Prime Time: A Warning To The Curious (2013)

First of all, this has nothing to do with the famous ghost story by M. R. James. Let's make that clear right now. That is a classic tale. This is a slice of hot garbage. It may be the easiest review I have written in some time, considering all I need to do is string together a load of expletives and drop in the names of the cast and crew in between them.

The plot is so thin that it's almost translucent. It's a found footage film. A group of amateur ghost hunters, who apparently go ghost hunting most weekends, go to an abandoned location. From there, they are directed to another abandoned location by someone who doesn't seem at all weird and simply there to move the plot on. It's not long until the camera starts picking up what could be evil spirits. Oh, and there's a record on a turntable that everyone decides to play and listen to, basically doing The Evil Dead tape player spiel, but so much worse. At least it gave some work to Danny Webb anyway (credited as "The Voice"), who is probably the only person involved in this that I don't now hate.

Written and directed by Ali Djarar, with him also taking on every role behind the scenes (although locations were used almost as they were found, and it seems that very little else was needed)

Shot in a very short amount of time, and for a very small amount of money, what you have here is a prime example of someone mistakenly thinking that it is very easy to get some people and cameras together in the same place and just make a found footage film. I’m not surprised to see what this is the only film from Djarar, which I would suspect he funded entirely himself, and it stands out as an object lesson in how not to do this kind of thing.

Most of the runtime is full of scenes that play out for too long, don’t have the right focus, and continue to be boring even when the sense of creepiness is supposed to be building. Bearing in mind that so many of these films gradually get scarier and scarier, leading to that standard third act use of night-vision, the fact that most of this film is shot in that night-vision style is one glaring mis-step that typifies how much Djarar misunderstands the kind of film he is trying to make.

I will be polite to the cast, mainly because none of them are memorable (certainly not for the right reasons). One actor playing a detective may be the worst of them all, but I think that has as much to do with the awful script and presentation than his performance. At least he is a character that viewers can always identify, unlike the identi-kit mix of ghost hunters who all look far too similar when wandering about a dark and empty building.

Ironically, this does at least manage to serve as a warning to the curious. If you are curious about making your own horror movie, and if you think found footage is an easy and cheap way to get a good result, then be warned. This shows you just how bad the end result can be, and it is enough to make me never want to see anything else that Djarar might try to make.

2/10

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Hosts (2020)

A feature debut from co-directors Adam Leader and Richard Oakes, who also co-wrote the movie, Hosts is a horror film that should entertain genre fans after a bloody treat. And it certainly makes a decent calling card for Leader and Oakes.

Jack (Neal Ward) and Lucy (Samantha Loxley) are a young couple who have been invited to a neighbour's home for Christmas dinner. But something strange happens just before they head over there. One major bout of possession later, Jack and Lucy are out for blood. And they're also aiming to get Michael (Frank Jakeman), the patriarch of their Christmas dinner hosts, to be more honest with his family. That's really all there is to this, although there are a few more details to come out, both in relation to the family and to the two evil entities.

Ward and Loxley do good work in their main roles, enjoying some time as normal characters in the first few minutes before becoming unfeeling killers. Jakeman is also very good, as are all of his family members (played by Nadia Lamin, Jennifer K Preston, Lee Hunter, and Buddy Skelton, the youngest of the lot). Although there are times when the cast struggle to deliver some of the more ridiculous lines of dialogue, they're not a major problem. I don't think any actors could do well with certain parts of this screenplay.

The biggest problem that Hosts has is when the film-makers move away from the simple core of the film. Although I understand that they may have been worried about delivering something a bit too slight to justify the 89-minute runtime, there's something refreshing about a film that takes one main idea and effectively works a feature around it. It's debatable whether or not Hosts could have been tweaked in other areas to still make it work, but perhaps slimming it down even further could have been beneficial. The opening sequence is enjoyably unexplained, which means that every bit of dialogue that subsequently tries to explain some of the motivation feels unwanted and unnecessary. And the moments that go off on a bit of a tangent, having the actors wax lyrical about some evil deeds, are worse.

Leader and Oakes do a decent job with their direction. It's a shame that they can't avoid one of those main first-time mistakes, scenes that feel as if they either grind things to a halt or simply repeat earlier beats. That's not the biggest error that a film-maker can make though, and there are one or two fantastic gore gags that help to punctuate the proceedings, but it's enough to keep the film from being a truly great discovery.

Hosts is a good, grisly, bit of macabre entertainment. I'd recommend it, and look forward to what Leader and Oakes do next. It's probably not one to revisit though, and some people will probably like it a fair bit less than I did.

6/10

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