Prime Time: The Special (2020)

A decent film that could well have worked better as a short, which is something that can be said of many films (and is far from the worst criticism you can level at something), The Special is a cautionary tale that does everything it sets out to do in a perfectly serviceable manner, but starts to fall apart as soon as viewers get one step ahead of the main character. That happened for me by the start of the third act, but others may figure out where things are going as the very first main scene plays out.

Davy Raphaely plays Jerry, a man who has been rocked by the revelation that his wife (Sarah French) has cheated on him. Jerry’s friend, Mike (Dave Sheridan), takes him along to a brothel, encouraging him to try “the special”. The special doesn’t seem very special, basically being a wooden box/portable glory hole, but whatever happens to Jerry is good enough to blow . . . his mind. But the special is meant to be a one-time deal, which makes things very difficult for Jerry when he wants to experience it again. And we all know that trying to bend or break the rules is unlikely to lead to a happy ending (no pun intended).

Written by James Newman and Mark Steensland (the latter having gone on from this to the much better Jakob’s Wife), there’s enough done here to help this feel much better than other ways in which the concept could have been used. It could have been an excuse for a load of gratuitous gore and nudity, which I may not have necessarily complained about, but it’s more impressive to watch the film play out as a study of someone spiraling into a lust-based addiction, with very occasional moments of violence punctuating the proceedings at moments that feel like natural bridging points between three main acts.

Director B. Harrison Smith, who seems to currently be veering between horror movies and Christmas TV movies, does a good job of balancing the unpleasantness of the subject material with a surprisingly tasteful approach to it all. Some may yearn for something much nastier, and I wouldn’t have minded seeing this in the hands of someone like a Brian Yuzna or a Frank Henenlotter, but the end result ultimately feels like the right decisions were made. Nothing is left ambiguous, and viewers can imagine the more horrible implications not shown onscreen.

The cast do well, but nobody is giving a career-best turn here. Raphaely plays up the characteristics that show his addiction, Sheridan is there more to kickstart the main plot than to be a fully rounded person, and French is convincing enough, and adds some beauty to offset “the beast” that has taken over the mind of her husband. Doug Henderson, Susan Moses, and Paul Corman also work well in their roles, whether they know about the special or not, and it’s enjoyable to see how these people connect with, and affect, the life of our main character.

Perhaps low down the list if you are looking for the best horror movies from the last decade, but if you are looking for something removed from the mainstream, and if you are searching the dark and dangerous recesses of all that Amazon Prime Video have to offer, this isn’t too bad. It doesn’t have a bloated runtime, even if it could have worked better as a short, it isn’t left too rough around the edges, and it tries to do something a bit different. It’s not special, but it’s far from terrible.

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/

Prime Time: Blind (2019)

There's something quite mesmerising about Blind, and I don't mean that in a good way. Or maybe I do. It's an interesting oddity, which certainly makes it hard to forget once it's all over. I'm really not sure what the intentions of the film-makers were though. Did they want to make some cult comedy work, or were they aiming for something dark and serious? Either way, it doesn't work. 

Sarah French plays Faye, an actress left blind after a botched surgery. She spends her time chatting to others in her support group, mainly the equally blind Sophia (Caroline) and the handsome Luke (Tyler Gallant, playing a character unable to speak without the aid of a voicebox device), and wandering around a house filled with way more candles than any blind person should surely have. Unbeknownst to Faye, she is the target of an obsessed killer (Pretty Boy, played by Jed Rowen).

Directed by Marcel Walz, and written by Joe Knetter, it's hard to think of who to blame more for this amusing mess. French does the best she can, and I'll get back to the performances later, but can only do so much. 

I'll start with the script. Knetter obviously has some ideas buried in the material here, ideas that he doesn't flesh out enough, but they're in there nonetheless. Faye has adjusted to her new state, and seems to have adjusted better than I think I would have managed, but her mental state is a different matter. An actor makes their living from having eyes on them, which is where I think Knetter wanted to play around more in his script, and Faye doesn't feel too good about encountering people who recognise her and wonder what has happened. As Pretty Boy stalks and watches her, is it often just the same way anyone else would look at her without having to worry about her spotting them? Maybe, but the material isn't executed well enough to make this point effectively.

Walz makes one bad decision after another, whether it's his shot composition or the way he holds on scenes for so long that they become laughable (the best example of this being a moment in which Faye rambled on at great length to a presence she thinks is Luke). I haven't seen anything else from Walz, and this has reassured me that I haven't missed out on anything major. He seems to have a problem grasping the basics of horror film-making, although there's at least a degree of technical competence to keep things from being unwatchably bad.

French is good in the lead role, good enough to make it obvious why she was picked ahead of anyone else in the cast anyway. I was worried that she would overplay things while acting blind, but she strikes a good balance, for the most part. Williams and Gallant are okay, although both suffer from being the supporting characters who end up involved in scenes with tinkly emotional music (a technical term that musicians will know) making it clear that they are helping the lead character on her journey. Rowen has to stand around and wear a mask, which he does.

As I said, there's almost a good point to be made here, even as the standard horror genre stuff keeps being mishandled, but it's not successful. And it's certainly nowhere near successful enough to warrant the second instalment promised/threatened during the end credits.

3/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews