Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

As a willing outsider to parenthood, it’s not too much of a reach for me to see the whole thing rather as some very fine horror movies have seen it – as something alienating, pervasive and often irrational. Having children is something most people sign up to eventually, or often yearn to if they can’t, and then ask repeatedly if you’re going to sign up, too. Being a parent confers status, but it also shifts a person’s priorities completely; it’s one hell of a fork in the road. As for pregnancy and childbirth itself, it may have stopped killing women (in the West) in the numbers it once did, but it still walks hand in hand with invasive medical procedures, pain and discomfort, lethargy, sickness, physical damage and of course, mental health issues. All of this is, of course, ‘worth it’ and, as I’m regularly assured, I’m just one of those awful childless women who doesn’t understand – but, hey, even if mainstream culture is still reticent on the dark side to raising a child, then horror cinema has long embraced it, both squirming at the physical aspects of pregnancy and holding a mirror to the life-subverting aspects of bringing up baby too. Rosemary’s Baby, a classic of this kind for good reason, positions Rosemary’s pregnancy as something quietly monstrous, sapping her strength and then her autonomy as she’s manipulated and sedated in turn. She is given one opportunity for revenge and reassertion of self, but instead capitulates to her maternal instincts. Other films look more closely at the role of the baby itself, such as Grace (2009), which pushes the draining physical demands made by a newborn into more grotesque, if understated body-horror territory – again, pushing the mother away from her friends and family, her instincts compelling her to nurture her child at all costs to her.

This brings us to Shelley (2016), a film with similar subject matter and some similar developments to the above, but which – on reflection – is more subtle and ambiguous, defying any neat summary, yet one of those rare films which dares the disapproval of all of those folks crying out for neat summaries.

The film begins with a young Romanian woman, Elena (Cosmina Stratan) being driven to her new place of work, where she’ll be acting as housekeeper and assisting Louise (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), who is recuperating after an illness. Louise and her husband Kasper (Peter Christoffersen) live an isolated and largely self-sufficient life on their small Swedish estate: there’s no running water, no electricity (the New-Agey Louise seems to actively fear it) but the married couple seem fine with their no-mod-cons existence, and the house’s environs are indisputably serene and beautiful.

Elena and Louise begin to bond – first, via conversations about Elena’s little boy, Nicu, whom Louise asks after. Elena explains that he’s living with her parents back home while she works to save money for them both. It soon transpires that Louise has suffered miscarriages and the ensuing complications led to her womb being removed; this is clearly a subject which causes her profound pain. Off the back of this frankness, a warm, believable friendship between the couple and their employee soon follows. Elena teases them for their unusual lifestyles, they tease her back, and it seems as though the presence of somebody new has added some fresh energy to their home.

One evening, Louise asks Elena if she would consider surrogacy for her and Kaspar. Their payment for this, she explains, could enable Elena to go home to her son far sooner, and secure the apartment she wants for them both. After careful thought – and a mother’s desire to do right by her little boy – Elena accepts, and the reception of this news by her hosts is genuinely sweet. The implantation of Louise’s egg and Kaspar’s sperm is successful and Elena’s pregnancy progresses – but soon, she begins to suffer nightmares, then minor adverse symptoms which worsen. Louise, seeming genuinely alarmed, is worried about her, though medics assure them both that the baby is fine: however, Elena is convinced that something is wrong and begins pleading to leave.

The film could have began to flounder at this stage, painting the rest of its plot in foot-high letters and adding a pentagram at the end for good measure (as is conventional). By the time half of the film had passed, I found myself hoping against hope that this wouldn’t be the case, and thankfully it isn’t: to do so would have rendered the slow, meticulous build-up of atmosphere null and void. Shelley isn’t an exercise in clear exposition, and its mood is not generated to lure viewers into a false sense of security before a change of tack. What it does superbly it does oh-so quietly, and it maintains this approach throughout.

Things are shown to be out of kilter – quite aside from the mesmeric, deeply-unsettling sound design courtesy of Martin Dirkov – in unassuming ways. The clean Scandinavian interiors have flies crawling in cupboards; Louise swigs from a bottle of red wine, all the while extolling the virtues of clean living; there’s something faintly hollow about the quiet happiness on offer. Also the way the narrative skips – from Elena’s warm agreement to being a surrogate through to a cold, functional medical procedure, for instance, lends the film an episodic, dream-like quality which can feel exclusionary and unsettling. We are led to feel exactly as Elena (with whom we spend the most time as a character) must feel. The ‘good news’ of her pregnancy reinvigorates Louise and Kaspar’s sex life; as they grow closer, more intimate, the person facilitating it all is shut out even more. Elena’s nightmares may be just that, or they may be supernatural, but unquestionable is her loneliness, and as pregnancy weakens her physically, she begins to recede as a person. Louise seems genuinely alarmed by her surrogate’s condition, but attempts to help her strip Elena of even more autonomy. She’s given ‘healing treatments’ she didn’t ask for, given nutritious food which doesn’t match what she chooses to eat, and is grilled on her behaviour. Louise is no monster (Kaspar, however, grows ever more absent) but it’s impossible not to feel sorry for this poor girl, in a strange country, away from her family, growing increasingly vulnerable as her pregnancy – or is that Louise’s pregnancy? – develops.

One of the brief downsides to this character-centred approach is that little is truly made of the sylvan setting; the press release mentioned the house being a significant presence in the film, for instance, but on balance I disagree. Where these people live is relevant in terms of their isolation, and of course Elena’s distance from home, but otherwise, people’s internal worlds seem more developed and are given far more attention on-screen. Still, the rare skill invoked by first-time feature (!) director Ali Abbasi weaves a complex tale, and leaves us with questions which I feel could definitely be rewarded by repeat viewings. Is Shelley pre-partum psychosis writ large? Is it a parable on human exploitation? Is it about the all-consuming effects of maternity, or is there – is there – something more otherworldly behind it? These things I don’t know, but the film is better, not worse for it. It’ll be too quiet, too arty for some, and any answers it provides are inconclusive, but I’ve never before seen a film which marries the idea of starting a family to such an utter sense of dread, and as such I think it’s a unique and defiant piece of work.

Shelley will be released on DVD and download on the 10th October, 2016.

By Keri O’Shea

I hope that I’m not doing the film being reviewed a disservice to immediately mention Game of Thrones here, but it sees that the success of the latter is now so huge that there’s a large battle-shaped void in our viewing when the latter disappears from our screens for another year, and more than a few eager souls ready to fill it. Now, whilst medieval epic The Last King doesn’t have any fantastical elements like giants or dragons, it certainly boasts a lot of the aesthetics and themes which make GoT the indisputable smash banger that it is, from hails of arrows to loyalty in the face of political power-play. And then of course there’s one of GoT’s key actors (Kristofer Hivju) in a key role here, playing a Torstein rather than a Tormund, but essentially reprising the blunt, good-hearted man of action which has made his name worldwide.

Where the film parts ways with the aforementioned series, however, is in its real-life historical basis. The director of The Last King, Nils Gaup, made a Viking-themed film titled Pathfinder in the 1980s (a film I love, though I take issue with some of the characterisation). Well, his most recent feature is far more firmly anchored in realism, though coming from that intersection between myth and history which usually arises with a good yarn. Coming post-Viking Age, the film is set in Norway in the year 1204. Although Norway has been Christianised by this point, as elsewhere in Europe the whole ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ gambit has been ignored in favour of factionalism and brutal attempts to seize power; Norway is divided into small kingdoms, with the East Norwegian/Danish alliance, the Baglers, vying for control over the independent West. Fearing imminent invasion, the king sends some of his loyal Birkebeiners to escort his illegitimate baby son Håkon Håkonson – and the baby’s mother – to safety, ahead of the invading army. Illegitimate or not, the boy is in line to the throne, and will be killed if he’s discovered and identified. However, what seems initially to be a successful mission is thwarted by traitors in the king’s camp, who see the two friends – Torstein and Skjervald (Lilyhammer’s Jakob Oftebro) – taking the child to safety. Skjervald is followed and information as to little Håkonson’s whereabouts is brutally extracted from his young family. There’s our coming vengeance angle, then – but can the Birkebeiners prevent an overthrow of power which seems to come as much from within the country as without? Life at court is just as fraught with risk and duplicitious goings-on…

Firstly, and in common with a rather different Norwegian film that I reviewed lately (The Wave) this film is an absolute visual feast. Maybe I’m biased by my long-standing love of Scandinavia scenery, but quite honestly, who could look at places like this and not feel something? The bleak, beautiful and truly-inclement conditions on display look fantastic and Gaup gets that, even giving the Northern Lights a bit of screentime. Sure, all the skiing was a bit of a surprise, but of course it makes perfect sense in a country completely snowbound for many months of the year, and in fact it’s funny that the Wildlings never thought of it. In keeping with this brutal, yet Sublime landscape, life as depicted in The Last King is itself brutal – though on a workable and smaller scale, with no vast armies pitted against vast armies here, rather a believable number of men in the fight. Whilst the film isn’t awash with blood and grue, either, it certainly makes the point that bloodshed was a matter-of-fact process, where women and children are not let off the hook (Hollywood would have had the girls throwing the men around like matchsticks at some point; Gaup does not).

Outbreaks of violence are matched against far slower sequences, in which we’re invited to understand the key protagonists and their motivations. These are, by and large, plausible and engaging, although on occasion the film feels a little like Two Men and a Baby (or perhaps due to the large amount of scenes shared by the baby himself, Jonathan Oskar Dahlgren, a little like Willow – two films where the baby feels like a person rather than a prop). This is largely Hivju’s and Oftebro’s film, although all of the supporting cast are good; the villains here are a little one-dimensional, something the director decided on in Pathfinder, too, but as a force to be reckoned with they’re more than adequate, if not equally as fleshed-out as the good guys. In fact, only some bizarre oversights with dubbing (a lullaby clearly not coming from the supposed singer; a baby crying when the bairn is in shot and looking perfectly happy) threaten the overall competent handling of all of the elements in play.

Fair enough, nearly all of these historical action films share obligatory elements (like the wafty female vocals on the credits or the aforementioned vengeance plot-line) but The Last King is a worthwhile entrant into the genre. It has its roots in a period of history I’ll confess I don’t know well, but it crafts a decent, accessible tale and supplies an abundance of equally decent performances and settings. Plus, let’s be honest: any more Kristofer Hivju hurtling around in furs brandishing weaponry can’t be a bad thing, now can it?

The Last King is available from 3rd October 2016.

By Keri O’Shea

You know, it’s funny. I’ve spent around fifteen years writing about horror cinema – for a variety of audience sizes from one upwards – but in all that time I’ve never been for a wild weekend in a remote cabin, and nor do I know anyone who has. Perhaps it’s just not a British thing, but were anyone to use the opening gambit of oh-so-many of these films as any sort of indicator of reality, then you’d think a cabin break was some sort of rite of passage; everyone just seems to do it, everyone’s distant relative apparently has a little place in the woods, and there are far more cabins than castles in modern horror. Anyway, considering that The Evil In Us proudly proclaims its pedigree as “Cabin Fever meets Evil Dead”, then we’re already at cabin x cabin, even before the opening credits roll.

When they do, what we see is a fairly robust and stylish set of visuals – based on first impressions, presumably there’s at least some cash and some clue behind this project, as shown by the prettily-shot woman bathing in (and, for want of a better expression, gargling with) blood. Furthermore, there’s an early surprise when we seem to start with urban horror, as police discover a gruesome scene within the confines of an otherwise normal apartment block in Seattle. Still, this turns out to be a parallel plot line: as a detective tries to get to the bottom of what happened in the apartment, an expected group of twentysomethings are indeed getting ready to head into the boonies for a 4th July party. A few unnecessary lines of dialogue tell us that there is limited cellphone signal at the cabin they’re staying in, and as ever I’m unclear on whether this group of old schoolfriends are meant to be hateable or relatable, but feeling called upon to ponder this now seems as ubiquitous a part of cabin-based horror, for me, as the bikinis and the weak bottled beers.

It seems, though, that the events back in Seattle and the party animals in the woods are somehow linked. Key to this is a mystery narcotic, a bag of which has made its way out of the city with the gang of friends; the supplier of this narcotic evidently has plans for those who fall under its influence, and there’s an as-yet unknown reason for wanting to make the people who take it increasingly paranoid, angry and aggressive.

The Evil In Us isn’t a badly-made film, and the shooting style suits the increasingly claustrophobic atmosphere as, one by one, friends fall under the influence of the drug. There’s a fair amount of ambition here in terms of combining several tried-and-tested elements from horror films we may know well, and attempting to link scenes in the cabin to something wider that is going on outside of this situation is a decent idea in terms of adding interest. This does mean that first-time feature director Jason William Lee has to navigate some choppy waters, though; filmmakers have long struggled with filming drug trips, and they’ve often struggled with the ratcheting tension you’d expect from…well, from a bunch of young people losing their minds in a confined space, and there’s no exception to that here, even if it was brave to try and incorporate so much. Ultimately, it’s not the reversion-to-yelling or the drug use scenes which do the film the most harm, however: rather, it’s towards the film’s close. By this point, The Evil In Us is a zombie film by any other name rather than anything really akin to The Crazies or Blue Sunshine, with the same aesthetics and behaviour on display as we’ve seen in any number of other films in the zombie genre.

And as for the ‘big reveal’ of what has been going on, that emerges only in the closing parts of the film, and as such feels very much tacked on for some heavy-handed social commentary. Had there been more of a consistent approach to this political element, then this could have added a much more interesting dimension overall. Seeing the film hailed as ‘a message for our time’ is, I think, overstating it somewhat, unless you want to go fully ‘meta-‘ and comment on how the film’s flailing aggression and conspiracy theory elements give you a sense of deja-vu which is currently being echoed by our global political picture…

The Evil In Us will be released by Studiocanal on 10th October 2016.

By Keri O’Shea

When is a giallo not a giallo? Sure, the cinematic tradition is expected to deliver crime drama as per the print publications which gave us the term ‘giallo’ in the first place, but the expectation is also there of a certain aesthetic on our screens, usually invoking sexuality as well as criminality; perhaps a good giallo understands that the lurid set-pieces are just as important as the crime itself, or at least, that a certain amount of spectacle will compensate for the often nonsensical solutions to those mysteries meant to form the heart of the plot.

The Bloodstained Butterfly starts off with some understanding of this: a beautiful French student is found, dead, in the woods – wearing the bloodstained butterfly of the title around her neck, we assume (and the follow-up scene is of course of some amorous lovers, thus splicing death with sex, as is traditional.) Clearly there’s a maniac at large, or we wouldn’t be watching this story – but the heavy rain at the time of the killing has watched away the forensic evidence, and the killer managed to evade the dragnet which attempts to close in as soon as the alarm is raised. All that’s known about him, at this point, is that he’s clad in a beige raincoat. The hunt is on. Or, rather, we then see a slow succession of lab processes and meticulous ‘going over the evidence’ in order to close in on the possible culprit. When a witness comes forward to say she knows who the killer is, the case takes a turn: it seems, then, that the girl’s lover, a TV presenter, was the man responsible. Others corroborate, and soon the erstwhile TV star, Allesandro Marchi, is hauled into court on seemingly damning evidence of his involvement. Things are, however, rarely this straightforward. As the case is debated – at length – other factors are revealed, and it seems that Marchi might not be the maniac after all. A philanderer, yes, but perhaps not the murderer…

Considering the gaudiness of the title, this is a rather drab film beyond the initial impact of the opening scenes, which is certainly not something I expected. The rain, the mud, the dull clothes, the grey rooms and buildings, the largely understated dialogue, and the sense that the plot is being prolonged by a kind of mad attention to realistic criminal law did little to engage me as a viewer. The film’s tendency to go over and over footage from earlier on in the proceedings as the court considers it is, frankly, bloody boring too, and although it might be deemed necessary, it looks suspiciously like filler.

Perhaps this is the wrong term to use when describing a genre of films which almost always feature grisly murders, but The Bloodstained Butterfly just isn’t as much fun as you’d expect from even a passing awareness of its peer group. I mean, it’s nicely shot from a technical level, with a variety of locations, angles, shooting styles and the like, and there’s ever the possibility that it’s been misrepresented, somewhere along the line, which will often lead to disappointment – but there simply isn’t enough going on here, and when the film tries to add interest by delving into slightly more fantastical content, or even more salacious content, it jars. When you work so hard to go with realism, then you can’t really do much else. In fact, I felt so beaten down with the courtroom proceedings, that I found it quite difficult to get a handle on any of the characters thereafter – a shame, really, as there are some interesting cast members here (such as Salon Kitty’s Helmut Berger).

Whilst there are some elements here which can be applauded – the soundtrack is interesting, the time-capsule effect is abundant, the cinematography shows some skill, and above all there are attempts to render a gripping crime drama – I wouldn’t automatically peg this one as an obvious choice for a remaster and re-release by Arrow, as much as they’ve done a decent job on it. Still, if you’re a completist who loves vintage Italiana, then have at it, and take note of the fact that there are a few extras on offer too – namely an audio commentary by Alan Jones and Kim Newman, new interviews with Helmut Berger, Evelyn Stewart and Lorella de Luca – who speaks about her husband, director Duccio Tessari. There’s the usual gamut of trailers and still images, too.

The Bloodstained Butterfly will be released by Arrow Video on 22nd August, 2016.

Isn’t it well past time that sharks became truly scary again? Beyond the original Jaws, it’s debatable any film has ever presented those formidable sea dwellers as true objects of terror, and in recent years it’s pretty much a given that any film which features the creatures in the title is going to be an utterly stupid, cut-price, SyFy Channel pantomime: Sharknado, Sharktopus, Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus… and so it goes. It’s hugely encouraging then, to see a major Hollywood studio prepared to put some real weight (not to mention budget) behind a comparatively grounded tale of a lone surfer who inadvertently winds up caught in the middle of a great white’s feeding ground, and must fend off injury, exhaustion and overwhelming odds to stay alive. Whether the film in question winds up any more accurate a portrayal of real shark behaviour than any of the aforementioned direct-to-DVD schlockbusters is another story, but to a certain extent that’s hardly the point. You’ve got innumerable National Geographic documentaries out there if you want to see the truth about sharks; but if you want a gripping, tense survivalist thriller with a liberal dash of monster movie stirred in, The Shallows may be just what you’re after.

In many respects, The Shallows feels like a throwback to the intimate trapped-in-one-place shockers which sprang up a few years back – 127 Hours, Buried, Adam Green’s Frozen – but in concept and execution, I’m most reminded of the underrated Burning Bright (Brianna Evigan trapped in a house with a ravenous tiger? Forget about it).

Blake Lively takes the lead as Nancy, a Texan surfer and medical student who we’re told has recently dropped out of school, and gone on something of a personal pilgrimage to a secret beach somewhere in Mexico; so secret, she doesn’t even know the name of the place. However, it’s a place Nancy feels a deep connection to, as her recently deceased mother, also a surfer, rode the waves there whilst pregnant with her. Clearly Nancy’s got a bit of that classic surfer free spirit thing going on (or at least, that’s how surfers always are in the movies, I don’t know any in real life), but she also doesn’t seem that good at planning ahead; having got a ride through expansive woodland to a beach she doesn’t know the name of, she’s made zero arrangements to get back later, and misses her one chance at a ride when the two other surfers she meets there head off home while she’s still on the waves. And of course, it’s only once those guys are as good as gone that the shit hits the fan, as Nancy finds the ravaged carcass of a humpback whale floating nearby – the meal ticket of the dreaded Carcharodon Carcharias. But it would seem the whale meat hasn’t satisfied this big boy, as he proceeds to go straight after Nancy, who soon has a nasty bite in her leg, and only three possible places of refuge: the whale carcass, a patch of reef, and a rusty old buoy. And so the stand-off begins.

Originally entitled In The Deep – not the most appropriate title given it takes place 200 yards off shore* – Anthony Jaswinski’s script was named on the 2014 Black List, an annual Hollywood poll of the best un-produced screenplays on the market. It’s not hard to see how this was deemed a no-brainer with the studios: it provides a juicy role for an up-and-coming young actress, completely justifies keeping her in a bikini for more or less the duration, and combines an exotic sun-drenched setting with the mother of all nature’s terrors. However, while it works as a high-concept spectacle, it also manages to be a surprisingly intimate and understated affair, keeping things character-based without drowning (no pun intended) in gratuitous flashbacks and exposition. All this being the case, in some ways it is a surprise they cast Blake Lively – an actress who, despite having been in the business for some time, remains comparatively anonymous in the popular consciousness (she’s best known for being married to Ryan Reynolds, or to some of us for being the niece of Night of the Creeps star Jason Lively). Happily, this may be one of those roles they like to call ‘star-making.’ Lively’s relative anonymity works in her favour, and she proves more than up to the challenge of holding our attention with minimal dialogue. And yes, of course, it doesn’t hurt that she fills her skimpy bikini very well.

As for the other key attraction; director Jaume Collet-Serra adheres to the wisdom of Spielberg and keeps the shark mostly unseen, building tension through editing, suggestive camerawork and brief glimpses of the formidable antagonist. When we do see the big bad, it’s naturally all CGI, and that’s one place where The Shallows does slip up a little. While it is a studio production, it wasn’t exactly made on a blockbuster budget (IMDb lists its budget as $17 million), and it’s the FX that make this most evident. Sure, it’s more impressive than the rubbery sharks of the Jaws movies or the video game graphics of all those SyFy productions, but it’s hardly the most convincing CGI ever; this extends beyond the shark to a number of other sea creatures which make an appearance, as well as Lively’s face being digitally transposed onto her surfing double. These moments don’t ruin the film, but they do tend to take you out of the moment somewhat.

That having been said, the obvious CGI isn’t necessarily a problem if we think of The Shallows as a monster movie – and, all verisimilitude aside, that’s ultimately just what it is. I’m no shark expert, but it’s well established that they very rarely attack humans, so for one to so relentlessly stalk one the way this bad boy does – particularly once the inevitably melodramatic final act kicks in – pretty much beggars belief. But again, this isn’t a nature documentary; it’s a bit of crash-bang-wallop entertainment, and very effective at that. It’s truly tense throughout, and boasts more than a couple of old-fashioned jump scares which I’m not ashamed to admit got me. Obviously it’s not about to dethrone Jaws, but as a movie custom designed to make you afraid to go back in the water, The Shallows gets the job done better than many mainstream efforts in recent memory.

The Shallows is in cinemas now, from Sony.

*Just to further confuse matters, the upcoming Johannes Roberts shark movie 47 Meters Down was briefly set to be released as In The Deep.

By Keri O’Shea

Saw has a lot to answer for, doesn’t it? Since it appeared a little over a decade ago, it’s had a long-lasting and far-reaching impact on horror – for good, and for ill. Saw showed us that a horror story could be effective and gripping whilst being incredibly economical with characters and settings; by the by, and this is something that the team behind Saw can’t have predicted and shouldn’t be blamed for, it has convinced an army of low-budget filmmakers that they can do the same – that a horror story can unfold in a single room, with a small number of characters, and if Saw can do it – so can they! Here’s the rub – that confidence is often very, very misplaced. Which brings us to Captive (2015). Captive’s DVD release is proudly emblazoned with an (unattributed) cover quote which describes the film as a “cult gem in the same vein as Saw”. I don’t know who said that and I’d like to ask them a few things, but it would be more accurate to say that Captive is a brazen and mystifying attempt to re-frame Saw on a shoestring budget, and one which fails on every single score.

The plot hardly needs describing, given the above, but I’ll give it a whirl: we start with a room full of dead bodies, though with a couple of people left alive who are communicating with a mysterious someone via mobile phone (sound familiar?). They’ve decided to disguise their voice so thoroughly you can barely make out what they’re saying, which could have put a crimp in the plot, but basically it’s something about the people who are left having to follow commands to kill one another, which perhaps clues you in to why there are so many corpses in this particular dimly-lit room. You know where we’re going from here – yes, back in time, where we see some folks in HAZMAT gear dragging the inmates into the room, where they duly wake up and start wondering why they’re there. Whoever has put them there wants them to work out why they’ve been chosen, as well as spicing things up by getting them to bump one another off from time to time.

Oh, and there’s another element to the plot, too: apparently this is set in the future, a future where people are still using analogue alarm clocks and wearing clothes which are utterly in keeping with the current times, but yeah, this is the future, and the inmates have a virus. A virus! This manifestly contributes no originality to the film as a whole, but allows some very limited SFX at least, because viruses in these films always justify contact lenses/colouring in the eyes during post-production.

I don’t honestly enjoy tearing a film to shreds: I’d much prefer to be able to find something good to say about a film if someone’s bothered to get it made in the first place, but I can honestly think of nothing complimentary to say about Captive other than that the cast seem to be genuinely trying to inject some life into the film – even to the point of near-parodic scenery-chewing – and might have got somewhere, had they been given a script which didn’t ask them to repeatedly yell “We have to get out of here!” and other such ‘no shit, Sherlock’ moments throughout. The camera-work is dire (laughably filming through a HAZMAT mask to represent the point-of-view of the mysterious experimenters; using a zoom shot which then goes out of focus), the actors are not adequately miked up (everything echoes throughout) and the editing is a series of clunky physical jerks which can’t hide the fact that this plot is far, far too thin for a feature-length, especially considering it’s already been done more than once, and properly.

Indie cinema can be superb. It can be a space for resilient and resourceful filmmakers to tell stories without any of the pressures of big studios who demand tried-and-tested cinematic conventions; it can be innovative, refreshing and life-affirming. Or, it can be a cheap and nasty waste of time stemming from incomprehensible motivation and, in the case of the horror genre, startlingly cynical laziness – and it seems director and writer Stephen Patrick Kenny has form in this respect. There is nothing about Captive I can possibly recommend to anyone who enjoys film.

Captive is available on DVD now.

By Keri O’Shea

Most horror fans who have delved beyond the physical jerk-invoking shitfests being screened every Halloween will probably have an idea who Debbie Rochon is; add in a soft spot for low budget indie cinema, and chances are you’ll have seen more than a few offerings from her very extensive CV, especially if you’ve ever sat through a Troma movie or two. As of yet, however, despite many years in the business, she hasn’t been on the other side of the camera. Model Hunger (2016) is Rochon’s directorial debut, then – and it’s not more than a few frames before you can safely say that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree…

In that rather Troma-esque, overblown but twee style, all over-pronounced lines and omnipresent musical score, we start off with a troupe (correct plural?) of cheerleaders at practice, working hard to conceal the fact that they’re all actually and as-standard in their twenties. At the end of their session, their head honcho sends them out to ‘raise more money than last year’ for their charity of choice. The neighbourhood they head to is not much cop: the first guy to open his door seems to be hard of hearing, ha ha, but then they try a door down the street and meet Ginny (Lynn Lowry).

At first Ginny seems sweet, if the rather unlikely ‘little old lady’ that she’s apparently meant to present: t’isn’t long, though, before we can hear her inner thoughts (a staple of this film) and they are none too complimentary to the young ladies sat in her lounge now laughing at her ‘favourite show’, one of the film’s most baffling inclusions and something which features throughout – a shopping channel show where scream queen Suzi Lorraine, wearing a fat suit, rails against the indignities heaped upon ‘real women’ and tries to sell plus size clothes via a glamorous model, or rather an obese man in drag – an obese man who continually eats, as does Suzi, obviously. Hmm. Anyway, come some internal monologue about the shallowness of youth and beauty, it’s then time for the girls to be drugged, kidnapped and very soon afterwards hacked up for chow. As all of this happens in the first few minutes, I think I’m safe on the spoilers front: the film very much shows its trump hand early, albeit it then making us wait for anything much else in terms of plot.

However, another familiar indie horror face is moving into the area – step up one Deb (Tiffany Shepis) and her husband Sal (Carmine Capobianco), who have just taken a house on the street. Debbie is depressed and, after a fashion, recuperating – mainly by calling her husband an asshole repeatedly, and having traumatic dreams of family, though beyond this, very little context for Deb’s character is offered – a waste, and the reason for something of an imbalance between the two female leads.

Where Shepis is kept on the down-low, with very little to do for large parts of the film, there’s an attempt made to position Lowry as many things all at once. Whilst Ginny as a character definitely has some entertainingly deranged, sneering moments, though some of this may be due to recalling her understated performance in arguably one of her best-known roles in Shivers, overall her role in Model Hunger is confused, alternating between dear old lady (both being called this by others, and calling herself such), then hey presto! She’s a bat-wielding maniac, and then also an increasingly irate mouthpiece for the indignities of the beauty industry. Oh, and she has a sexy lingerie scene too. These latter elements, I think, would all have been easier to believe if we weren’t first asked to see Ginnie as an infirm old dear, which, despite being nearly seventy in real life, she doesn’t appear to be, whatever chintz she’s given to wear here.

As for the press release’s feted showdown between Shepis and Lowry, this largely consists of Deb growing ever more suspicious of her prim-and-proper neighbour, especially when people seem to be forever going into Ginny’s house but never resurfacing, before later – much, much later – deciding to investigate. If the film has a central core, it seems to be Ginny, trying to come to terms with her former life as a model and the fact that her body shape was just slightly too curvy for the fashion of the day. This translates to a hatred of other women, it seems, though the cannibal element is never explained. Presumably we’re entitled, even invited to join the dots and see it as a literal representation of how adverse beauty norms chew us women up and spit us out, or something – and certainly, other reviewers have praised the film for its commentary on the ‘male gaze’ and ‘unrealistic body expectations’, maybe because they don’t feel confident to contradict it. Well, all I’ll say is that this is an effective a critique of Western beauty standards as Redneck Zombies is of the North/South divide in modern America. There’s a lot here I can’t buy, basically, something which comes from the risk indie horror takes when it pays lip service to a serious theme like body image.

Your best bet, should you find yourself watching Model Hunger, is to leave any expectations of social commentary at the door. To focus on the positives: the SFX are practical, with plenty here for those who come out in a cold sweat at the thought of CGI; there’s some splatter, some flesh-eating, some recognisable indie movie faces, and that rough-and-ready feel which will be just as recognisable and familiar to plenty of viewers. Beyond that, however, like the body type being rejected over and over in the movie, this is all just a bit thin.

Model Hunger is available from July 12th 2016.