Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

Celluloid Screams 2019: The Nightingale

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

If ever a film spoke to unpalatable truths, then it’s Jennifer Kent’s most recent film, The Nightingale. Where her previous feature The Babadook put a fantastical spin on mental trauma, The Nightingale strips back all varieties of artifice and fantasy, striving to represent a notoriously brutal period in Australia’s colonial past as realistically as possible. In so doing, it thankfully avoids getting mired in modern-day political predilections – there’s not, in my opinion, a clumsy script, nor talking to the audience loudly and slowly to make them get the point. But, by faithfully representing the horrors of history through a plausible, sensitively-acted drama, the history lesson here is doubly effective, because human drama will always appeal to us more than academic treatises. The resulting film is a difficult watch. Certain scenes led to audible gasps from the audience. The Nightingale prevents you, or should prevent you, from looking away.

Set in the early decades of the 19th Century, transportation and the conquest of Australia was in full swing, with Tasmania in particular one of the most brutally-managed and exploited territories in the whole of the country. Were you sent to the penal colonies there, then ostensibly you could eventually earn your freedom but, as both an Irishwoman and a woman, Clare (Aisling Franciosi) has been unable to exercise this right, despite completing her sentence for a petty crime. Hawkins, the commanding officer of the incumbent British militia (Sam Claflin) sees her as barely human, justifying his sexual exploitation of her by reminding her that he’s allowed her to marry – to a fellow Irishman, Aidan (Michael Sheasby). Aidan and Clare are penniless and to a large extent tainted by their pasts as ex-cons, but they have a young baby together, and they seem very happy. Clare keeps hope that she will receive her ticket (her guarantee of freedom) and they will be able to leave for good. Well, that would never do for Hawkins, who has Clare right where he wants her. An altercation follows when Aidan tries to intercede on her behalf, to make Hawkins make good on his promise. The worst happens; in a world where the British military make the rules, and where any semblance of law and order is a long way away, there was never going to be a positive outcome for this powerless, impoverished family, who have no recourse. That said, the brutality of the outcome is truly hideous.

Clare is left a broken woman, with nothing now left to keep her docile. After she tries and fails to get justice via conventional means, she learns that Hawkins and his men have left to go to the nearest town where Hawkins is hopeful of an important promotion. Determined to catch them and avenge herself, she turns to a member of a nearby Aboriginal camp who knows the land. Billy (Baykali Ganambarr) agrees to take her – for a fee – but makes no promises of offering her any help beyond directing her to where she wants to go, making it clear that he doesn’t relish working for white folks. Together, they track Hawkins and his men, working their way through an often hostile, if beautiful landscape.

One of the most interesting dynamics in the film occurs between Billy and Clare; who has the most power here? Is it the disinherited local, who nonetheless has recourse to knowledge and skills? Or is it Clare? Clare is white, and she instantly begins to use language to exercise her authority over Billy (such as by calling him ‘boy’), but then being female carries its own vulnerabilities in this brutal world, and as an Irish woman, she’s a few rungs further down on the ladder the other whites she encounters. It’s a distinction she tries to make clear to Billy, who has little concept of any difference between whites and listens to her with some surprise as she rails against him calling her English. It’s also interesting that Clare uses Irish language, and refreshing to hear it on the big screen – in a similar way to Billy, who uses a moribund Tasmanian language called Palawa Kan, the first time this language has ever appeared in a mainstream film. Language is both power and powerlessness, a marker of culture, but one that is invariably suppressed; Clare and Billy, to a large extent, find that they share some common ground through their use of non-English languages and a friendship begins to grow. It becomes the bedrock of the film, supported by phenomenal acting performances. What isn’t said is as important as what is. Billy infers a great deal about Clare’s plight, and handles it carefully.

Throughout, there is little let-up in the unflinching hardship and cruelty here; thankfully, the British aren’t turned into simplistic villains, and as the narrative follows their own journey we see them as flawed, arrogant, but also frequently scared and isolated from one another, scared boys clinging to the only systems they know. You find yourself hating them, sure, but you see them as weak as much as you see them as bad, particularly in the case of Jago (Harry Greenwood) who is haunted by his role in Clare’s tragedy – a panicked, troubled young man. Eddie (Charlie Shotwell), a child who picks up with the military men and at first gains Hawkins’ favour, is a sad emblem of a broken system, a world where unattached women and children are terrible things to be. But then, almost no one thrives in this environment. Those that had thrived in the environment have been disinherited, transported people are still at the mercies of the system and even the self-assured Hawkins cannot operate without help to do it. The representation of Tasmania at this point in time is of a merciless, indifferent place. Some critics have commented on the detached, under-explored nature of some of the visuals and motifs on screen but for me, it’s exactly as it should be. We glean some sense of other tragic stories unfolding, but then the landscape draws us quickly elsewhere. Likewise, there were several walk-outs during some of the scenes of rape and sexual assault in the film, and it’s absolutely fine for audiences to do that if they feel they simply cannot watch such things any longer, but as I see it, you’re exempting yourself from the nub of the narrative. Perhaps cruel things just are, and desperate people simply try to make sense of this, try to go on.

Admittedly not a film for everyone, then, but an important, ambitious historical drama which clings to you like a fever dream. You do not come out of viewing The Nightingale feeling good about humanity, but you can at least grasp what fragile elements of human goodness there are, and marvel at how this could ever be in such circumstances.

Celluloid Screams 2019: Antrum – The Deadliest Film Ever Made

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The notion of the ‘cursed film’ is nothing new in horror cinema, and it has formed the basis of some deeply disturbing, evocative projects over the course of the years. The Ring was a hugely successful crossover from what was, for many viewers, a largely unknown horror tradition with its own mythology and rules of operation, but even without an understanding of Japan’s fantastical relationship with the seas which surround it, the curse of Sadako still made hideous sense. More recently, the Masters of Horror television series offered us an episode called Cigarette Burns, taking for its central premise the idea of a mysterious, dangerous film which endangers its audiences via its very being, even causing cinemas to burst into flames upon screening.

This brings us fairly neatly to Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made (2018), which shares many characteristics of each of the above; there’s an oddball, somewhat intractable cursed film which only hints at any bigger message it may have, but there’s also a broader awareness of this cursed film’s reputation, and what could befall audiences who watch it. Using a brief mockumentary format to bookend Antrum itself, we are primed for the potential ill-effects of seeing the film, with examples of calamities which have befallen audiences in the past. The resulting experience is a lot stronger in premise than in execution, though, with perhaps more attention paid to the cosmetic appearance of this ‘lost film from the 70s’ than to a film which really rewards being seen. After all, if the curse ain’t real, what we are really looking for is an entertaining film – not a verdict you can easily come away with here, even whilst you might enjoy aspects of the atmosphere.

Antrum (which means ‘chamber’) follows a teenage girl, Oralee (Nicole Tompkins) and her younger brother Nathan (Rowan Smyth). Nathan is bereft after recently having his dog Maxine put to sleep; due to an offhand comment which his mother then makes about her being a bad dog, Nathan’s childish imagination therefore places Maxine in hell, something which terrifies him and gives him nightmares. In an unorthodox way of relieving his anxiety, Oralee devises a story whereby using a grimoire she’s gotten hold of, they can go and access hell itself to free Maxine. This involves digging at the spot where Satan allegedly fell to earth, which will take them down through the different levels of hell. Using on-screen titles to tell the audiences at what point they are currently, it quickly becomes apparent that their efforts to get into hell are symbolic at best, but they begin to notice odd phenomena and people around them in the remote woods: could they really have freed harmful entities? Or drawn attention to themselves in a dangerous way?

As you might well already have gathered from that summary, the plot itself is very low in the mix, with the directorial emphasis much more on sound, unusual visuals and cutaways to some unknown, unexplained scenes of torture. There are also multiple examples of occult symbols being allegedly scratched onto the film itself, leading to a deliberately multi-layered approach presumably intended to generate a sense of unease. This is referred to directly via the mockumentary frame at the end of the film, though even without this it’s pretty clear that the various sigils are intended to signify malign efforts, presumably to hex the lot of us.

Antrum is therefore fairly successful on the unease front, though I found myself craving more explication; beyond that atmosphere, the film was so thin that any genuine impact or occult content – i.e. being able to believe in the central premise or its implications in any way – was soon lost. Perhaps making this a short film, taking Antrum closer again to Ring (or at least to that film’s own cursed film) would have avoided this, and I note that directors Michael Laicini and David Amito have collectively got more experience of the short film format; Antrum is an odd choice for a full-length, all told. It’s very hard to sustain both artifice (making a film appear to be from the late 70s) and interest across a feature-length project. Whilst the ambition here is laudable, as a feature Antrum can’t quite live up to what is essentially its own hype, its notional existence as a somehow dangerous film.

Still, in terms of aesthetics, Laicini and Amito have done good work in presenting something which genuinely does look like an unearthed film reel from forty years ago. The audio track is equally very fitting to the time and place intended to have generated Antrum, nicely discordant and suitably strange for the subject matter and the style. It’s just that it doesn’t really work on a deeper level to me, which is a shame.

Celluloid Screams 2019: The Golden Glove

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The opening scenes of any film are important in setting the style and tone of the film to follow; accepting this, the beginning of The Golden Glove rapidly establishes that what is to follow will be saturated with grime, misery and desperation, coming in immediately with largely intimated, but no less horrific violence. Based on a true story, the serial murders committed by Hamburg resident Fritz Honka during the 1970s, perhaps this film was never going to be able to represent that story without delving so fully into the misery and vulnerability of the red light district’s unfortunate inmates – but even so, The Golden Glove is a barely palatable foray into those crimes, a film which is very nearly void of any redemptive moments whatsoever. If this was director Fatih Akin’s aim, then bravo.

So in our opening scenes, there is already a woman lying dead in Honka’s ramshackle apartment. The suggestion is that he has lost his temper, leading to the woman’s death at his hands, and his predicament is simple: what does he do with the body? The camera pans away as he dismembers the corpse, stashing parts of it into black bags which he later dumps, whilst ominously, TV news reports state that parts of the woman’s body have not been found. Years move on, with Honka continuing to live his hand-to-mouth existence, harbouring malingering fantasies or clear contempt for the women who drift into his life, whilst daily drinking himself into a stupor in The Golden Glove of the title – a dive bar in the red light district, frequented by various oddballs and, for the most part, older women who are severely down on their luck. It is amongst these women that Honka usually spends his time, and – as downtrodden as they are – he sometimes convinces them to go home with him. Whilst murder is not necessarily his aim, he is without doubt a misogynist, and his treatment of Gerda Voss, for example – a lone woman who drifts into his life as a de facto housekeeper and sometime sexual target – is one of the toughest aspects of this film. I said that there are barely any redemptive moments in The Golden Glove; thank heavens there’s something approaching this where Gerda is concerned.

The Golden Glove would be pretty unpalatable on an audience-engagement level were it simply a run-through of murders, but instead, the film follows Honka as he makes some sort of an attempt to clean up his act, quitting the bottle at one point and endeavouring to break away from his dead-end job and deadbeat friends. It is during this section of the film that I found myself wondering if we are intended to feel any sort of sympathy for Honka here – as the film shows him almost handling a new role and new people, even turning into a shoulder to cry on. Perhaps seeing him humanised in this way makes it even more unpalatable. However, his fall from grace feels fairly inevitable when it comes, his behaviour and predilections ultimately inescapable. The performances are excellent. Jonas Dassler, in his prosthetics, is unrecognisable as himself and for such a young actor his rendition of a misshapen middle age man is quite something. He spins something incredibly dismal out of his role. Similarly, all the women here, with the exception of seen-from-afar schoolgirl, are shown at their absolute nadir – impoverished, dishevelled, sick with drink. The humanity they demonstrate in-role redeems the film from simply being a stalk-through the streets of Hamburg; the pace is more languid, giving enough time to really feel for the characters. Margarete Tiese and Martina Eitner-Acheampong in particular are superb (Eitner-Acheampong is able to assert herself, if momentarily – something which led to audible approval from the festival audience, which in turn reveals just how effectively repellent Dassler makes his own role.)

Whilst The Golden Glove is not overtly graphic, it feels almost as though it is – it implies the horrific, and where violence takes place, it is delivered with such hatred that it makes it seem all the more upsetting. Elsewhere, vomit and stench permeate the film, putting audience on the same level as the people who have to live near Honka. The Greek family dinner – shown after Honka has been seen blaming them for the stench in his apartment – uses a fairly simple technique, but does so well enough to seriously underline the disgusting conditions upstairs. Perhaps the film’s biggest trump card though is where it becomes clear towards the end credits just how meticulously the film represents the real-life settings and people of the crimes. It adds a verisimilitude which actually makes the film harder-hitting. Not only is the film nauseating, but its events actually took place. Odd moments of humour stand out as odd stylistic choices, but by no means can the film be said to be funny; it’s far too close to the knuckle for that.

The Golden Glove is absolutely not for everyone; this is a grim story reproduced incredibly faithfully. How it begins and ends should warn the viewer that they are not being helped to any clean sense of closure here – this is simply a snapshot of a warped, dangerous man and the misery he inflicts on people who can get no lower. It’s as much an anthem to the dangers of alcoholism as it is the ensuing violence, as it is alcohol that mars every relationship and gesture throughout.. However, if you can tolerate incredibly unsettling cinema, then this is immensely well done for what it is: an evocative, if appalling examination of serial murder.

And Soon The Darkness (1970)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Two young girls, Jane (Pamela Franklin) and Cathy (Michelle Dotrice) are on a summer cycling holiday in rural France. It’s sunny, bright and picturesque; the atmosphere is relaxed, both girls are having fun and Cathy is keen to soak up the sun a little, but Jane is keen to press on to the next village. As they leave a youth hostel on their way onwards, they pass a young man who seems to take an interest in the pair; he overtakes them on the road, and seems to be waiting for them at the next town.

In actual fact, the girls aren’t coming – they’re squabbling about how best to spend the rest of the holiday, and the argument escalates to the point that Jane decides to leave the recalcitrant Cathy to her own devices, cycling off alone. Cathy is happy enough at first, but soon both girls become acutely aware of the dangers of their isolation. Jane waits for her friend to arrive, but all is not well and she cycles back to look for her. She’s been warned in broken English that the area is ‘bad’, and by now she’s gleaned a little about a murder in the local vicinity too. It remains to be seen whether Jane is in time to find her friend safe; equally so, the young man from the earlier village, Paul (Sandor Elès) is still on the scene and claims to want to help, but Jane is finding it very difficult to know who to trust…

Directed by Robert Fuest, who would go on to make rather more ornate, overblown films like The Abominable Doctor Phibes, And Soon The Darkness is a rather different beast. It’s very economical, making excellent use of a very small cast and a small number of key locations, albeit that there are more than enough shots of the wider countryside and its deserted roads to make the point that this is a very isolated part of the world. As attractive as the area is, it pales against the small-scale human drama going on within it – a point which is underlined, at the very end of the film, by the sight of two other female cyclists departing into the great beyond. Whatever befalls Jane and Cathy, it is almost immediately lost within the wider environment, something which makes their story all the more plaintive; they are small-scale, lost against something bigger.

With regards the colourful, bright summer landscape, there are a couple of films which have used similar to good effect but – regardless of the fact that the horror itself is different – it put me somewhat in mind of Midsommar, which features another idyll which turns out to not be as idyllic as it at first appears to be. Also, the language issue is a key factor in the bewilderment and fear which overtakes Jane as she tries to help; the foreign land might be in Europe, and might be ostensibly as modern and as forward-thinking as we would hope, but without being able to understand what anyone is saying, it might as well be a million miles away. The fact that the film retains the original French without throwing the audience so much as a subtitle helps to preserve this sense of isolation. Female vulnerability is also a key plot component in And Soon The Darkness, and it would be foolish to glance over this: the girls are followed, warned and ultimately endangered here on account of their sex, although we’re probably primed nowadays to see all of the girls’ encounters as potential problems – a lot of the male attention they receive never turns into anything sinister, and they seem fairly confident in how to handle it – well, for the most part, of course, and as ever, there’s always a point where things ultimately turn irreparably sour. The film was made in 1970, and the past is (also) a foreign country, though that’s as often as not part of the appeal of these older films – taking in the world in which the narratives operate, how it looks and how it works.

Amongst the film’s many strengths, you can also count ambiguity; it’s difficult to trust anyone here, appearances are monstrously deceptive and (with the exception of one absurd plot point where one of the girls hangs her clean, dry underwear on a nearby tree, presumably simply to generate clues) the events which befall these girls are very plausible, again given the time and place. Certainly, the perils of lone travel in an unfamiliar country have seen the film judged worthy of a remake within the past ten years; spoiler alert, but there, mobile phones don’t seem to solve the core issues either.

Trust is a hard thing to come by in this well-wrought, often unbearably tense piece of cinema. The audience is kept on the same level as the girls throughout, never privy to some great saving grace or way through, and that – together with the fantastic job Studiocanal have done with their remaster – makes for a worthwhile, prudent and clever film.

And Soon The Darkness received a release by Studiocanal (Blu-ray and DVD) on 14th October 2019.

Mayhem Film Festival: The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil (2019)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

There’s a brutal serial killer on the loose in South Korea. His modus operandi is quite simple: by faking a collision with another vehicle on a deserted road, he encourages the aggrieved party to get out of their car: when they do so, he waits for them to get distracted, then stabs them to death. Thus begins The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil – a particularly brutal slab of Korean crime drama, an unholy trinity of unorthodox policing, gang warfare and compulsive murder – albeit one which manages to offer more than a few moments of bizarre camaraderie and even humour along the way.

The serial killer’s antics are of great interest to local cop Jung Tae-seok (Mu-Yeol Kim), who would much sooner investigate this case than all of the other, to his mind, petty cases which his boss insists should take precedence. It’s quickly clear that the world in which Jung Tae-Seok operates is incredibly corrupt; the local crime syndicates exert control over the local area via a system of intimidation and bribes, and seem largely left to fight it out amongst themselves when any issues arise (spoiler: issues very much arise). At the very top of the chain is boss Jang Dong-su (the inimitable Dong-seok Ma); however, his usual assured position in life is severely challenged one night when he himself has a minor traffic accident, gets out – and walks straight into the serial killer, now known simply as ‘K’. Dong-Su is severely injured in the encounter, but escapes with his life. Naturally, as he recovers he wants to seek revenge in his own way, but the police have their own ideas. When meeting with his old nemesis Jung Tae-Seok shortly after his encounter, Dong-Su proposes both a truce of sorts, and a challenge: he tells Jung Tae-Seok that he’ll set his own enquiries in motion to find ‘K’, and invites the cops to do the same. Who will find the killer first? And at what cost?

We’re left in no uncertain terms from his opening scenes that Jang is a mercilessly violent man on his own terms, and we also see that Jung is an essentially decent man, severely hamstrung by his own department’s apparent corruption and inability to really tackle the crime going on at ground level; we are prepared for each man to really go for the challenge of finding the killer with some relish. Each is unafraid to manipulate their rival, as well as brooking no opposition to their respective schemes. Along the way, we get a sense of each man’s deeper character; this would be a weak film indeed if we were presented with nothing but a couple of blockheads, one in the ‘right’ and one in the ‘wrong’, and left to watch them play at a whodunnit as they look for the ‘devil’ of the title. There is a lot more to enjoy in this slick, well-paced film. The cat and mouse scenario at the heart of the film isn’t the only element of the plot to play out, as we also see Jang grapple with the power struggles within his own demi-monde, often fixing said issues with immense shows of brutality (the film boasts some seriously accomplished, brilliantly-choreographed sequences of gang warfare). Jung, on the other hand, has to endlessly sidestep the bureaucracy and boastfulness even of those operating legitimately – all against the backdrop of the machinations of a clever and conniving murderer, who seems to be enjoying the power he has over both men, making it his business to demonstrate to them that they are each being watched.

However, as both crook and cop get closer to finding their man, the action escalates; a clever character study this might be – at least in key places – but towards the film’s close, The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil demonstrates that director Won-Tae Lee is no slouch with shooting action; there are some particularly brutal car chases and pursuits, the end-points of meticulous surveillance and patience on behalf of each man. Their truce with one another is always uneasy, and there’s a keen sense of competition between them as they each try, in their own way, to make the streets of Seoul safer. Jang may be a crook, but it’s not a monster; he is depicted in many ways as a gentleman thug, only allowing himself to spill over into ultraviolence when the rules he lives by are violated. Likewise, Jung is something of a likeable rogue, someone who may be prepared to bend the rules, but only where he believes people’s best interests lie. The film falls broadly into key acts – though thankfully without the current obsession with on-screen chapter titles – and the last act of all contains a deep lull in the action which has come before, but it allows the film to finish on a sizeable pay-off, and a grim, black humorous conclusion which rounds off the film as a whole very well.

Fans of crime thrillers will find plenty to enjoy in this tense, well-realised example of the genre. It skates the line between overtly bloody and oddly picturesque, and there is more than enough here to engage audiences throughout. As Won-Tae Lee’s only second feature, there’s quite a remarkable amount of skill on display, a story which works on its own right but perhaps also has a few things to say about Korean society and its deeper issues. Whilst the finer points of this may be lost on Western audiences, I’m sure we can recognise the idea of odd bedfellows and contested motivations, things which this film showcases brilliantly well. Skilled, almost joyful acting performances within the key roles on display aid the film in landing a big impression. By the film’s close, I felt I’d seen something well-written and worthwhile. The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil might not always be an easy watch, but it’s absolutely a satisfying one.

The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil screened as part of the Mayhem Film Festival in Nottingham, UK in October 2019.

Mayhem Film Festival: Color Out of Space (2019)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

It’s a sad fact that director Richard Stanley is as well known for not making films as he is for making them; since the debacle surrounding The Island of Doctor Moreau in the mid nineties Stanley hasn’t made a creative feature-length film, and given the quality of his earlier projects such as Hardware, this can only be our loss. Still, he’s apparently decided to ‘go big or go home’ with his latest offering – an adaptation of an HP Lovecraft short story, brought bang up to date and crafted into something both incredibly lurid and incredibly dismal. I don’t think you make the attempt to adapt Lovecraft without having a determination to push yourself or, to an extent, having something to prove. Color Out of Space may have its flaws, but no one can argue with its sense of purpose. It’s a graphic, artistic assault on the family; almost a home invasion film as it’s imagined here, it spins something very interesting and unsettling out of the extra-dimensional force which lands on this particular corner of the world.

The film starts in rural New England: the Gardner family have moved there to escape city life, and although they need to keep on-grid to an extent make a living, they seem to be enjoying it there. Daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur) is getting into the spirit of Gaia in the woods, enacting versions of magic rituals as a means of protecting her family; her brothers Ben and Jack (Brendan Meyer and Julian Hilliard) seem fairly well-adapted and parents Theresa and Nathan (Joely Richardson and Nicholas Cage) are in the throes of re-assembling their marriage after Theresa’s fight with breast cancer, even if Nathan seems to have an unorthodox idea for his new career in farming (if you’ve never seen an alpaca in a horror film, then get ready). We get just enough of a sense of this happy, if eccentric family before all hell lets loose; a meteorite lands on their property overnight, causing a fair amount of obvious damage. However, the impact of this event goes far beyond the obvious; whatever the meteorite has brought, it soon has an impact on the landscape around the farmstead. The local authorities arrive and, finding that the water has been contaminated, they advise (too late) that the family avoid drinking it. New, hitherto-unseen flora begin to bloom around the area; the well on the property seems to be a particular focus for whatever malign (or at least indifferent) force has just arrived; crops come in sooner than expected, but they’re all putrefying. Technology begins to fail; mobile phones do their thing of capitulating the moment they’re genuinely needed. The family are more than a little perturbed.

It’s perhaps not such a leap to suppose that whatever can impact upon the local flora and fauna in this way can have an equally disruptive effect on the people who live there, and the ways in which these changes are shown are by turns very creative and gruelling to watch. At first, quite subtle shifts in mood and space/time perception give way to more physically harmful phenomena. These go from close-up minutiae (not for the squeamish) to something approaching body horror as the film approaches its end. I said the film was ambitious; it encompasses everything from magical/extraterrestrial phenomena, all in glorious technicolour, to grotesque practical effects – the one balancing the other, though without letting up on the overall sense of pressure. Watching this fairly relentless assault may not be for everyone, as there is little in the way of redemption here, and the film is escalatingly nasty for a film with such a magnificent colour palette.

Perhaps the main sticking point for many genre film fans will be the range of performances on display here, though, and how you feel about Nicolas Cage in particular in his role as Nathan Gardner will depend on your overall tolerance for his style. Here, he seems to drawl his way through a lot of his earlier scenes; these actually make for harder viewing than the inevitable ‘full Cage’ scenes, as to be fair, when these occur, they’re for good reason. Stanley apparently had to cut some of Cage’s wilder improvs, so we can only wonder what that would have been like. Against the other performances, Cage can seem a little jarring; Joely Richardson in particular has a very different manner in front of the camera, but perhaps the main danger of casting Cage is that many viewers don’t seem able to see past his mannerisms at all – some people laugh if he draws breath – so it runs the risk of taking people out of the film altogether. Of course, for just as many viewers, this is part of the appeal and can only contribute to the overall sense of detachment from reality. Personally, I preferred to look past Cage, for fear of getting absorbed by one aspect of the film only.

Still, overall, the film is an engaging piece of cosmic horror, with some visually bold, effective plays on the ideas of space, time, bodily integrity and (of course, being a Lovecraft adaptation) the notion of sanity. It looks great, with an almost painterly eye in places. As entertainment it’s largely successful, and as a return to the big screen, it’s evidence of ambition realised. I sincerely hope Richard Stanley can build and build on this, as it’s clear he has much to offer and he certainly needn’t languish for another twenty-odd years.

Color Out of Space screened as part of the Mayhem Film Festival (UK) in October 2019.

Mayhem Film Festival: Daniel Isn’t Real (2019)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Daniel Isn’t Real was introduced as ‘a cross between Drop Dead Fred and Hellraiser’; if you are immediately wondering how that could ever play out, then rest assured, this is as good an approximation as you are likely to get. This film is incredibly dark throughout, threaded through with ambiguities which grow the more you think about them, and at heart it’s also an incredibly sad film, with few moments of respite. It is also, as the first sentence of this review would suggest, a film about an imaginary friend – albeit that this theme is itself full of ambiguity.

We first meet Luke as a small child, whilst he’s witnessing the live-action breakdown of his parents’ relationship (a compelling scene which reminds us of the often hellish vulnerability of being a child). As they argue, Luke slips unseen out of their apartment and wanders straight into the aftermath of a brutal, apparently unprovoked mass shooting at a nearby diner. Hey, it’s a busy day for storing up trauma. As Luke looks on, dumbfounded, another little boy appears at his side and asks him if he wants to play. Happy to get away from the domain of adults – which seems to be riddled with bitter recriminations, misery and bullets – Luke readily agrees, and the two boys go off together. This is Daniel, who instantly becomes Luke’s best friend. But it isn’t all innocent fun; one day, Daniel incites Luke to spike his mother’s drink with medication, insisting it’ll give her ‘super powers’. It does not. From the depths of what’s probably a near-fatal poisoning, Luke’s mother has a moment of clarity. She finds what her son has done and insists that he locks Daniel away; Luke does this by commanding his friend into a dolls’ house, which he then locks.

We skip forward in time: Luke has grown up and left home to go to college, but his mother’s mental health – always erratic – has worsened considerably, meaning that he has to make frequent trips home to check up on her. This contributes to his sense of profound isolation from his peers. One day, as he grapples with what it is which makes him different, and what happened in his childhood to set him on this path, he decides to open the dolls’ house. Daniel reappears – now the same age as Luke – and at first, seems to be just the man to ease Luke’s social anxieties. Daniel is confident where Luke is shy; he’s clever, he knows just what to do or say, and he’s omnipresent. Of course, his attentions aren’t obviously benign for very long, and Luke must fight hard to retain control and agency in his life, a hard fight which this damaged young man is ill-equipped to face.

The idea of the malign imaginary friend could so easily be construed as just another riff on mental illness, another means of displaying outwardly what is going on inwardly, and of course the film tackles this notion head on because a film set in the modern world could hardly not do so, with therapists, well-wishers and Luke himself categorising ‘Daniel’ in just this way. However, were Daniel Isn’t Real to start and stop here, with a big reveal that Daniel is not in fact Real, it would not be the well-realised film we actually get. Other ideas are interwoven into the narrative – none of which are ever fully resolved, leaving the audience to ponder what they’ve seen. Could Daniel have his origins in supernatural phenomena? Could those supernatural phenomena themselves belong to different mythologies? You won’t get to the end of the film and feel these questions have been resolved; this is definitely one of the film’s key strengths. I didn’t feel that the writers simply left a gap in the narrative where they ran out of answers, either, as has happened with other films. Here, the film’s refusal to neatly tie everything up worked well as a facet of the plot.

What is beyond doubt, though, is the acute sense of inescapability here, as a young man does what he can to control his own actions but seems scuppered at every turn by someone more able, more together than he is. This effect is achieved fantastically well by the two leads, each of whom comes from a family with a fair bit of experience in acting (Miles Robbins, playing Luke, is the son of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon; Patrick Schwartzenegger, playing Daniel – well, I gather his dad is in the business, too). Robbins is fantastic as the likeable, but deeply damaged and vulnerable Luke whilst Schwartzenegger is placidly sinister as Daniel – until someone tries to resist him, that is.

But then, there’s that ambiguity again: is Daniel actively trying to destroy Luke? Or is he just doing what he thinks is for the best, with the proviso that he’s prioritising his own needs and desires? After all, how many millions of humans have done and are doing the same thing right now? The road to hell may indeed be paved with good intentions. In any distillation, this is a film which is tough viewing on its own terms. Whilst I felt that some of the replayed scenes from childhood were weaker than the rest because they were decidedly unambiguous, overall Daniel Isn’t Real is a challenging, uncomfortable watch. As an exercise in well-honed brutality, it’s a success, albeit a success which comes via a bitter sense of powerlessness.

Daniel Isn’t Real screened as part of the Mayhem Film Festival in Nottingham, UK in October 2019. It receives a US release on 6th December 2019.

Mayhem Film Festival: Extra Ordinary (2019)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

As the point has been made several times before on this site, horror comedy can be a risky venture; when it goes wrong, it can be either not that funny, nor really capable of showing any love for the horror genre either. Happily, neither of these charges can be levelled at Extra Ordinary. The film uses a full, recognisable array of horror tropes, and yet also manages to craft something very plausible, because in the midst of all the madness there are some organic human relationships which work in all their lunatic (usually) dysfunctional glory. There’s also an Irish lilt to the humour, much as the filmmakers deliberately swerved around the use of Irish stereotypes (spoiler: there are no priests here and there’s no boozing either). But for all that, there still is something unique about how the film moves between the very straightforward and the oblique, something which feels very Irish to me and which makes the film the genuinely funny experience it is.

Our first introduction to the Dooley sisters, Rose (comedian Maeve Higgins) and Sailor (Terri Chandler) comes via a VHS clip from the days when their now sadly-departed father investigated the paranormal. We’re shown that Rose blames herself for her father’s death, but Sailor assures her that it was just an accident; in any case, Rose had followed her father into paranormal investigation, but has since opted for a rather more orthodox career as a driving instructor. The problem is, people in the local area are still convinced that they need Rose’s help with their paranormal problems; most of these are hilariously low-key, but then there’s Martin’s case…

Martin (Barry Ward) is plagued by the spirit of his deceased wife Bonnie. She has strong feelings on what he does around the house, right down to what he wears every day, and Martin has little choice but to follow her wishes. Whilst their teenage daughter Sarah is largely left alone by Bonnie, she can see that her father needs some serious help in order to move on, or to move Bonnie on – which is largely the same thing. Eventually, under the auspices of having a driving lesson (!) Martin gets in contact with Rose. Rose’s own loneliness is a factor in her decision-making. This would be quite enough, but it seems there’s more trouble at hand for the Martin family – and, yep, Martin’s name is Martin Martin. When Sarah is bewitched by a [deep breath] washed-up vocalist whose only big hit was decades previously, leading to his decision to use the Dark Arts to resurrect his career, then Rose feels honour-bound to help them.

So we have a little haunting, a little paranormal investigation, a dash of possession, and some Satanic ritual to boot. There’s even a bit of gore here. I challenge you to be bored. All of that said, the film starts incredibly small in terms of its paranormal phenomena, opening with the point that most hauntings are so insignificant that people don’t even notice them (and Rose’s dad pointing out that even something as small as ‘a gravel’ can be affected gave us an early laugh). It’s just that things don’t stay small. I’ve no wish to spoiler, but, well – you know rituals. Underpinning all of this, and the reason that the film never feels like an aimless sprint through a hell of a lot of plot, is that there’s such plausible, poignant characterisation. Sure, the performance given by faded music star Christian Winter (Will Forte) is as OTT as you’d expect, but this acts as a foil to the performances of Barry Ward and Maeve Higgins. Higgins was offered the opportunity to modify the script to make it sound more natural where she felt it was necessary, and this does add a lot of likeability and depth to the characterisation. In amongst everything else which is going on, you can suspend your disbelief as the people here just work so well.

Extra Ordinary is ambitious in what it seeks to do (and how it steadily reveals elements of its plot in the run-up to its closing scenes) and it has created an original, very engaging story from recognisable horror elements. No complaints here: this is a horror comedy that works brilliantly well, with bags of charm and deserved self-belief.

Extra Ordinary screened at the Mayhem Film Festival in Nottingham in October 2019 and will be released in UK cinemas on 25th October 2019.

3 From Hell (2019)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

After the Firefly family got caught in a hail of bullets at the end of their little road trip in The Devil’s Rejects, I don’t think anyone really foresaw a sequel. But it turns out these characters have a life of their own now that defies expectations: House of 1000 Corpses and Devil’s Rejects are the best things Rob Zombie’s ever put out, and the Firefly family – though obviously based in part on other famous horror families – have broken through to garner long-term appeal. So, unlikely it might all be (though it seems silly to quibble over cold, hard facts in what is so obviously a piece of exploitation cinema), turns out Otis, Baby and Spaulding survived the shoot-out, got patched up and sent to jail, where they’ve been languishing ever since. Ten years have passed.

And not that much has changed in the interim. Well, Baby’s covered in jailhouse tattoos now and has gone ever so slightly stir-crazy from spending so long in solitary, but Otis is the same as he ever was and – in a part which was sadly, hastily re-written due to Sid Haig’s health problems – Spaulding is still a wisecracking lunatic who finally meets his maker very early on when he is executed for his crimes. Something has to give from this point on; Otis is sick and tired of jail and doesn’t much relish the same fate as his old man. He begins to formulate a plan, which of course involves a spot of horrendous cruelty and hostage-taking: taking the warden captive, he manages to persuade him to go and get Baby out of her respective cell and bring her out into the world.

Reunited again, the Firefly kids are accompanied on their new jaunt by a relative – Foxy Coltrane (Richard Brake), in a role which was very obviously intended for Sid Haig ; Brake is perfectly respectable in his role and engaging enough on screen, but it really does feel like a hasty swap, and a lot of his lines are noticeably reworked for him. Anyway, now that they’ve murdered and outraged their way through the warden’s house, they need to be moving on pretty quickly. The three decide on Mexico. When they get there, they hole up in the middle of nowhere, but they’re about to find (again) that their host isn’t to be trusted.

In 3 From Hell, Rob Zombie makes it blindingly obvious that this is an homage to the great low-brow exploitation cinema of the 70s and early 80s: the cut scenes, the addition of on-screen text and the shooting style all scream cheap, nasty cinema, even though a lot of the rest of the film is actually rather slick, but if you’re find of that type of tribute – we’ve seen a fair few in recent years – then you’ll likely enjoy what 3 From Hell does with its style. The film feels closer to House of 1000 Corpses than Devil’s Rejects in terms of that style – however, in terms of plot, it is noticeably similar to the 2005 film, to the point of being a re-tread in several key respects. Consider the similarities, even at a basic level: fugitives head onto the road looking for somewhere they feel they’ll be safe, but find out that danger and dangerous people follow them there. The whole home invasion/torment the warden scenes are themselves very similar indeed to the motel scenes from Devil’s Rejects. There’s no great progression here, at least in terms of what happens. If you like the characters and you’re just happy to see more of them, then this won’t be too much of a problem, but if you wanted a brand-new spin, then you won’t find it here. A few tantalising lines offer the suggestion of something more – such as Otis remarking on how traumatised his sister has become since he saw her last, or the remaining siblings commenting on the fact that everyone they loved is gone, with a touching cut scene to Sid Haig with them in the previous outing – but these aren’t developed in any depth, somewhat frustratingly, as this would have been interesting.

Still, if it sounds as if the verdict on 3 From Hell is negative, then really, it isn’t: there’s lots of straightforward, grisly fun here, with Bill Moseley showing once again that he was born to play the part of Otis, and getting the majority of the best lines for his pains. It’s clear he’s having an absolute blast; Brake is able to enact a close relationship with him, too, giving us two characters who are affable as much as they are awful. And that’s what Rob Zombie does very well with his most famous creations; you end up rooting for them, because everyone else is worse anyway. Sheri Moon Zombie does a decent turn as a deeply messed-up individual – that is, worse than she was before, someone used to being toyed with by a malicious warden (Dee Wallace) who has made it her business to destroy her; all in all, it’s just good to see these characters again, and if they’re not reinventing the wheel as they go, then so what? It’s hardly the point. The set pieces alone are enough entertainment.

3 From Hell looks every inch the Rob Zombie movie; its aesthetics follow a familiar pattern, and he seems quite content to just let his characters amble on through their days, resurrected largely to take one more road trip. It is, of course, a real shame that Sid Haig got to spend so little time reprising his role as Spaulding here, as like Moseley, it’s a role he clearly loved playing. So it’s a fairly simple yarn, but 3 From Hell an enjoyable enough nod to the glory days of exploitation cinema, with some warped humour, a chance to see some now-established horror film characters reprise their roles and indulge themselves in a spot of ultraviolence. If you’re happy with that, then you’ll likely be happy with this, even whilst it won’t replace The Devil’s Rejects in your affections anytime soon. And will they be back for more? Without Haig, it would be something of a shame now, but as we’ve learned -never say never.

3 From Hell will be released on 14th October 2019 (UK).

Rabid (2019)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

When I first heard that the Soska twins were directing a remake of David Cronenberg’s 1977 movie Rabid, I think, like many people, I wondered what on earth they were going to do with it. Whilst not an obvious choice for a glossy re-imagining, it’s also a film with plenty of potential for a new perspective: given Jen and Sylvia Soska’s rather variable output since their first real calling card American Mary in 2011, however, it was a project which could go either way. Happily, the finished article has lots going for it, forging something which strikes a balance between source material and new ideas. This is a pretty savage body horror of its own sort, brought up to date in a series of ways which don’t feel like mere lip service to modern concerns.

The House of Gunter is a prestigious fashion house with the prerequisite cruel, eccentric owner who gives the company its name; one of his employees, Rose Miller (Laura Vandervoort) might be a talented designer and seamstress, but she is making none too positive an impression. Mousy, uncertain, frequently late, her position is by no means assured, especially at such an important time: Gunter is about to launch his newest range, ‘Schadenfreude’, a range which will in his own words showcase ‘the dark night of the soul’. Rose’s dark night of the soul starts here: when she is invited to a party by the good looking journalist Brad (Benjamin Hollingsworth), she’s flattered, and her friend and colleague Chelsea helps her pick out an outfit. However, at the party Rose overhears that Chelsea put Brad up to it: humiliated, she leaves, gets on her moped and immediately lands herself in a serious traffic collision – not her first accident, given that she already had facial scarring, but this time things are far more significant. Rose is unconscious for a week. When she wakes up, she begs to see what has happened to her face. With a horribly disfigured face and a wired jaw, she can’t even speak to say how she feels.

Despite her earlier meddling, Chelsea wants to show herself to be a good friend, and she offers for Rose to stay with her whilst she recuperates. Rose agrees, glad of the support. Scrolling through her emails one day, she notices one from a clinic offering radical, experimental surgery from a ‘transhumanist’ perspective – but never mind the philosophy, they’re offering free care based on cutting-edge stem cell research in return for some ‘minimal blood work’. Medical care costs a lot of money in America. This is almost motivation enough. Rose and Chelsea go along to see what’s what, and despite her misgivings, Rose decides to undergo their suggested procedure. It works brilliantly, but as with all such successes, there’s a terrific, chaotic price for Rose and those around her.

There are many good qualities to admire here: this is a stylish film, well shot and lit with a great eye for colour. If Cronenberg’s Rabid was somewhat dour and grim, then this is the opposite; the use of practical SFX is very welcome, too, with some particularly unpleasant, and therefore skilled depictions of injury and surgery. During their career to date, the Soskas have done a very good job at turning the operating theatre into…well, theatre, and Rabid is no slouch in that respect. Also, on a personal note, as someone who’s had a doubly-broken jaw and reconstructive surgery, some of the footage of a very hungry Rose trying desperately to eat or drink something gave me some mild flashbacks. Ain’t no hunger like the kind where you can’t physically open your mouth (except maybe, the kind which comes later in the film). Speaking of Rose, she is far more of a rounded character for me than ‘American’ Mary, and the film does successfully generate pathos for her situation. In her chosen industry, the forces which drive the emphasis on looks are perhaps even more brutal than elsewhere, and watching people’s sudden warmth towards her when she ‘looks the part’ is well-handled. The film hinges on vanity – its artifice, but also its genuine importance to people.

In other respects, Rabid invokes some very modern demons: it tackles ‘clean eating’ and conscientious consumption, the ubiquity of plastic surgery and – without feeling like you’re being beaten around the head with an agenda – the phenomenon of street harassment of women by men. For all that, key elements of the original are retained, with some nice nods to Cronenberg (look out for them) and that self-same sense of things rapidly spiralling out of control. Whilst some of the new-direction stuff of the end scenes sat a little oddly, and whilst I still can’t be persuaded that the director cameos contribute anything, this is an entertaining horror film.

In effect, Rabid feels like the film which the Soskas shoulda-woulda-coulda made right after American Mary. There are recognisable parallels between that earlier film and Rabid, but with Rabid there is evidence of lessons learned – a defter touch, and a sense of progression which I don’t feel that you get from their other interim projects. It’s pleasing to see, and I really hope that these directors can use Rabid to generate momentum for their next pitch, as it would be a crying shame were this not the case.

Rabid gets a UK release via 101 Films on 7th October 2019.

Groupers (2019)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

It seems that gone are the days when social commentary in cinema happened as a matter of chance; more and more, in our hyper-aware times, filmmakers actively tackle hot topics such as attitudes to sexuality, race or class – it’s there from the start, right from the beginning of the writing process. So when I saw that Groupers (2019) was being pitched as a film taking homophobia as one of its key plot points, I’ll admit that I expected something perhaps – how shall we say – intentionally ‘woke’, choc-ful of correct attitudes and lessons learned. And in that rather simplistic expectation I was completely wrong. Yes, this film challenges homophobic attitudes, but it does it in a range of ways from downright savage to fairly oblique. The film shifts from something approximating ordeal horror, to a dialogue-driven skit on human stupidity. In short, it’s immensely ambitious, and most of that ambition pays off.

The film starts with two rather hopeful jocks – the impressively moronic Dylan (Cameron Duckett) and his slightly brighter, but no nicer best friend Brad (Peter Mayer-Klepchick). They’re very pleased to be leaving a club with a pretty girl who intimates that they can both come home with her: just get into this large, empty truck, guys, and I’m yours. Naturally, they do just that. But the journey to wherever they’re going would suggest that she’s not that enamoured of them after all; slamming on the brakes, veering from side to side, oh and donning a gas mask before tossing a gas canister into the back, knocking them both out. When they revive, they’re tied to chairs (!) at the deep end of a disused swimming pool in an abandoned neighbourhood. The girl, who introduces herself as Meg (Nicole Dambro) says that they have been chosen to participate in a very special experiment. To help them make sense of their predicament, she reminds them of someone they might have forgotten…

It transpires that these jocks have been doing what jocks do best, at least if my experience of the school social system in America (which comes exclusively via cinema) has been correct: they’ve been victimising someone weaker than them, in this case for that person’s sexuality. The victim of their bullying, Oren, was Meg’s brother. And she wants to tackle Dylan and Brad’s assertions that Oren (or Aaron, they can’t quite remember his name) brought it all on himself: you choose to be gay, therefore he used his free will to think himself into a state that left him rife for victimisation.

Meg’s ideas for just how to test her own ideas are non-violent but definitely uncomfortable, and had the film began and ended with ‘people tied to chairs learning life lessons from an empowered captor’, then Groupers would for me already be filed with all the rest of the ordeal cinema already out there; also, the notion of a film where minors become the subject of sexual experimentation would be unpalatable or unsustainable to many. Just as an aside, a ‘grouper’ is apparently someone who changes their sexual orientation or gender identity later in life, and as that’s displayed loud and proud at the beginning of the film, it’s not a spoiler to add that detail here. Hold that thought, though. The film quickly breaks up any emphasis on the experiment itself with a number of features which raise this film above what it might otherwise have been.

The pace in Groupers is overall fairly quick, even for a film which comes in at nearly two hours in length. There’s comparatively little focus or fixation on the two boys and what is being done to them, as there’s a lot more plot to follow: it’s a common feature in indie filmmaking now to have your film chaptered, but it’s worth knowing that there are other characters and plot devices to come via this method, with second glances at scenes we’ve already seen; new perspectives and footage are added each time (so there’s no fixation on a single location, which helpfully breaks the film up further). The dialogue itself from all of these characters is sparky and smart, with superb performances (particularly from the driven, charismatic but fallible Meg). There’s far more in here, again obliquely for the most part, than homophobia too. Ideas about bullying in general, our relationships to social media and our attitudes to gender and race all get touched upon. In fact, as things progress, this begins to feel a lot more like a Kevin Smith-style script, an assemblage of odd people and their attitudes, all playing off one another and using just the right amount of dry humour, moving eventually from the sublime to the ridiculous. If the film loses something of its initial impetus across its running time, then it continues to be an engaging, unusual and funny film.

So, contrary to expectations, there are no grandstanding ideas about social attitudes here; attitudes are challenged, yes, but it’s as often implicit as it is explicit. The overarching appeal of Groupers must surely be its utterly unique handling of that challenging subject matter as it spirals out from the initial premise, gathers a whole host of larger-than-life characters then draws them all back together again. It deserves credit for that.

Groupers is on general release in the US from October 1st 2019.