Shudder Saturday: The Tombs (2019)

Urgh. Here we go with yet another garbage, and cheap, horror movie from the UK. I don't know how these people keep getting money, but they do. The end results, sadly, often show that you would have been better giving that money directly to Michael, the money-munching monkey of Morocco. That is certainly the case here.

Written by Michael William Smith and directed by Dan Brownlie, this is a tale of a movie promo event that goes horribly wrong. A bunch of people are placed in the London Tombs, located under London Bridge (which was news to me, I mistakenly thought they were just trying to utilise The London Dungeon, which is actually a different attraction), and then a killer starts picking them off. Unfortunately, I've already made this sound better than it is, especially if you're imagining any decent kills and a fun mix of characters. This film has neither.

Jessica Ann Brownlie plays Piper, a woman who is famous for being the final girl in the horror movie that is now getting a much-trumpeted sequel, and I'm going to make the horrible assumption that, despite not being the worst actress I have seen (in any movie, not just in this movie), Brownlie seems to have had a good chance of being cast in a main role thanks to the fact that she's married to the director. Ayvianna Snow is Gigi, the potential new star of the film series, and she is a much better onscreen presence here. There are also depressingly bad performances from Devora Wilde, Jessica Cameron, Danielle Harold (playing a chirpy TV presenter who then turns into some grouchy Eastenders extra when the cameras aren't rolling), and Chris Simmons, playing a paparazzo type named Doug. Anthony Ilott isn't too bad, as the very scared PJ, but I think that may just be in comparison to most of the people around him.

The supernatural killer at the heart of the story has no decent background, nor does he really have any consistent ability to actually kill a lot of people who should be easy pickings for him, and three quarters of this movie is just people wandering around dark rooms and acting scared by their surroundings. I get it, you could probably say that about most horror movies, but this one is so incompetently thrown together that it becomes irritating from the very earliest scenes.

The good news is that it only lasts for 78 minutes. The bad news is that 78 minutes feels like 3 hours here. It's a barrage of bad camerawork, poor lighting, non-special effects, bad acting, bad music, and bad, well, everything. I'll be kind to it because of the less painful turns from Brownlie, Ilott, and Snow, mainly Snow, but this is a film that I recommend everyone else avoids completely. We certainly don't want to encourage the writer or director to come up with a sequel.

2/10

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Fanged Up (2017)

I was only a few minutes into Fanged Up when I started to realise I knew the lead actor. His face, his manner, he was familiar to me. But how? Well, annoyingly enough, Daniel O'Reilly, who also co-wrote the movie, is probably best known to many as the man who was a bit of an internet hit, for a while, with Dapper Laughs. I'm not going to go into the details of his act here, you can Google it, so it should suffice to say that his persona was that of a cheeky chappy, to put it mildly.

O'Reilly plays Jimmy Ragsdale here, a . . . cheeky chappy who ends up arrested after a brawl in a nightclub, and placed in a jail that deals with prisoners in a very unique way. They get eaten. A lot of the prison staff are vampires, hence the name, and their appetites are growing. Can Jimmy survive? Never mind the vampires, will he be able to avoid death at the hands of his cellmate, Victor (Stu Bennett)? And will he also be able to build a bridge with the prison nurse, Katie (Danielle Harold), an old flame who believes that he once cheated on her while on a holiday with friends?

Directed by the talented Christian James (who started with Freak Out and also gave us Stalled, two films you can at least admire, even if you don't love them), Fanged Up has a surprising number of positives to make up for the negatives. I admit that I was worried about what I was letting myself in for, especially after enduring a number of low-budget British horror comedies mixing criminal geezer types with evil forces, but my worry abated slightly as things began to play out.

The general look and feel of the film is polished and professional, including the vampire make up and any gore gags. James knows how to give value for money, and he focuses on the film-making ahead of the comedy, and not vice versa.

The cast also do a good job. Yes, even O'Reilly. He won't be everyone's cup of tea, but this is a toned-down version of the kind of character he has played before, and there are some critical moments that show just how much of his overcompensating bravado and lewd behaviour is all just a front. Bennett is impressively tough, Harold makes for a good beauty who has more brains than our "hero", and Vas Blackwood is very enjoyable in a main supporting role. Steven Berkoff is the Governor, and has a bit of fun, while Lauren Socha is the woman in charge, and the one deciding who is to go on the menu first.

But things fall down at the script. The contributions from O'Reilly seem obvious, considering how he manages to stay in his comfort zone. Nick Nevern has a filmography that includes a couple of more straightforward British gangster movies, so that would seem to be his addition to the recipe. Then you have Dan Palmer, who has written the scripts for most of James' movies, shorts and features. The fact that almost all of the features feel both undercooked and yet also slightly padded out in places makes me think that he was the one trying, and failing, to bring everything together and tighten it all up. It almost works, because there are enough different elements jostling for attention, but ultimately doesn't.

Remember what I said about James focusing on the film-making ahead of the comedy? That would have paid off in dividends if the comedy had worked. Sadly, it doesn't. Which means the film ends up being nothing more than a mildly amusing genre mash-up. Although it could have been so much worse, which is why I charitably score it right at the halfway point.

5/10

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