Prime Time: Cobweb (2023)

You have to be careful when working with horror material. Sometimes meeting expectations and delivering predictable plot beats becomes part of the fun. Sometimes you need to subvert things. It all depends on what you offer up around the most familiar elements. Cobweb, sadly, doesn’t offer up anything that feels truly worth your time. 

Written by Chris Thomas Devlin, who has one other writing credit so far (one of the writers who served up Texas Chainsaw Massacre), this is a fairly standard tale of some over-protective/maybe harmful parents (played by Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr) and a young child (Woody Norman) who starts to feel the presence of someone else living in the walls of his home. There’s a concerned teacher (played by Cleopatra Coleman), a young bully (Luke Busey) who soon moves from the terrorizer to the terrorized, and a third act that becomes disappointingly unambiguous and underwhelming when you realise the squandered potential of the premise.

While director Samuel Bodin, making their feature debut, has a decent eye, they don’t have the ability to elevate scenes in a way that can help to distract from the fairly weak script. Devlin fills the runtime with tired dialogue and one ridiculous contrivance after another. I remember being excited to check this out last year, and then my enthusiasm started to wane as I kept seeing the advertising for it and feeling as if it had nothing new to offer. I could have been wrong, sometimes the trailers and marketing do hold back a surprise or two, but it turns out that I was right. And things are made worse by both Devlin and Bodin wasting the cast.

I am a huge fan of both Caplan and Starr, which made this an even more frustrating viewing experience. Both are asked to act quite ridiculously, because anyone acting normally would end the movie within minutes. Part of me wanted more screentime for them, part of me was glad they didn’t have to carry the whole film on their shoulders. That task goes to young Norman, who is okay, I guess, but has to overdo the nervy and fragile core of his character, which is his entire personality for the duration of the movie. Coleman comes out of this best, playing the standard caring adult who investigates further when she suspects something is amiss. 

The more I think about Cobweb, the less inclined I am to compliment it. I was angry as the end credits rolled. There are positives though. It has some eye-catching visuals, making good use of the shadows and darkness in the finale. There’s also . . . Well, it has . . . Actually, I think that is it. Some decent visuals, two great cast members (both wasted), and a good title. The rest is bad, as bad as any other mainstream horror I can think of from the past few years.

3/10

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 

Infinity Pool (2023)

The third feature film from writer-director Brandon Cronenberg, Infinity Pool shows that he can keep finding different ways to explore what seems to be his favourite topic - immortality. There's more to this, and it's different enough from both of his previous films, but it's interesting to see that the pros and cons of potential eternal life seems to be his obsession (perhaps stemming from his personal experience of forging a career with the weighty Cronenberg name attached to him).

Alexander Skarsgård plays James, an unsuccessful author (he wrote one book, some years ago, and hasn't written anything since) on holiday with his rich partner, Em (Cleopatra Coleman). They are staying in an exclusive beach resort, advised not to stray outwith the boundaries of that area, and having a very nice time of it. Things all change when they meet Gabi (Mia Goth) and Alban (Jalil Lespert), a couple who encourage them to be a bit more daring and join them for a day out. A day beyond the resort walls. Heading home, an accident leads to someone dying, which could land them all in very hot water. That's when the central idea of Infinity Pool kicks in. This island has a deal for tourists who can afford it. If you have the money, you can pay for a clone to be executed in your place . . . while you watch. This bizarre experience changes something in James, and he realises that he can live his life without fear of consequences. For a while.

As you may have already noticed, Infinity Pool is a movie that actually sits nicely alongside a few other recent releases that have something to say about the selfishness and entitlement of people who can afford anything they like. It might make for a bizarre triple-bill, but you could easily schedule this alongside both The Menu and Triangle Of Sadness and have a strong thematic strand running through your evening's entertainment. This may be a horror film, and one interspersed with hallucinatory and kaleidoscopic imagery at times, but the biggest horror of it all is watching people devolve so quickly when they realise that they can be as hedonistic and boorish as they like, pitying those around them who haven't tasted the same level of "freedom" from the chains of morality.

Skarsgård is excellent in his role, moving convincingly from a state of calm and passivity to a wrecked mass of raw nerves as things develop (imagine him as a healthy tooth that is then worn down and broken within a short space of time), and it's not saying anything new now to heap a whole lot of praise upon Goth, who plays her part here with sheer glee. Even when raging with anger, Goth's character is confident that she will get whatever she wants by the time everything is sorted out. Coleman has less to do, but it's good that her character remains calm and clear-headed at a time when everyone else is looking to dive into the deep waters of insanity, and Lespert is suave and charming throughout, the slick devil alongside Goth's imp/demon.

While it is all put together well enough, with every aspect, from the score to the practical FX work, supporting the ideas being explored throughout, Infinity Pool, due to the nature of that central conceit, cannot avoid feeling a bit inconsequential. Maybe that is deliberate, maybe it isn’t, but it certainly lacks the impact of Possessor (which remains Brandon Cronenberg’s finest work, to date). There's a strong point being made during the final scene, but any statement is undermined by what ISN'T said/shown. I just wish, ironically, that more people had suffered some real consequences. That isn’t to say it is a bad film though. It’s a good one. In fact, it's a very good film indeed.

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

Netflix And Chill: In The Shadow Of The Moon (2019)

Taking place mainly in 1988, 1997, 2006, and 2015, In The Shadow Of The Moon is a sci-fi thriller that will hold no surprises to anyone who can pick up on the obvious seeded clues. It will also hold no surprises to anyone who has seen the trailer. Or, because I am going to go into some more detail, anyone who reads this review. So, if you haven't seen it, proceed with caution. The film is not good, but you're more than welcome to watch it before reading the rest of this review.

Boyd Holbrook is a cop named Locke, working with his partner, Maddox (Bokeem Woodbine), when they end up investigating a number of mysterious deaths. The person responsible, Rya (Cleopatra Coleman), is chased down and ends up losing an argument with a speeding subway train. Meanwhile, Locke's wife is giving birth to their first child, but that isn't going to end too well either. Nine years pass, the killer reappears, and Locke starts to become obsessed with figuring out just what the hell is going on.

Directed by the usually-dependable Jim Mickle, In The Shadow Of The Moon proves that he shouldn't spend too much time away from his old co-creator, Nick Damici. Because the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that this is a terrible film, easily the worst thing that Mickle has done so far. It's not necessarily the direction that is the biggest problem, but the fact that he couldn't get better performances from his cast, or figure out small ways to improve the script, undermine his ability to help something with a concept that requires a bit more attention to detail.

Gregory Weidman and Geoffrey Tock are the men responsible for the script. Their background seems to be in TV, and it looks as if this is their first feature, which explains a number of the failings. The characters are a bunch of tropes mashed together (seriously, they just have Wookbine saying "shhheeeeeit" more than the jokingly stereotypical black character in Not Another Teen Movie), they don't feel connected to any wider world out there, and the main premise has at least one plot hole you could drive a huge truck through. Time travel is always perilous territory, which means people usually have to decide whether to approach it seriously or just hope viewers go along with everything as they deliver fun. Weidman and Tock choose a worse path, trying to be serious while hoping that nobody notices the massive error in their plotting that undoes the entire film before your eyes while you should be enjoying the final scenes.

The extra disappointment of Woodbine's character being so poorly written is that he still gives the best performance out of the lead roles. It's hard to tell, beneath the weight of the weak script, but he does. Holbrook just isn't strong enough to carry the film, so it's hard to care about how things turn out as the movie begins to focus more and more on his character, Coleman is used best when just fleeing from cops, as opposed to the moments in which she has to explain things that don't make sense, Michael C. Hall is solid, but sadly underused, and Rudi Dharmalingam is hampered by playing a character who is shoehorned in because . . . nope, I've got nothing. I know what he ends up contributing to the plot, I just have no idea why they decided to plan it that way.

The first half is a decent little genre film, and it's a great shame that there wasn't a way to somehow keep all of the action based in 1988 while the leads figured things out (btw I am SURE that could have been done, but that's why I just maintain this blog while others write the movie scripts), but it's sad and frustrating to watch everything unravel in the second half, leading to a manipulative finale that is unearned, and ultimately dishonest (no matter what the sleight of hand tries to make you think).

4/10