Netflix And Chill: The Killer (2023)

If you go into The Killer expecting a standard hitman/revenge movie then I don't think you're going to enjoy it. You cannot go into this with certain expectations, and I would quickly warn people who may assume that they're going to have a perfect blend of cool and controlled David Fincher style and cool and controlled lead character. While things may seem to match up on the surface, the whole thing is actually an amusing dark comedy that shows us someone holding on to their superb natural instincts while everything else starts to slip through their fingers.

Michael Fassbender stars as The Killer. He lives by a number of rules that we hear repeated, mantra-like, in voiceover narration. "Stick to your plan. Anticipate, don't improvise. Trust no one. Never yield an advantage. Fight only the battle you're paid to fight." He also believes that you should forbid empathy, because empathy is a weakness. "Empathy is vulnerability". When a job goes wrong, however, The Killer ends up seeking revenge, and this shows us how often he breaks his own rules. He's not actually that good at living by his own code, but repeating it to himself seems to show how often he spends time convincing himself that he belongs in the life he has chosen. 

Adapted from a graphic novel series by Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon, this is a long-overdue opportunity for writer Andrew Kevin Walker and director Fincher to fully collaborate again. The two last worked together on the superb Seven, but it's interesting to view The Killer as something that works as very much a companion piece to Fight Club. The script isn't as packed with quotable dialogue, but everything here, whether spoken word or silent expression/movement, works exactly as intended. You get repeated mantras that are used for self-delusion (and are lies), you get the use of corporations assisting the hasty demise of characters, and you have an apparent code of ethics that ends up warped and broken as a main character strives towards what ends up being their ultimate goal. It's also a film that may well be taken by many viewers as something it very much isn't. Maybe.

Fassbender feels like he was born for this role, a captivating presence able to keep his face completely blank as he interacts with people he doesn't view worthy of full engagement. He looks capable enough when it comes to the physical side of things, and the juxtaposition of how things play out onscreen and how the character comments on his own approach becomes funnier and funnier as the divide between perception and reality gets bigger. Charles Parnell and Kerry O'Malley shine in a couple of key scenes, Sala Baker casts an impressively large shadow as a potential target named "The Brute", and both Arliss Howard and Tilda Swinton have fantastic moments in the third act, the latter coming seriously close to stealing the movie with her blend of calm defiance and slight regret.

Hilariously soundtracked by a selection of tunes from The Smiths, there's also extra laughs mined from Fincher upending some action movie standards. Whether or not people enjoy the joke is a different matter, but I liked watching a chase sequence that wasn't really a chase, miscalculations made by someone who needs to rely on precision, and a messy fight that was as dark and disorientating as it might feel when right in the middle of it.

I've already seen many people dismiss this as a fairly empty and pointless work, a lesser entry from a master director, but I would respectfully disagree. It's not a full return to form, considering how high the Fincher highs are, but I think it's his best film in over a decade (note, I have STILL to see Mank, just too many movies and never enough hours in every day). It will be interesting to see if others start to agree with me as more time passes.

8/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share

Netflix And Chill: Case 39 (2009)

A high point in the filmographies of both director Christian Alvart and writer Ray Wright, Case 39 is a slick and enjoyable, and quite ridiculous, mainstream horror movie that takes some familiar faces and unapologetically keeps them grounded in circumstances that keep getting more and more outrageous.

Renée Zellweger is Emily Jenkins, a social worker who finds her spidey-sense tingling when she is handed the file for her 39th "live" case, that of young Lilith Sullivan (Jodelle Ferland). It looks as if Lilith is being threatened by her parents (played by Callum Keith Rennie and Kerry O'Malley), and Emily wants to get her to a safe space, helped by her boss (Wayne, played by Adrian Lester), a psychologist friend (Doug, played by Bradley Cooper), and a detective (Ian McShane). But things star to occur that make Emily think she has misread the situation. Were people trying to harm Lilith? Or were they trying to protect themselves from something else?

I first watched Case 39 a few years ago. It was never high on my list of priorities, and I basically dismissed it as a very standard horror movie, with twists and turns easily spotted by those with even the most cursory interest in the horror genre. That was probably a little bit unfair. Although full of moments that you've seen before, Case 39 also has a few really good set-pieces and tries to plot everything out with a passing nod to some kind of reality. 

Alvart directs it well enough, making good use of some decent CGI and not shying away from some of the bloodier moments (one or two should make you wince). Wright clearly knows that he's walking a tightrope between something nasty and something quite silly, and he shows that in a number of scenes in the third act that allow for some more playful interactions between Emily and Lilith, with a more truthful picture exposed and the two characters testing one another.

Zellweger is very good in her lead role, whether she's a concerned worker or someone who ends up at the end of her rope. McShane puts in another of the many great performances he has been delivering over the past few decades, Lester and Cooper are both very good (with the latter getting what I would say are the two best scenes in the movie), Rennie and O'Malley get interesting character arcs, and Ferland has a lot of fun in her role. Everyone pitches their performance at just the right level, which helps enormously, especially as things hurtle towards an enjoyably entertaining ending.

Still not a title I would suggest people prioritise over many other viewing options, Case 39 does at least deliver a fun time for those after some undemanding horror. And it's a nice riff on the many "bad seed" movies we have seen over the years. It's also a reminder to check out the wonderful cosplays that Ferland does nowadays (check her out on Instagram at . . . @jodellecosplays).

6/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Bonus Review: Annabelle (2014)

A horror spin-off from The Conjuring, this is a film that shows just how easy it can be to put together a polished final product without it feeling too obviously designed for the masses, even though it IS. I didn't love The Conjuring, but I did enjoy aspects of it. Annabelle is absolutely on a par with that film, although I was perhaps a little more receptive to it because of going in with lower expectations. There are less scares here, but those that are here are executed as perfectly as you could wish them to be.

For those who didn't see The Conjuring, Annabelle was a periphary character/prop used to show just what the main characters - the Warrens - had to do in their battles against evil forces. The start of this movie reprises those moments from The Conjuring, before moving backwards in time to show viewers the origin of the malevolent power that came to be contained within the doll. Well, that's the rough idea. What happens, instead, is that the audience is given another modern horror movie that replaces ghosts with demons before hitting many similar beats to the grand horrors of the late 1970s. Annabelle Wallis and Ward Horton play the young couple, Mian and John, who end up with a doll in their home who appears to be far from lifeless, and it's not long until they start freaking out (understandably). A priest (Tony Amendola) may be able to help them out, but it all depends on just how powerful the evil is.

While not directly comparable to films such as The Omen, The Amityville Horror and The Sentinel, this is very much the territory that Annabelle traverses. The main characters are fairly mature adults, the potential ridiculousness of the whole thing is overlooked in favour of brow-furrowing and serious talk about real good and evil, and the glossiness of the whole thing still allows for moments of real darkness (literally, in the case of one nail-biting sequence).

Director John R. Leonetti certainly takes a more serious approach to the material than he did when directing The Butterfly Effect 2. It looks like his years of working as Director Of Photography for James Wan have paid off, and this is never more apparent than in those precisely-engineered jump scares. The script by Gary Dauberman may be weak, with fairly uninteresting characters and a surprising lack of focus, but it does enough to keep you interested in between the more memorable set-pieces.

Wallis, Horton and Amendola all do okay, but after the end credits roll it's only Annabelle who will linger in your mind. That's as it should be, obviously. It is, after all, "her" film. It's just a shame that none of the actual human characters stood out at all, although Alfre Woodard tries the hardest (playing Evelyn, a woman who becomes concerned for the couple as she sees what they're going through).

If I call the film competent then you may think I'm damning it with faint praise, but I don't mean to. It IS competent, which means that I tentatively recommend it to fans of mainstream horror movies like all of those mentioned above. As for the hardcore horror fans who sneer at anything made in America, with any kind of decent budget and studio backing, they can either give it a chance or not. They might just end up agreeing with me that it's . . . . . . competent.

6/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews