmmaking industry which brings in some watchable, engaging ideas. It pokes fun at itself and the industry as a whole, too.

Casting Kill (2023) is available now on Amazon Prime.