Shudder Saturday: The Field Guide To Evil (2018)

I have said before, and will undoubtedly say it again, that anthology horror movies are often an easy sell for me. I love short film content, and even an uneven horror anthology should have some thing to entertain you among the various segments. If you don't like one then just wait, a better one should be along soon enough for your viewing pleasure.

The Field Guide To Evil is a film that has come along to be the exception to that rule. I can't remember the last time I had such a miserable experience with a horror anthology movie, and it's quite telling that my memory of many of these shorts has faded so soon after watching the film.

With the emphasis very much on folk horror, as is clear from the title, a variety of writers and directors set out to provide cinematic interpretations of folk tales from their countries of birth. This covers a wide range of potentially interesting tales, from a goblin wanting to join in with some revelry to forbidden love, from  a djinn that is connected to childbirth, to a group of humanoids known as "melonheads".

The big problem here is that almost none of these stories are interesting enough for their limited runtime. Which would be fine if the runtime was a bit more limited. This film clocks in at just under two hours, and not even a quarter of that is as entertaining as it could be.

Although things often look visually impressive, the writing often leaves a lot to be desired, and the cast are left struggling to convey any decent message as the screen is filled with odd, although often pleasingly unsettling, imagery. Text often sets the scene for each tale, but viewers may still feel as if they're dropped in to the middle of something that is a bit too complex for the kind of quick scares and punches that anthology segments usually provide. Although I have said that the film runs too long, many of these short tales could be greatly improved by being further fleshed out and turned into a full feature.

I'm not going to name all of the writers and directors here, sorry, but I will say that names I was looking forward to seeing work from include Peter Strickland, Can Evernol, and Agnieszka Smoczynska. If you also enjoy their work, I recommend you go back to rewatch some of their features. 

In fairness, there's very little here that absolutely stinks, to use a proper cinematic term. It's just that nothing makes enough of an impact, which makes the runtime feel like more of an endurance test than it should be. The tales should feel varied, but they don't. They should feel like a worthwhile point is made, in my opinion anyway, but they don't. This could have been, stripping away some of the narrative story aspects, an interesting collection of visual essays. It isn't. I just didn't like it. And I continued to dislike it for most of the two hours it was on. Which made me feel rather grumpy as the end credits finally came around.

3/10

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Filmstruck Friday: The Lure (2015)

If I told you that The Lure was a film about killer mermaids then you'd not be bothered by me reviewing it as a horror movie, I assume. You might even be unphased if I told you that it uses the mermaids as proxies for many people in the world around us who are exploited, shaped into something else, and then left in a state that doesn't allow them to just slip back into their former life. But if I told you that it was also a musical, didn't really have many moments of tension or scares, and is basically a strange and cool updating of The Little Mermaid (the Hans Christian Andersen tale, not the Disney animated film), then I can understand that you might balk at the idea of me including it as a horror viewing. Well, I'm counting it.

Marta Mazurek and Michalina Olszanska play the two mermaids, Silver and Golden. They encounter a band singing on a beach one evening and end up going along with them to a nightclub, where they are eventually turned into part of the act. They become singers, stripping as well, and seem to go down well with the clientele. Unfortunately, Silver can't control the urge to go out at night and find someone to eat while Golden finds herself falling in love with the bass player of the band (Jakub Gierszal). Things start to turn sour.

Written by Robert Bolesto, The Lure is quite the entertaining genre mash up. After a very brief prologue that sets up the meeting of the characters, things become very cool and pop-tastic, staying that way for a little while before showing the struggle that the two leads will face (one due to love, one due to staying true to her own nature). It's a smooth transition, allowing viewers to accept the central idea well enough before playing around with it and introducing all of the other main plot points. The dialogue may not be the best you will hear but this is a film more interested in using the fantastical to explore issues that affect people every day.

Director Agnieszka Smoczynska does a fantastic job, moving on from a selection of shorts and TV work to her debut feature with a good eye and plenty of confidence required to handle the imagery, tone, and performances. Even during the busiest, and strangest, moments, she never loses her eye on the focus of the tale. And she's also very good at handling the musical moments (there are some enjoyable, lively, tunes here).

Mazurek and Olszanska both do well in their roles, expressing plenty with just a look as they sometimes communicate telepathically, and comfortable in the fact that they have to be fairly nude for most of the runtime. Geirszal is also good, Marcin Kowalczyk makes a good impression as another land-living creature from the sea (he is, in fact, playing an incarnation of Triton), and Kinga Preis and Magdalena Cielecka are both very good as performers affected by the introduction of the mermaids into their lives/performing group.

If you go into The Lure expecting a standard horror movie then you're going to be VERY disappointed, despite the fact that it is tagged in that way. That is just one part of it (and you get a few moments of bloodshed and quick violence to warrant that). But the horror here stems from mistreatment and abuse that may feel over the top here, because of the main environments and the central characters, but is actually not too many steps away from a version of reality that many victims suffer through. That's what makes The Lure so effective and powerful, once you realise that the sheen of fantasy is just sugar-coating a very bitter pill.

8/10
You can buy the movie here.
Americans can get it here.