Whilst I have something of a handle on Japanese cinema of the 70s and 80s – well, in so far as the films have made the great leap to Western screens – I know comparatively little about Chinese cinema of the same period, and in that I have to include Hong Kong/Taiwan. I’ve seen a couple of hopping vampires (hopping because they still have their winding sheets on) and a handful of crime dramas, but not a lot else. Compared to Japan, China, HK and Taiwan are, by and large, a closed book. I’m aware, though, that the director of Legend of the Mountain, King Hu, moved from acting to directing, and that the film under consideration here is oft considered to be his magnum opus. An epic it certainly is; rocking in at over three hours, it’s a lengthy, visually incredibly accomplished Chinese folk tale, which uses its ample screen time to do a great deal of quite disparate things along the way.
Based on a tale which dates to the Song Dynasty – a period from the 900s to the 1200s, so (for context) roughly the time that Northern Europe was being redrawn by the Viking Age – Legend of the Mountain follows the fortunes of a young copyist, enlisted to copy a Buddhist sutra. In Buddhist belief, this is a sanctified text which has tremendous power over the spirits of the dead; these dead are beings which themselves are quite unlike Western ghosts with their diaphanous forms, something which makes sense as the film goes on. Our young man Yungqing is not a Buddhist himself, and although he appreciates the importance of the task, he assumes that it’ll be a job like any other. A job like any other, with three hours to go? Naive.
He receives the texts for copying from the sumptuous monastery which is giving him the job, and then he heads off to do this important work in peace, walking for seemingly days into the countryside to find a suitable retreat. Before he even reaches his destination, however, he begins to encounter strange people who do not act the way he clearly expects them to act. Two mysterious women – Melody (Feng Hsu) and Cloud (Sylvia Chang) take an especial interest in him, and the other inmates of his remote mountain lodge are just as strange in their own ways. Evidently, supernatural forces are at work, and certain entities want the all-powerful sutra for themselves. Yungqing will need all of his wits to finish his employment, and get himself back to civilisation in one piece.
This entire project screams classic China: abundant landscapes are presented in a highly colourised, painterly manner, and traditional Chinese instrumentation accompanies the action throughout. Then, of course, the subject matter itself is based on ancient folklore, and to an extent this film is a piece of Far Eastern folk horror, albeit that the film never settles into this mode completely. Supernatural elements underpin the story, and the director works hard within his means to produce some subtle, uncanny scenes. But this film is many other things, to the extent that it never really takes its place in any genre, in an expected sense. It has an eye for historical detail, but also flits between being a pastoral, a romance, a reminiscence and – when it’s not adding comedic elements and the obligatory martial arts scenes to this melee – it even dabbles in Buddhist philosophy, ruminating on life, love and everything. Overall, Legend of the Mountain does a great, great deal. Well, the film is immensely long, and I’ll say it, as ever; it’s rather too long for my tastes, and despite its pleasant visuals and overall engaging subject matter, it veers from cramming in more and more plot elements to lengthy, even unnecessary forays through the woods. As it’s nearly forty years old, I can’t even say it’s falling in behind the new tendency to make films increasingly longer.
Still, Legend of the Mountain showed me some elements of Chinese folklore which I’ve never seen before, and it offers an interesting window onto 1970s filmmaking of the era. Anyone with a completist’s interest in cinema of the Far East would be rewarded with an excellent 4K quality remaster, all crisp lines, good colours and clear sound for seeking this out.
Legend of the Mountain is available now via the Eureka! Masters of Cinema series.
There has long been a relationship between horror cinema and the humble waxwork museum. Though now sadly fallen out of favour, waxworks were a de rigeur form of entertainment before cinema existed; the world-famous Madame Tussauds opened its first ‘chamber of horrors’ in 1802 after the successes of the French ‘Caverne des Grands Voleurs’, which had made a pastime out of exhibiting wax figures of famous victims – and leaders – of the French Revolution. Taking her cues from the new buzz in Paris, Madame instituted a similar exhibition of her own in London which soon proved to be massively popular: this great success was integral in spawning a thousand other chambers of horror around the world, oddities which aimed to satiate people’s morbid curiosity about infamous murderers or horrific events, back in the days when the best you could hope for along those lines was the odd illustrated Penny Dreadful or low-brow newspaper.
When cinema emerged, this offered new opportunities to appal and repel its audiences, but there was overlap between the old scares and the new. Early cinema often took its cues from the same source material – the legend of Sweeney Todd, for instance – and often presented its most shocking fare as tableaux which wouldn’t look out of place in a chamber of horrors. There was also overlap in the sense that waxwork museums themselves appeared on film. The House of Wax told the story of a demented artist (the one and only Vincent Price) who wanted to repopulate his wax museum with real bodies – in a link to the wax museum’s historical legacy, his chamber of horrors features Marie Antoinette, whose modelled decapitated head was one of the most popular exhibits in the Caverne des Grands Voleurs, and later in Madame Tussauds, too. Other horrors have continued to reference waxworks and exhibitions of this grisly nature, even if not featuring them outright. House of 1000 Corpses sees the Firefly family turning their victims into exhibits; even Hostel references doing the same thing, demonstrating the terrific reach of the chamber of horrors, even if, unfortunately, only a few still exist today.
“Stop on by…”
But in the 80s – a whole thirty years ago, to be precise – a film used the theme of the waxwork museum as its central plot device; not only that, but it was one of the first truly self-referential horror films, doing far more than simply utilising the waxwork museum as a straightforwardly scary setting. Whilst sharing some plot features with House of Wax, Waxwork also runs stories within stories, eventually pitching these stories against the world as we know it. It’s ambitious, it’s novel – and it’s such fun.
Looking every inch an 80s movie – which itself has a nostalgic charm – Waxwork gives us a bunch of college kids who are variously unlucky in love, virginal, massively wealthy and terminally privileged, and it seems at first that it’s going to be really difficult to empathise with them – but writer/director Anthony Hickox achieves it. This isn’t Society (1989) and the purpose of the film isn’t to roast the rich – these kids are just of a type, and they want to have fun. When a wax museum mysteriously pops up in the middle of their neighbourhood, and the owner (David Warner!) invites a select gathering of their friends to come along at midnight, of course they want to go. They’re a little surprised, and they think that the whole thing is perhaps a little old-fashioned coming in what they refer to as “the video age”, but it turns out the museum has its charms. It also has something distinctly weird going on – and as the show begins, the visitors begin to disappear – one by one. Can the survivors uncover what is going on before they, too, fall prey?
“This…is…killer!”
The nature of each waxwork tableau is significant. Each functioning as a distinct story (and I’d honestly have happily seen each and any of them turned into a film of their own) the waxworks feature a panoply of entertainment and horror film archetypes: there are circus acts, historical murders, Gothic fantasies and a whole host of famous monsters. In the first sequence, the werewolf story even references Universal’s take on the werewolf myth, using the ubiquitous silver bullets which were the invention of the 1930s script. Later on, we come up against mummies, vampires, zombies, even the Phantom of the Opera: the whole film is a love-letter to both old and new horror, with a cast of older actors, several of whom, like Patrick Macnee, had long worked in horror cinema, featuring alongside new actors like Zach Galligan – fresh out of the hit kiddie horror Gremlins, and forever associated with this decade in film.
The different ways that Waxwork achieves its novel approach are just as interesting. Firstly, each ‘participant’ who enters their own waxwork scene seems to assume, at least at first, that they’re taking part in some kind of show. They speak directly to an assumed narrator, guessing that they’re being watched or directed in some sense. Also, each participant joins in with their scene in character: once the story-line starts, no one challenges the other characters or asks where they are. They simply perform as they believe they’re meant to, right down to a bit of casual cannibalism, or a heavy whipping (the film has a few erotic sequences for its female characters, including a ‘noteworthy’ rendezvous with the Marquis de Sade).
Then, those horror stories which reach a conclusion turn from movies back into tableaux. The moment of death becomes frozen in time, forming the chamber of horrors scene, and making the ongoing relationship between waxworks and cinema very clear. In trying to decipher what is going on in this museum, Mark (Galligan) eventually works out that you have to believe in the phenomena in order to be harmed by them. Characters cross their own fourth wall, then turn back into static figures. it’s both very modern, and very traditional in this sense – whilst never losing its sense of humour, from the diminutive doorman Hans’ incomprehensible whiplash bows (!) to its self-effacing dialogue throughout.
“They’ll make a movie about anything nowadays.”
If you thought the early phases of this movie had a lot going on, then the end of the film is even busier, to the extent that Wilfred’s explanation of what the hell has been going on here is delightfully mad. To add to the vampires and the lycanthropes, we get a liberal dose of black magic, topped off with voodoo, and all of this apparently engineered to bring about the end of the world, no less! As an homage to so much of the horror which had come before it, Waxwork is borderline exhausting; the finale is basically a horror brawl, shot through with some more pretty good creature FX and masses of blood spray. It’s an OTT conclusion which perfectly suits the approach taken throughout the film, and keeps the entertainment factor high.
Waxwork has stood up to the test of time pretty well, and I’d say it’s Anthony Hickox’s best and most original piece of work – not bad going, considering this was his first ever feature, shot before he had turned thirty. It has that time capsule quality which we can enjoy on its own merits, but its charms run deeper than that. As an 80s film, it came at a point in horror history where there was already a wealth of work to reflect back on. Waxwork is aware of its place in the horror canon, it knows its stuff, and accordingly it’s able to play with some of the expectations 80s audiences would already have had of the genre. However, it also comes at a time which is still largely non-cynical; there’s no eye-rolling here. Waxwork is as experimental as it is deferential, but its experiments are done with glee. Because it’s a film that is clearly not bored by itself, it’s never boring to watch, and I wish we could say the same for more of the eye-rolling films which have followed in its footsteps.
Is it just me, or does the ‘found footage’ craze of the past fifteen years or so seem to have died back a little of late? This sub-genre seemed to dominate indie cinema for what seemed like forever, becoming infamous as a go-to model for those on a shoestring budget. Well, found footage films are still out there and they’re still being made, though to be fair, a Hungarian ‘horror comedy’ found footage is a new one on me. This would be A Guidebook to Killing your Ex, then, written and directed by József Gallai – a young filmmaker who has turned his hand to a range of fare so far in his career, from cryptids (the Mothman) to true crime, from spectres to Hungarian-language mumblecore. It’s fair to say that A Guidebook has far more in common with the latter than any of the former, and this fact may be of note to any prospective viewers.
The ‘Guidebook’ transpires to be something like a filmed tutorial, made by a ‘John Doe’ (Balázs Szitás) who explains that he’s going to be narrating his film in English to ensure it reaches the largest possible audience, as well as translating it wherever Hungarian crops up (one has to wonder if he spent a period of time at the end of every day subtitling his work thus far). The tutorial itself is just as the title suggests: Doe has planned that, 72 hours from the start of his film, he’ll be committing the murder of his ex girlfriend and her new partner. The film serves the purposes of being his sounding board, evidence of his preparations, his rationale, and so on. Along the way, we glean the reasons behind his prospective actions and thus gain something of a back story about his character.
Acting convincingly in a foreign language must be difficult, and the English spoken here – together with the performance overall – is of a reasonable standard, generating a plausible and distinctly non-glossy piece of characterisation. The vast share of the film focuses specifically on John Doe, with him filling the screen for most of the time, so a great deal hinges on this. There’s some generation of sympathy here along the way, as this man’s story comes out and you realise that a perfect storm of triggers has led him to this point. The film’s themes – which range through revenge, impressionability, isolation and emotional illiteracy – are given a low-key treatment, and many elements come across successfully. That all said, the crux of this story has been seen a million times, and I’m fairly sure I’m safe from allegations of spoilers when I say that the climax of the film centres around a murdered woman. It’s been done a million times, and utilising the abuse of a largely two-dimensional female character in this way washes a lot of the sympathy out of how I felt about John Doe by the end; his ex becomes a prop, while the film runs through the standard torture-and-murder motif it’s taken an hour to set up. It’s not meant to be ingratiating, of course, but it’s not particularly enlightening either.
The decision to use the found footage framing style makes sense here in many respects, though in common with many other films within this genre, there are a few head-scratching moments. These completed films (this one held in police files post-case) apparently pop up in the form we see them, which suggests (as above) that some sort of editing is going on before films are recovered or, perhaps, that those who find the films edit them into some sort of shape before they’re seen – in which case, the inclusion of things such as John Doe tucking into a meal are odd things to keep in. See also: someone speaking the immortal line “What is the camera for?” Maybe I’m alone in getting hung up on these points, but I think it’s interesting; standard, edited-by-omniscient-storyteller films don’t bring these issues with them. I mentioned that the film had much in common with the ‘mumblecore’ genre, too, and it would seem that lots of the dialogue is improvised – though Doe does look off camera from time to time rather than into it, which means, perhaps, that he is looking at cues. This improvised dialogue – which is reasonably sparky and engaging – is far easier to see as associated with mumblecore than it is to see the film as a whole as a comedy, or a straightforward horror for that matter. There are some absurd elements which veer towards humorous, and in terms of horror there is some slightly grisly footage, but overall, A Guidebook to Killing Your Ex feels a lot more like an experimental , dialogue-heavy film than either a horror or a comedy. Its refusal to sit comfortably in either of the bigger genres is to some extent a strength, but may mean it’s trickier for the film to find its audience.
So, A Guidebook to Killing Your Ex labours under several of the difficulties which have plagued this cheap, accessible but problematic framing device over the years, and it’s open about the fact (via the title) that a familiar kind of resolution is on its way – but it has some spirited dialogue and some decent ideas: it will be interesting to see what this barely-thirty year old director can turn his hand to next. As this is his fourth found footage film in just eight years, I have to say I’m hopeful of seeing a different approach in the future, and to see what he can do beyond these particular confines.
The very opening scenes of The Lodgers speak to the key themes of the film as a whole: a young woman, sitting alone by a lake at night, preoccupied by her thoughts, suddenly flees back to a dilapidated mansion house when she hears the clock striking midnight. This is the first, but not the last nod to the darker side of fairy stories; stories which the film references in abundance. Especial menace surrounds a trapdoor in the house, which bubbles and threatens with dark water as the girl returns; there are sinister forces at work here, and the girl is obviously terrified.
“Love can be worse than hatred.”
The girl is Rachel (Charlotte Vega) and she lives alone with her twin brother, the sickly Edward (Bill Milner). The year is 1920, and they are the orphans of a family of English descent, although they live in the crumbling family estate in rural Ireland. Aside from the obvious physical isolation they’re in from the nearby village and its inhabitants, the house has some sort of control over them which will only gradually come to light, but it’s clear that whatever this presence is, it makes the brother and sister live under a series of rules. Flouting the rules causes rising anger; being outside at midnight is one way to flout the rules, and each transgression seems to make the presence in the house manifest more clearly.
Meanwhile, an Irishman who has been away fighting for the British in World War One returns to the village, going home to his family business – the local grocers. This is Sean (Eugene Simon – best known as cousin Lancel from Game of Thrones, the Lannister who goes full Sparrow). His reappearance causes inevitable ripples of anger around town, coming as it does at a particularly heated time in Anglo-Irish relations; however, as his mother owns the only shop in the area, he soon meets the distinctly aloof Rachel, though his initial attraction to the girl is clear. Rachel, meanwhile, receives a letter from England which jeopardises her and her brother’s isolated existence in the house, and as her oppressive home life becomes even more unbearable, even terrifying, she no longer repels Sean’s attempts to help.
To say more about the plot and how it unfolds would do the film a disservice; I’ve seen some reviews note that to them the plot is unduly thin, but it seems to me that director Brian O’Malley and writer David Turpin have quite deliberately allowed the atmospherics to prevail: there’s more than enough going on here to weave a sinister story. Anything which is left unexplained works to the film’s credit; a grand exposé would unpick what comes before. What we get here is a cold, autumnal film which still simmers with a sort of aberrant sexuality, just beneath the surface. The supernatural elements exist in this repressed, dare-not state too, making people into monsters whilst personifying itself as something monstrous. This, admittedly doesn’t lead to a terrifying horror story – although there are a few sequences which effectively transform the underlying tension into something more real. Overall, this film is far closer to The Innocents than The Innkeepers. Prospective viewers take note, and please don’t kvetch if you pick this one up expecting to jump out of your skin multiple times.
If The Innocents is one prospective influence, then you might note others. From what I’ve said so far, you could infer a few similarities to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Fall of the House of Usher. From Edward’s sensory over-sensitivity to the entity-like house to the brother and sister in a state of warped isolation, the links are there; again, no bad thing. I was also put in mind of The Company of Wolves in a few scenes, although the film as a whole is rooted in a modern, largely realistic setting. Something about the way the light slants through the woods, perhaps, but also the way that The Lodgers takes elements of fairy stories – the obsession with coming-of-age, beauty, sexuality, conduct, curses – and explores them in a similar way to Angela Carter/Neil Jordan. The film is also stunningly beautiful, and not a stroke of set-dressing seems to have been wasted. Shot on location in Ireland, the sets and the scenery are stunning to look at, and the period setting is meticulously realised throughout, with no spell-breaking anachronisms.
As much as there is a chain of influences at work here, The Lodgers is very much its own beast. It’s just the kind of rich, symbolic, but still subtle supernatural horror which I love, and which I wish more filmmakers were making these days. Yes, there are unanswered questions here, but this absolutely doesn’t detract from the film as a whole. And all of this is achieved without a single screeching jump-cut, either.
The Lodgers is released in US/Canadian cinemas today (23rd February 2018).
I think everyone must remember the first time they saw Dead Alive – or, to give it its UK title, Braindead, where it released in the spring of the same year (May). There are other titles in use, all of which show that distribution companies took the film very much in the spirit it was intended. As well as the expected variants on ‘braindead’, in Spain a line of dialogue from the film gives us the title, Your Mother Ate My Dog; in Brazil, they opted for Animal Hunger; Hungary, a literal nation, simply went for Corpse! (exclamation mark included). All in all, the variety of titles around the globe do a fair job of summing up the film’s plot and vibe.
When I first saw the film – not long after its video release, around the time that I saw the likes of Army of Darkness and Return of the Living Dead 3 – I was already primed for films which could link black humour with grisly effects. I still wasn’t quite ready for Braindead, though; in fact, claims that it’s the goriest film ever made still ring utterly true. Using the already-familiar idea of the ‘dead undead’, director Peter Jackson takes the equally familiar idea of the living trying to escape from them, then chucks in a stack of physical comedy before absolutely drenching his sets in blood (300 litres in the final scenes alone, apparently). The film is an unparalleled piece of splatstick, so ridiculous that it’s sublime, and a demented rite of passage for so many horror fans. But apart from the unprecedented gallons of red stuff – why else do we love this film? Gore is good, but on its own it just becomes a series of grisly panels.
“SINGAIA!”
Hopefully, no one will go full pod person on me for spoilering the film if I sidestep into a quick synopsis here…but obviously, if you haven’t seen it, stop reading. Go to it.
It’s the 1950s, and a naturalist expedition into Skull Island, Sumatra (ring any bells?) to find a specimen of a rare species – a ‘rat monkey’ – ends in a bloody incident which can’t be patched up, not even with a bit of Dettol. These little buggers are dangerous, it seems, being the warped offspring of local monkeys and slave-ship rats, and only amputation (even of the head) can be used to treat their bites successfully. Lesson duly noted. Back home in New Zealand, overbearing mother Vera divides up her time between Wellington Ladies Welfare League duties and stopping her grown-up son Lionel from growing up any more than is strictly necessary. When he starts dating a local girl, Paquita, Lionel decides to take her for a lovely day at the zoo. Vera, who isn’t too keen on her son fraternising with an Experienced Girl like Paquita, goes along to spy on them. Our rat monkey friend is by now installed and on display, but when Vera gets too close to its cage, it sinks its teeth into her, ruining her dress into the bargain. It looks as if she’s won this round, as Lionel immediately escorts his injured mother home, but she soon falls sick. Really sick. And it seems as though whatever condition she’s picked up from the monkey, it’s contagious. Lionel is one of life’s copers, but he soon loses control of the situation, despite doing what he can to keep his mother (and some unwitting houseguests) ‘calm’. Except, oh, he makes a singular error, prompting the closing sequence to end all closing sequences…
“They’re not dead… exactly…”
Firstly, you’d have to really go some to see the kind of social commentary here which writers are so happy to pick out of almost anything horror-related these days, particularly if dead (or otherwise zombified) creatures are wandering around. I mean, if you put your mind to it, you could come up with something relating to the monstrous feminine, but by and large, the film sets out its lack-of agenda before the opening credits roll: the fact that limbs are being lopped off and the title on screen physically comes out of this OTT sequence surely tells us that. Sure, there are some messed up relationships in the film, but they’re fairly quickly escalated into something comprehensively and joyously detached from reality – and that’s okay, it’s good to park your brain at the door and enjoy a film which is completely unreal and cartoonish from time to time. If the film has any central message it’s that ‘life comes at you fast’, and poor Lionel’s attempts to keep normality ticking over are hilarious, excruciating and ill-fated. Yes, he gets the girl at the end, but only after going through a houseful of party guests with a lawnmower.
Things certainly do go badly wrong at home for our homebody main character, though. Jackson’s early films (Bad Taste and Braindead in particular) take great pleasure in turning an average house into something going catastrophically wrong and he seems to have a particular knack for making mealtimes disgusting. Passing around the ‘gruel’ in Bad Taste was vile enough; the dining table scene in Dead Alive is a masterclass in stomach-turning awkwardness, this time swapping the gruel for an everyday dessert. Vera’s frantic attempts to host a delightfully middle-class WLWL gathering, despite her body parts starting to fall off, result in that repellent, hilarious sequence where an oblivious and very easily-pleased Mr. Matheson tucks into a bowl of pus-filled but otherwise “damn fine” custard. The whole thing is laugh-out-loud funny, brilliantly acted by the late Elizabeth Moody (“Thank……you…No…ra”) and it’s a kind of horror-infused Keeping Up Appearances (a British sitcom about social snobbery – honestly, the parallels are there). Elsewhere, moments which are meant to be very sad (such as Vera’s ‘passing’) segue immediately into head-shredding gore, and the riotous false ending involving the ‘tranquiliser’ subverts the whole mood of the quieter scene which comes before it. You never get to relax in this film, and nor would you want to, making it one of the best splattery comedies out there – and the quaint, old-fashioned setting of 50s New Zealand acts as a neat foil and a perfect contrast to the absurd developments we see on screen.
More than this, Dead Alive is confident enough in itself to do a few new things with the idea of the zombie. Lionel has his hands full with the little house gathering he ends up with, but probably didn’t expect to have to contend with two of them falling for each other. The only people consummating anything in the film are corpses; weirder still, these corpses end up doting on a new arrival soon afterwards. Cinema had brought us monster offspring, but never clowning like this. Parenthood doesn’t exactly get an easy run in the film, at any point, and forging the guise of a happy family gives us one of the film’s most outrageous scenes. Baby Selwyn – with Lionel haplessly trying to look after him – gives us the best parody of the proud parental walk in the park, probably ever, especially when Lionel starts punching the little bleeder before shoving him in a duffle bag, under the astonished eye of a gathering of genteel looking women. “Hyperactive,” apparently. There’s still a shock value in having a character doing anything to ‘The Children’, even if one of them is a zombie, so this is another expectation Jackson plays fast and loose with, as well as showcasing Timothy Balme’s tremendous skills as a decent man on the edge of losing his mind. When I first saw the park sequence, I had to watch it again straight away. I wasn’t sure if I had really seen a man doing that with/to a pram. (I re-watched the sequence to write this feature, and yep, it’s still enough to make me cry laughing. I mean, how could you not?)
This really is the film which has it all, if you like seeing gore layered on top of gore and a pitch-perfect script. Never mind the meticulous cinematic metaphors – there’s a time and a place for all of that. Dead Alive blends pratfalls, ingenious, imaginative gruesome effects, engaging characters (yeah, even Uncle Les) and a novel set up which plays out in an unexpected way. It’s sheer, farcical entertainment throughout. I suppose, in the end, the whole thing is about a sheltered young man eventually making decisions for himself. It’s just that, to get to that point, he has to be absorbed into the monstrous womb of his recently-resurrected giant jealous mother, then carve his way out of there. So, okay, if you really want to go down the social commentary route, I suppose you could, but there’s more than enough to just stick to the entertainment value here.
I’ve always felt surprised that the guy who directed the likes of Dead Alive and Meet the Feebles eventually went on to make Lord of the Rings and I said as much when I wrote a retrospective about Bad Taste, but perhaps it’s not that staggering after all although the different-era films are, shall we say slightly different in tone. Jackson has a history of aiming big and bold, even from the very earliest point in his career, and his horror/exploitation offerings can certainly still hold their own, even against a new wave of films which were surely influenced by the unhinged overkill of Jackson’s early years. And, twenty five years on, this film is as brilliant and irreverent as ever; it’s far, far more than just a gag reel, but its gags and its one-liners have definitely stood the test of time.
My relationship with the Hellraiser sequels is ambivalent at best, hostile at worst; as I’ve said previously, the first Hellraiser is rather important to me, and I’ve always yearned for a fully-realised entrant into the mythos to appear, but with the exception of Hellbound – itself a brilliant horror movie – I’ve always ended up disappointed. Obviously, the stakes are high when you’re so invested in an original film, but ever since the Worst Cenobite Ever in Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (burning someone with a cigarette is hardly on par with the torments of hell) and then Hellraiser: Bloodlines (Pinhead! In space! With a dog!) there has been a series of dwindling returns; as our guest writer Oliver noted in his rundown of the Hellraiser sequels at that time, the franchise has been cruelly mistreated ever since – yet still, it heaves on. Oh! Why did they never make the sequel mooted by Barker, where the Lament Configuration was linked to the construction of the pyramids! Go big, or go home…
This brings us to Hellraiser: Judgment (god, that spelling of the word looks wrong to my eye). Written and directed by Gary J. Tunnicliffe, who has been involved in several of the direct-to-video sequels, it’s a film which does – to be fair – show some love for the original Hellraiser mythos, but it’s clearly been hamstrung by a lethal combination of budget constraints and a confused approach which seeks to bring numerous genre tropes into the same narrative. The resulting film is a watchable, but infuriatingly thin piece of work which repeats the errors of several of the prior DTV sequels.
The film begins with Pinhead – no longer played by Doug Bradley, but by one Paul T. Taylor – ruminating on a modern world now too satiated with technology to be interested in a mere “wooden box”. Who’d have thunk it – the Lament Configuration box is just too lo-fi these days. (Quick, get some into a hipster bar.) However, in conversation with what I can only describe as his new PA, Pinhead reaffirms his ability to tempt sinners; he’ll just find new means of achieving it. Cut to a down-and-out, a Mr. Watkins, receiving a strange, typed letter which invites him to a deserted address on the outskirts of the city. Being an idiot, he goes. It turns out that Watkins has some dark secrets in his past, secrets which the sender clearly knows about: in a sequence which actually showcases some neat ideas and repulsive imagery, Watkins is ‘judged’; perhaps Pinhead’s new search for souls is by appointment only, but in any case, he’s soon bagged his first.
Disappointingly, we leave this part of the plot to segue into something akin to a Se7en-style serial killer case: one of the irritating flaws of Hellraiser sequels is a tendency to park the Cenobites somewhere before heading off into new territory altogether. It’s both a tease and a waste. But anyway, it is what it is, again, so we begin to follow the fortunes of detective brothers David and Sean Carter – who are hot on the heels of a Bible-inspired serial murderer going under the name of The Preceptor. Aided by new girl Christine Egerton (Alexandra Harris) they aim to catch The Preceptor before he enacts the rest of the deadly sins Ten Commandments via his crimes. However, while they try to solve the whereabouts of the killer, elder brother Sean (Damon Carney) is increasingly going it alone, and his state of mind is leading him into some strange, unsettling territory…
In the melee, there are some decent ideas here. The idea of an affinity between deviants and demons is of course nothing new, but exploring it in a modern, urban setting still has some promise, lending old Judeo-Christian ideas a grimy horror patina. The idea of being judged at the Pearly Gates is transformed into a demonic admin exercise here – it’s different, and it has potential. Although the presence of T&A doesn’t exactly fit in with the other monsters in this mythos, these scenes are book-ended with material which gets close to the dark, maggoty horror of the first two Hellraisers, and a few moments in the script display some love and knowledge of the source material, which at least shows that Tunnicliffe isn’t just winging it here. As for Pinhead himself, well – when he’s on screen, he’s…okay. He’s blank, rather than malevolent; his garb has obviously been simplified for reasons of expediency, but the make-up is reasonably good. We have to remember that Doug Bradley wasn’t exactly able to shine in his last few appearances in his hallmark role, either, so as far as the sequels go, Taylor does a reasonable job with what he has.
Still, as much as there are a few positives, there are – sadly – plenty more negatives. The first major sticking-point, for me, are the layers of incomprehensible decisions which underpin the film’s action throughout. Hellraiser: Judgment is hardly the first offender in this respect, but almost from the first, its characters act unscrupulously, or do things which make no sense – all to advance a plot which already seems to hinge on very little. Acting incomprehensibly in a tenuous universe only compounds the issues of the latter, and doubles the distance between audience and characters. The way in which the film abruptly becomes a torture porn film also grated upon me; it feels like an idea is being mis-sold when it switches in this way, and as someone who was completely sated with this kind of thing after the Saw movies, I feel like any inclusion of this theme needs to be far more closely interlinked with those Hellraiser elements which will no doubt bring an audience to this film. As it stands, it felt like two separate films, overstretched by the bringing-together, and eventually joined by an unconvincing epilogue – and don’t get me started on that particularly trite, well-tailored final nod to Judeo-Christian belief which made me throw up my hands.
In fact, the more I come to think of it, the more I feel that Judgment is unsettlingly familiar to Hellraiser: Inferno (2000) in more ways that one – and similar to a few of the later sequels, too, in terms of its plot and its problems. These monsters are crying out for a film which has the will and the means to make more of them. I mean, Hellraiser (1987) barely put the Cenobites on screen – but they were very much present throughout the film. It can be done.
So, despite a few ambitious ideas, Hellraiser: Judgment is, I’m afraid to say, another one of those sequels. It starts fairly promisingly, but becomes a cop out with cops – yet another missed opportunity to really go somewhere with these no doubt exasperated demons who should be allowed to do their thing or stay off our screens altogether.
Hellraiser: Judgment is released on 13th February 2018.
The Company of Wolves (1984) really is a force of nature – a vivid array of stories-within-stories which capture the insurrectionist tendencies of Angela Carter’s book, The Bloody Chamber, a collection of familiar fairy stories reworked into unfamiliar forms. The film brings several of Carter’s tales to the screen, albeit via a new, modern framing device, one which links the humdrum with the imaginative, showing ways in which these two states overlap and influence one another. Ambitious, aesthetically-pleasing and intricate, it’s a film which has a diehard fan base, but perhaps has always struggled to attain the audience – or the appreciation – it merits, coming as it does at the tail-end (pun noted) of a number of grisly werewolf flicks and a growing appetite for the gory, not the Gothic. But there’s much to reward the viewer in The Company of Wolves, and now – with James Gracey’s book about the film – it yields up more still in this observant and scrupulous study.
Noting that the film appeared after a brief but significant werewolf phase in horror cinema, with the likes of An American Werewolf in London and The Howling still fresh in audience minds, Gracey sets out just how different The Company of Wolves was to these films (and, later in the book, how disastrous marketing strategies mis-sold the film as another grisly werewolf horror, to the probable disappointment of many viewers). Repositioning the film as a richly symbolic piece of work with a novel attitude to female sexuality at its core, Gracey is primed to explore the history of the project before contextualising both the film and The Bloody Chamber with a series of thought-provoking appraisals.
After an enlightening warts-and-all retelling of director Neil Jordan and author Angela Carter’s meeting and involvement in the project – theirs was a close, fruitful but occasionally rocky relationship – and some interesting facts (like Andy Warhol being the original choice to play the Devil) Gracey moves onto an important contextual consideration of the film: the history of storytelling. Oral folklore existed in various forms for hundreds of years before anything was written down in even a rudimentary form, but in the last couple of centuries, folklorists have taken an interest in what these stories can tell us about the mores of their times: as well as what’s in the tales, there’s an increasing regard for what gets left out, when, and why. For example, the Brothers Grimm, who believed that maternity was tantamount to an exalted state, turned a lot of malign mothers into the proverbial ‘wicked stepmothers’, even if there was no suggestion of this in their source material.
The book then moves on to a specific tale, one usually now known in English as Little Red Riding Hood. This story has especial significance within The Company of Wolves, where its scope for sexual subtext is inverted and called into question (and call me naïve, but I never twigged that this story had any sexual undertones whatsoever until I first saw the film!) Gracey talks us through a number of interesting variations on this story through time, conservative and otherwise. Over the years, little girls have fought back or embraced their fates, wolves have turned into ogres, and the moral of the story has shifted. Charles Perrault, in the 17th Century, made his Petit Chaperon Rouge a deeply moral tale which warned young girls about ‘stranger danger’, particularly men, implying that girls who fraternise with strangers deserve whatever they get.
Carter, in her short story The Werewolf, definitely pulls this version of the story into pieces, and along similar lines The Company of Wolves playfully inverts the vulnerability and innocence of Red Riding Hood, making the story of a girl endangered in the woods into a coming-of-age yarn where it’s the girl who finally prospers. Gracey also takes a look at the cinematic legacy of this particular tale, noting other ways in which it’s been adapted to tell us (or warn us) about different things. Along the way, there are effective and reasoned put-downs of those critics who wouldn’t accept the work Carter did in destabilising old tales of damsels in distress in her own work.
The book also offers detailed comment on the film’s use of symbolism, its impact on cinema and its legacy in film (the likes of Pan’s Labyrinth, for instance) and of course an engaging chapter on lycanthropy. This section of the book eventually brings us full circle, discussing the history of lycanthropic cinema, but before then we go back to the origins of the werewolf myth and its evolution through literature – noting that male and female lycanthropes have tended to receive very different treatments, something which has seeped into cinema, too.
Gracey’s writing is on point from the very first here; lucid, detailed and meticulous, with exhaustive knowledge of the film, its inception and its interpretation. However, this requires a similar familiarity with The Bloody Chamber, so Carter’s ability to interrogate old tales (Gracey calls her “deconstructive and transformative”) forms the backbone of this appreciation of the film. An able defence of Carter’s approach feeds into a worthwhile appreciation of The Company of Wolves, all the while with some nice turns of phrase; cinematic conventions surrounding the werewolf are described as ‘congealing’ in popular culture, for instance.
Academic film writing is nothing new, and as Film Studies as a phenomenon continues to grow, more and more academic writing will appear to map out hitherto less-noteworthy films and genres. However, film writing which effectively crosses the divide between academia and fandom is still rare. Happily, two of the books I’ve read so far in the Devil’s Advocates series fit the bill, and James Gracey’s book is one of these. Is that important, if this book is targeted more at students of film (coming via Auteur Publishing) than casual readers? I’d say yes, it is, as someone coming to a film like The Company of Wolves for a purely academic exercise would fall flat. Yes, the language here is highly formal and it’s a studious book in tone, but there’s still the sense of a dedicated film fan couching something they love in academic language, rather than an academic trying to dedicate their attentions to an interesting film. This book remains accessible, provides ample food for thought and never strays into abstraction; perhaps more importantly, it makes a compelling case for giving The Company of Wolves the credit it so richly deserves.
Devil’s Advocates: The Company of Wolves by James Gracey is available now from Auteur Publishing. You can find out more here.
How short can you – legitimately – make a cinematic scare? There are people who would say that a second is enough, but these people are probably discussing jump-cuts. Jump-cuts aren’t scary; jump-cuts are the equivalent of someone screaming BOO! into your ear to trigger a reflex reaction. Most people need – and expect – rather more than that – but the question remains – how short can a film possibly go?
One possible answer comes with the Troma ’15 Second Horror Film Challenge’, brainchild of Andrew J. D. Robinson, the founder and festival programmer. This international, non-profit open competition challenges filmmakers to come up with something which, although only seconds long, engages the viewer and tells them a short story. Using a celebrity panel (last year the likes of Laurence R Harvey, Barbie Wilde, Geretta Geretta and Tiffany Shepis were judges) the festival has come up with a Top 20, which we can share with you now.
I have to admit, a part of me was a little sceptical about the whole 15 seconds thing. However, I really enjoyed most of these films, and they showed that horror can be distilled down a great deal, yet still be effective. (Take note, rookie filmmakers who feel that only two hours can possibly do.) Could films go lower that 15 seconds? Probably not, but who knows? There’s some neat, versatile thinking going on here; maybe some of these filmmakers could even stand to lose a few seconds more and still come up with something which makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end/makes you squirm, or so on. Anyway, onto the films themselves. Enjoy!
Emma, which won the competition in 2017, successfully takes a few familiar ideas which we have as a culture about hauntings. Firstly, that the ghost wants to tell a tale about what happened to them; secondly, that the deed that did for them will still be visible on them somehow. The presence of a smiling child reflecting all of this back at us is an effectively unseemly thing. In second place, Daddy Daughter Day plays for laughs, but in its own gruesome way reminds us that most accidents occur in the home. Free Fallin’, in third place, has nothing to do with Tom Petty (RIP) but a lot to do with the old belief that, if you dream you are falling, you’d better wake up before you hit the ground or else you’ll die in real life. Here, the aftermath of that becoming a reality gives us a gruesome punchline. Drain, taking fourth place, has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it supernatural spin (geddit?) but shows us, again, an event taking place in a domestic setting which is either frightening or grotesque. So far as there’s any sort of a theme to these Top 20 films, it’s that domestic spaces and little darlings can quickly disrupt normality.
In fifth place, Paradox is, for me, the pick of the bunch. People have reported seeing or hearing things which seem to be out of their proper time, and how unsettling an effect this has. Paradox runs with this idea and creates something claustrophobic and nightmarish. It’s quite brilliant.
6th to 10th places
Good Night! comes in sixth, and plays around with another horror staple – the monster lurking under the bed. Interestingly, here we have another child who is somehow involved in disrupting normality. Goodnight Reader (7th) questions what we see and how we see it, when a chance glance at a bedtime book reveals a message you wouldn’t want to see written there. Night Patrol (8th) felt more like a snippet from a longer feature, but it showcased a number of characters and some effective SFX even during its short timeframe. If You’re Happy and You Know It (9th) is reminiscent of some old horrors like I Don’t Want To Be Born, hinting at metamorphosis and – yep – more demonic young ‘uns. Nail Biter (10th) is more of a gross-out along the lines of ordeal horror, though to be fair, it utilises an approach I’d never seen before and makes a refreshing change from your standard household tool torture.
11th – 20th places
The Sitter successfully reinvigorates the idea of the ‘hex’ or even the voodoo doll, a hex artefact, but does it via a neat idea whereby an annoying babysitter is silenced through a young girl’s arts and crafts hobby. Bad Timing (12th) is a skit which, again, feels like part of a broader narrative, but has fun with the assailant/victim motif in a way which has a lot in common with the Troma sense of humour. The Devil Made Me Do It (13th) again plays for laughs, and did make me laugh – investigating the cliché phrase which gives it its title and coming up with a strong, silly end visual. Yep, I could watch more of this sort of thing. Luckily enough, Showtime (14th) allows me to do just that, with its mad mash-up between Frankenstein and The Muppets. In a different vein altogether, Retina (15th) is visually very slick and laden with symbolism, bringing up ideas about cults and the apocalypse, though perhaps not quite coherently enough for the fifteen second format. VR (16th) breaks the wall between virtual reality and real life, whilst First Spray (17th) turns a first date gone awry into a sinister murder set piece. Possibly, like Retina, there are too many things to keep track of here, though the film is attractive and well-shot. Just Like You (18th) gives us a grisly punchline to some children’s play. Then there’s Making Faces (19th) which, for me, used the fifteen second formula really well, bringing in modern technology (face-swap apps) and having this ‘bit of fun’ rapidly give way to a horrifying vision. Last, but not least, False Scares (20th) shows us that something not being there can be as alarming as something that is.
Keri’s completely unasked-for Top Three:
1 – Paradox
2 – Good Night!
3 – Making Faces
Are you a filmmaker who think they’d like to have a go at this themselves? Well, you can. The competition is now open for 2018, and you are invited to visit the festival website for further information by clicking here.
I try to make it a point never to openly roast films just for the fun of it; whatever I say about a project, I try to ask myself whether I’d be happy to say it in front of the filmmaker themselves, and I try really hard to remember that real people out there might have poured a lot of effort into their movie. So, with that in mind, I did try to stick to this with regards The Curse of the Witch’s Doll (2017), and not only because I was the one who chose to watch this screener – I made the decision. So all told, in this case I would definitely say these things in front of the people responsible for this film, and it turns out to be physically impossible to talk about it without an air of exasperation bordering on a good roast. To do otherwise would be worse than dishonest. Alright, so let’s get on with it.
We begin in England, 1660 – just in time to see a witch being dragged off to her demise, though having a quick word with a carved wooden doll just beforehand. Okay, this is the first place where I have to pause in disbelief. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING? (Spoiler alert: that’s not the same doll used on the cover art.)
Although surviving dolls from that period are few in number, those that we do still have are fairly benign-looking, with ladylike faces and intricate costumes. The doll in this film looks like a cross between a Japanese Oni and something from Charles Band’s bin. Immediately the film looks to be heading in a Charles Band sort of direction, playing for laughs. We’re in trouble if it doesn’t, thought I, because it is entirely impossible to take this wild-eyed bauble at all seriously. No wonder the witch says she will “never forget”. Nor will I.
We then dart forward in time to 1942 – this film is nothing if not a tale for the ages – where Mrs Aveline Gray (Helen Crevel) and her perpetually-annoyed daughter Chloe (Layla Watts) are moving into a new, countryside home to escape World War II bombs. Erm, Chloe? A rare enough name for a child born in the late 1930s, but okay – she might be one of the few. Perhaps more surprising is that a lone mother and daughter could afford to move into what looks like a manor house, or how they happened upon it, but in any case, the landlord (Philip Ridout) shows them around. He must be competent at his job, in any case, as he manages to lease the property to them, despite that 17th Century doll being sat at the window. Perhaps it’s a forerunner to the Ebay mentality, where people seem able to shift any old tat by saying it’s ‘haunted’. Or, perhaps he simply hasn’t noticed it, which would be strange for a landlord.
Well, Chloe takes a shine to the doll soon enough; it doesn’t stop her from hating their new home and pining for her missing soldier father however, and soon Adeline is getting spooked by the new place. She wants to leave, but Arthur dissuades her, reminding her that yet another move would be disadvantageous for her and Chloe. But then little Chloe goes missing in the woods, and a creepy disembodied voice tells Adeline that “the witch has her”. Adeline pleads with the local authorities to help her find her daughter, but weeks begin to pass and so she starts exploring the house – belatedly looking for some sort of clues as to Chloe’s whereabouts. Letters which she finds hidden in the house begin to show her that all is not as it seems. In fact, is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
A missing child is meant to be a cataclysmic event in a person’s life, but no one in this film seems massively bothered. To be fair, I feel that the cast are making an effort with what they’ve been given, but they come across as self-conscious, and certainly not expressive of any great concern – not the mother, not the detectives who pop in once or twice and do little else, and not the landlord either. You could possibly argue that as ‘things aren’t what they seem’ (yes, the film attempts THAT plot twist) then this is reflected in the performances, but actually I don’t think so – I’m not prepared to do the work here to justify what I’ve watched. Add to this a script rammed with stock phrases like “we’re doing all we can” and a bewildering array of lighting and sound problems, and it’s devilishly hard to suspend your disbelief. Additional attempts to add dramatic interest by changing tack invariably fall flat, because it’s not possible to believe in anything up until the point of the plot shift anyway.
Coming back to this issue with the suspension of disbelief, the plausibility of this film being set in the 1940s is pretty ropey from the first. It’s very difficult to create a viable period setting, and giving the lead actress victory rolls just isn’t enough. I’ve already alluded to the name issue; other characters sport buzzcut hairdos or other anachronisms, and the overall impression here is of someone who’s seen The Others and Shutter Island and thought they’d have a go at blending the two together. Then, there are other issues: the cliché door slamming, the obligatory husky-voiced supernatural forces and then the cavalier laughter of same, the obligatory ‘demon’ make-up which always looks identical, the endless flat-voiced talking, Crevel’s worsening mental state being represented to us by clumsy eye-bags being added in make-up… And then having the nerve to jump forward to yet another point in time, just to rub salt onto the death by a thousand cuts.
As a very young filmmaker is responsible for this film, I can only hope that The Curse of the Witch’s Doll is just the beginning of the road and that one day an older, wiser man will seek to bury it without trace. This simply isn’t good enough by any single measure I can think of, as a film fan who tends towards the forgiving. It’s thin, derivative and predictable throughout, it lacks research, budget or cogent ideas and the only thing it does well is show that making a good horror film isn’t as easy as some would have us believe.
The Curse of the Witch’s Doll is available on VOD from 6th February 2018.
The ‘mockumentary’ format has been used to interesting effect over the years; note that I said ‘mockumentary’ rather than ‘found footage’, a sub-genre which usually conjures more questions than it can ever answer. There are some important distinctions between the two. Strawberry Flavored Plastic dodges the most typical question asked during found footage, which is ‘why are we/you filming?’ by positioning itself as a film about filmmaking, detailing what two filmmakers are willing to go through in order to see their unique angle through to a completed piece of work. In this, it’s reminiscent of a couple of older films – Man Bites Dog and Resurrecting The Street Walker perhaps, though far more subtle and psychological than either of these predecessors.
Errol and Ellis (Nicholas Urda and Andres Montejo) are aspiring documentarians who have chosen to focus on a spate of NY murders which took place over the preceding years. Believing that the culprit, a charismatic young man called Noel (Aidan Bristow) has served his time for his part in these crimes, they decide to speak with him about his experiences. Very quickly, however, they discover that he hasn’t ever been jailed. In fact, his predilection for violence – his “unscratchable itch” – is ongoing, and something he continues to act upon. Errol and Ellis consider what to do, but they quickly decide to continue to work with Noel, regardless of their initial shock. It’s an opportunity too great for them to give up, come what may. They even decide to bring him fully on board, sharing their equipment with him so that he can film himself. A risky strategy? Certainly. But Noel’s prosaic self-awareness could make for good viewing, and the opportunity to investigate what makes him tick surpasses all other considerations. So, when a figure from Noel’s past returns to his life with some significant news for him which causes him to begin to dangerously unravel, Errol and Ellis are still keen to keep him on board. The divide between filmmaker and subject itself becomes eroded, and the relationships between subject and filmmakers become hazier still.
This is a slow-building film with ample philosophical elements: our killer spends a lot of screen time pondering the nature of his crimes, after being asked a range of questions by two young men eager to understand what motivates him. Noel is very much the key character here, thanks to an absorbing performance by Aidan Bristow; it’s oddly difficult not to warm to his character, although he is capable of terrible things. Perhaps there are some similarities with early seasons of Dexter here (the ‘unscratchable itch’ and the ‘dark passenger’ are similar ideas), albeit we are never made party to Noel’s internal thoughts in the same way – not if he doesn’t want us, via the film, to know about them. Noel manages to dominate Ellis and Errol’s lives even when he disappears for periods of time. However, despite Noel’s overall dominance of the screen time, the two naive but very driven filmmakers gradually emerge as characters in their own right, not just guys behind cameras. We see them beginning to appreciate the strange quandary they’ve brought upon themselves – and, via them, the film explores the pressures of filmmaking: when is it time to call time on a project? When must you call ‘cut’ for good? When does a good documentary end?
Strawberry Flavored Plastic has an ambitious structure throughout, and it raises interesting questions regarding the creative process through its blend of static-shot interviews, Skype conversations, video diaries and editing days. So, as you might expect, this is a very dialogue-heavy film indeed which requires close focus to get the best out of its narrative. There are moments of violence during the film, true, but I do feel that a little more would have helped to draw the distinction between the serene, intelligent Noel we usually see, and the man he can be on occasion. We see only glimpses; more would have offset the emphasis on his speech and language. I also feel that, at around one hour forty minutes in duration, a little of the film could have been trimmed; it’s the age-old issue when the film has been written, directed and edited by one person and it’s their own labour of love – it’s not easy to let go of anything. A sequence where Noel plays with a camera, for instance, didn’t add a great deal, and felt a little indulgent.
Still, overall these are minor quibbles, and I think that Strawberry Flavored Plastic is an intelligent and understated piece of work. This is, after all, director Colin Bemis’ first full-length feature; it’s clearly a film which is reaching beyond the most obvious, usual ways of exploring tricky themes, and for that it deserves credit. (Oh, and the title? Yes, it’s explained, but I’m not giving the game away here.)
Strawberry Flavored Plastic will be released on 23rd January 2018 (on Amazon).
We’ve all heard of post-apocalyptic drama – literature, film and television which look at life after the End of the World as We Know It – and we can all name a few noteworthy examples, I’m sure. Well, the recent BBC series Hard Sun reinterprets this idea, giving us something rather different: ‘pre-apocalyptic drama’. It’s a new one on me. But, using this idea of a modern world poised on the edge of something catastrophic has – at least on paper – some bite. How would knowledge of some impending doom alter the behaviour of people waiting for it to come?
Set in modern London, Hard Sun begins its life as a standard cop drama, with DI Elaine Renko (Agyness Deyn) being drafted to a new constabulary for the shady purpose of investigating her new colleague, Charlie Hicks (Jim Sturgess), who is in the frame for murder. Of course, Hicks doesn’t know about this, so at first he can focus on being suspicious about the swap for more nebulous reasons. Renko, meanwhile, who is living out of a hotel after her estranged teenage son tried to kill her and burned her house down, is ‘happily’ getting on with her undercover role when the apparent suicide of a computer hacker throws both her and Hicks into a whole new world of trouble. It seems that there’s a conspiracy afoot to keep a piece of devastating news from the public – news which the hackers found, and unwittingly brought into the public domain via a certain flash drive, which the powers-that-be are desperate to get back.
The flash drive contains detailed information about an inevitable natural event codenamed ‘Hard Sun’. Evidence has suggested that, five years in the future, a solar flare will destroy life on Earth. Is there a plan to save humanity? Well, nope, not really. But the secret service know what’s around the corner – the panic, the mass migrations, the pitched battles over food and resources – and they’ve decided they would prefer people not to know about all of this; after all, the knowledge won’t benefit them in any way. It’s a very British way to face down the end of days: keeping completely mum. Along those lines, this is why the flash drive remains a bone of contention; Renko and Hicks have to work fast to keep themselves out of danger, and in its pursuit, the softly-spoken secret agent Grace (Nikki Amuka-Bird) shows she will stop at nothing to cajole, intimidate and threaten the pair and their families.
This isn’t it, though, and as some partial accounts of this so-called ‘hard sun’ event almost inevitably filter through to the public (although dismissed as ‘fake news’ and a hoax) people begin to alter their behaviour. The series is in many respects a more standard cop drama with cases to crack, albeit that these cases seem to have been initiated by a kind of desperate wondering about what might or might not be around the corner. Hence, all the while that damn flash drive is being sought after by increasingly desperate, violent means, we are shown religious angst giving way to serial murder, patricide and ad-hoc surgery on suicidal people to make them feel ‘better’ – to name a few. Almost impossibly grimy and violent from the outset, this series is shot through with broken glass, sharp implements, gratuitous use of night-sticks and an almost unreasonably number of scenes in which former Vogue cover girl Agyness Deyn gets punched in the face. The poor woman spends most of the series with a bloody nose. How much you take to all of this is, of course, down to you.
There are many strengths here: the attention to little details works well, with portentous graffiti warning of the ‘hard sun’ beginning to appear all over London. This is a neat touch, which adds to the increasing sense of something being wrong, if not openly discussed; London on the whole looks like an intimidating, alien space for most of the time it’s shown on camera. There’s a bit of mischief involved, too: some of the character names refer to folklore (Grace’s surname is Morrigan – Celtic goddess of death) and we even have a Herbert West in here for good measure, which fits quite well with his particular plot line. These may be entirely coincidental, I suppose, but it seems unlikely. As for the performances; I’ve read quite a lot of criticism of them, and yes, they tend towards being rather overblown (with the exception of Amuka-Bird, who is so calm and collected for the most part that a plot twist where she turned out to be AI wouldn’t have been too much of a leap). But, for most of the characters, the overblown style doesn’t seem to be so bad a fit, given the mode and the topic at hand. It’s all a bit like a London manga, more about spectacle than slow-burn, or indeed plot coherence.
All of that said then, Hard Sun labours under a lot of the issues which have waylaid so many BBC flagship series of recent years – a thinness of plot, a determination to rattle through ‘key scenes’ at a rate of knots, afraid to pause and offer any real explanation for events. This urge to show the audience as many shocking or dramatic scenes as possible, often without taking the time to blend these scenes particularly well into the narrative, may show that writers are now attempting to cater to shorter attention spans, or they want to generate something Tweetable, but I’d say series will always do better when they take their time and build plausible, absorbing stories.
This great urge to jump from one thing to the next, navigating via a few killer lines here and there, seems like one of the issues which makes the later series of Sherlock borderline unwatchable, and caused a few gripes with Hard Sun writer Neil Cross’s best-known series Luther, come Series Four. It’s all too easy to linger over the daft decisions in Hard Sun, too: the action often lacks common sense. For instance, if you were chasing a suspect and carrying a gun, would you run up to within a foot of them before attempting to use it? If you were undertaking a clandestine investigation of a colleague and you lived in a hotel, would you think to climb into the hotel roof-space and store your sensitive data there? Little head-scratcher moments like these did detract from the impact of the drama overall, as it seems they were either overlooked entirely, or plot coherence is being sacrificed simply so that the drama can plough onto the next big thing.
Still, a cliffhanger ending and Cross’s own assertion that he’d like to write further series means we may well get to know more about the Hard Sun in future. My overall impression of Series One is that this is a novel idea which has received somewhat problematic treatment, making it an entertaining, but often frustrating blend of inspired and scatty.
Hard Sun is available to watch as a complete box set on the BBC iPlayer now.
