Shudder Saturday: The Lair (2022)

Some people, SOME, have been saying that The Lair is a return to form for writer-director Neil Marshall. They are becoming an even smaller minority, but they're around. Somewhere. They're also being far too kind to a film that, rather than reminding you of how good Marshall can be, actually serves to remind you how far away he has moved from his best work.

Charlotte Kirk, who also co-wrote the movie with Marshall, stars as a pilot, Kate Sinclair, shot down over Afghanistan. She ends up encountering some hostile enemies, to be expected, but also discovers something else aiming to cause her harm. Eventually in the company of other military allies, Kate has to convince them of what she saw, and everyone has to figure out how to survive, and destroy, the monsters on the prowl.

Marshall may be very happy with the work he gets to do now, movies in which he can work with actress/co-writer/partner Kirk, but I cannot help thinking that he has lost his way, and that is sadly even more obvious in The Lair than it was in his previous film, The Reckoning. I don't think that Kirk helps him in the writing department, and she's certainly not a good enough actress to make up for the weaknesses in the script (compare any part of her performance to the many other women that Marshall has worked with and it will highlight how poor she is).

I could barely work up the energy to fully review this, it was so surprisingly dull throughout, but people should know what they're getting into. The creature design isn't bad, I guess, but nothing else works here. Action beats aren't exciting, none of the characters are given any personality (which leaves the other cast members hung out to dry), and there's no sense of anything that should be here: no tension, no real sense of place, no oppressive atmosphere, not even good banter between the soldiers.

As already mentioned, and I don't want to seem mean about it, Kirk isn't great in the lead role. Sadly, the rest of the cast pitch their performance in line with the lead/what Marshall wants. Jonathan Howard, Jamie Bamber, Leon Ockenden, and many others do poor work. Hadi Khanjanpour is the only person who almost rises above the material. Almost.

I remember one good gore gag. There were maybe one or two more, it's strange how my brain is already trying to erase this from my memory after just watching it last night, but it's hard to appreciate any fleeting highlight under the cumulative weight of one bad moment after another. And there's no silver lining on this cloud. Nothing works - score, cinematography, production design, etc - and the whole thing feels cheap and unworthy of Marshall's considerable talent. IF he has managed to hold on to some of his considerable talent.

I am happy that Marshall and Kirk are very happy together. I would be a lot happier if they could maintain that happiness without making movies together. 

3/10

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Shudder Saturday: The Reckoning (2020)

It's hard to say why The Reckoning doesn't really work as well as it should. Perhaps it's the feeling of watching something from Neil Marshall that is far below what we've been used to getting from him in years gone by, perhaps it is the fact that the story is far too familiar to fans of classic horror (coming closest to the fantastic Witchfinder General). Perhaps it's even the irritating score from Christopher Drake that swells and rolls around as if it is accompanying scenes with much more dramatic weight in them. 

Charlotte Kirk stars as Grace Haverstock, a woman who is left a widow when her husband visits a local tavern and drinks from the wrong cup, giving himself a dose of the plague. Trying to keep her property and land, and rejecting the overbearing advances of the local squire (Steve Pendleton), who doesn't mind getting what he wants by force. Upsetting a few different people with her attempts to simply get on with the rest of her life, for the benefit of herself and her young child, Grace is soon accused of being a witch. Which means the Witchfinder General, John Moorcroft (Sean Pertwee), is invited along to deal with her. 

Not ever tense or bloody enough to be a great horror, and not ever affecting enough to be a great drama, The Reckoning sits in a bit of an unsatisfying middle ground. It's all the more annoying for the fact that there are some very good moments here and there, but they're in a movie that takes just under 2 hours to say nothing really worth your time. If you don't know by now that a horribly large amount of women were accused of witchcraft, tortured until they confessed, and killed then this might be an eye-opener for you. Otherwise, it's certainly not the wake-up call that it seems to present itself as.

Based on a story by Antony Jones and Edward Evers-Swindell, the script co-written by Evers-Swindell with Marshall and Kirk is entirely predictable and composed of moments that we've seen a number of times before. Which isn't such a big problem when you have some great scene-stealing from someone like Pertwee.

It's more of a problem when you have the movie resting on the shoulders of Kirk, who doesn't ever feel like a good fit for the lead role. She's not exactly terrible, but always feels like she's obviously acting. It's like when a talented child actor attacks their first lead role in a new stage show with the same approach they gave to their previous work. The performance may not be bad, but it feels out of time and place, and you can tell they're working constantly all the way up at eleven (to use a Spinal Tap-ism). Waddington is entertainingly horrible, Suzanne Magowan does alright as an assistant to Pertwee's character, and Callum Goulden is decent as a young man out to help the lead. But it's Pertwee who does the best work, bringing the right kind of energy to help save this from being a complete bore.

I've seen far worse than this. I can also easily think of about a dozen movies you should watch before this (one mentioned in the first paragraph, but I'd also list the likes of The Witch, A Field In England, The Blood On Satan's Claw, 1960s Black Sunday, and a few others). There are even at least two episodes of Inside No. 9 that come close enough to this material to make them worth a watch ahead of this. Work your way through all of those before giving this your time.

4/10

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Hellboy (2019)

Hellboy is the weakest film yet from director Neil Marshall, who has been away from cinema screens for far too long (his last solo project was Centurion, almost a decade ago). But a weak film from Neil Marshall is still something that I'll happily watch ahead of films from many other directors. Because Marshall has consistently provided me with entertainment, thrills, and some of the best moments in modern genre cinema. So, despite the critical and commercial failure of this movie, I was always going to give him my time.

David Harbour is the actor now taking on the main role, and Ian McShane is his father figure, but this will all feel very familiar to fans of the property. All you need to know is that an evil sorceress, a "blood queen" named Vivienne Nimue (Milla Jovovich) is trying to come back and get her revenge, despite having been dismembered and her body parts placed in different locations, and part of her plan involves Hellboy taking charge of Excalibur and unleashing a kind of hell on Earth. Hellboy is helped in this adventure by a young woman who can communicate with the dead (Alice, played by Sasha Lane) and a skilled soldier type (Ben Daimio, played by Daniel Dae Kim).

I could spend just as much time writing about all of the little mis-steps that stop this from being a great movie, but I am choosing instead to try and heap a little praise upon it. Enough people have told you why you should give it a miss. I am going to try and convince you to give it two hours of your time.

First of all, forget the previous Hellboy movies. They are fantastic, and few people have the same attention to detail when it comes to creating cinematic worlds as Guillermo del Toro. So it's important to remember that as you go into this. It's not a Del Toro film, and it's not trying to be. I think too many people gave this a viewing while still holding on to their love (and well-earned love, at that) for those other movies.

Second, this is a good cast. Harbour does well in the main role, and McShane has become a master of stealing scenes while appearing in smaller roles in recent years. Jovovich has a blast as the big baddie, and is especially fun in the roles that have her still waiting for her body to be fully assembled. It's a shame that Lane and Kim aren't as much fun as they could be, let down by a script that doesn't seem to know what to do with them for large sections of the runtime, but that's compensated for by the performances from Sophie Okonedo, Thomas Haden Church (in a brief cameo), and Stephen Graham, voicing a "henchman" creature named Gruagach.

Although the script by Andrew Cosby may not be as strong or interesting as it could be, everything moves along energetically enough, with some fun set-pieces interspersed throughout that allow Marshall to deliver some blood and guts around people who roll their eyes and swear at the monsters attempting to push them off their mortal coil.

The special effects are varying in quality, the score from Benjamin Wallfisch is foot-stampingly good, and the whole thing is just a flawed bundle of messy fun. Which is sometimes the best kind of fun (hey, get your mind out of the gutter). Give it a watch and you may agree.

6/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy the movie here.