Jackals (2017)

Imagine, if you can, that you were trying to watch the very enjoyable You're Next. But nobody will give you any peace. You have to try to engage in conversations, someone has decided to visit and show you their new (crying) baby, and your bladder has decided to play up for the day, deciding that the last coffee you had was enough to take you over the edge, meaning that you have to nip to the loo every 10 minutes. The pause button on your player is broken so you end up just dipping in and out of the film, getting random bits of information without making sense of the whole plot.

Then you decide to make your own horror movie, one that you feel will be an excellent little horror film in the same vein as You're Next. That movie would be Jackals, a disappointingly pointless mess that never truly engages the viewer and draws them in. But at least you included home invasion horror, people wearing animal masks, and a plot point about someone who used to be in a cult.

The plot is all about a family unit trying to deprogram one of their own, having stolen him away from the cult he now considers his true family. While he resists their attempts to return him to his precious state, the cult members gather outside and start terrorising the family.

It makes sense that this is the first feature script from Jared Rivet, who doesn't create good enough characters, doesn't effectively build tension, and ruins any potential the premise could have with every main story beat, all the way to the tediously predictable final scenes.

What doesn't make sense is the fact that this is far from director Kevin Greutert's first rodeo. He previously directed Jessabelle AND the sixth and seventh instalments in the Saw franchise (two instalments I really enjoyed). So it makes me think that he initially saw something in the script that was then lost during the transition from page to screen.

The cast don't help either. They're not awful, and you get lead roles for people like Johnathon Schaech and Deborah Kara Unger, but a couple of them (Ben Sullivan and Nick Roux, playing the brothers, the former being the brainwashed cult member) aren't as good as they should be. Stephen Dorff is wasted in his small role, and Chelsea Ricketts tries her best but is given the worst parts of the script to deal with, in terms of her reactions to events and characterisation.

If you're desperate for something to watch, and it's streaming somewhere for free, then you may enjoy Jackals. I mean . . . I'm sure someone could enjoy it. But I would implore you to search for something, anything, different. Because the only thing this has going for it is a degree of competence on the tech side of things. No fun, no thrills, no tension, just technical competence.

3/10

You can, if you wish, buy Jackals here.
Americans can buy it here.

Noir November: The Game (1997)

It may cause some heated debate among fans of the franchise, but people remember that David Fincher directed the much-maligned Alien³. They also tend to remember the enjoyable camerawork that was used to set up the layout of the main building in Panic Room. The rest all have their loyal fans and are unlikely to be forgotten any time soon. But The Game, this is the one that people always seem to forget about. Which is a great shame, because it's a damn fine thriller with a strong strand of pitch-black humour running through the whole thing.

Michael Douglas is Nicholas Van Orton, a wealthy businessman who doesn't seem to have any fun in life any more. It's his birthday, not that he's going to celebrate it in any big way, so he ends up at lunch with his brother (Conrad, played by Sean Penn). His brother has managed to get him a gift for the man who has everything. He has booked Nicholas a game with a company called CRS. What is the game? Well, it's different for each person. A live scenario is played out, and finding out the object of the game is often the object of the game. What starts out as fun and/or mildly irritating soon turns into something darker and much more dangerous, and Nicholas is soon convinced that he's caught up in the middle of something that's no longer just a game.

Put together with typical attention to detail by Fincher, The Game is based on a script by John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris. Although the tone of the whole thing is quite dark, the emphasis is very much on a sense of fun. The whole film is as much a game for viewers as the central premise is for the main character. Figuring out just who is in on the plot, and who isn't, is part of the fun. Another part of the fun is seeing such a composed, slightly arrogant, character being brought low by a series of unfortunate events. Okay, it's maybe not the nicest thing in the world to laugh at someone having such a bad time of things, but it's hard not to enjoy it ever so slightly. So enjoy it. Think of it as the darker, twisted sibling of After Hours (and THERE'S a great double-bill to line up some time).

Douglas is fantastic as Van Orton, a man who slowly starts to unravel as things around him move from the ridiculous to potentially lethal. He's done this kind of role before, of course, but this really plays to his strengths. Penn has a lot of fun with his small, supporting turn. The other main character who comes to the fore is a waitress played by Deborah Kara Unger. I became a big fan of Unger when she starred in both Crash and this movie in the space of a year or two, and she comes into this film at just the right time, lifting things up another notch as the second act starts to show how expansive the game is.

There ARE problems. Anyone looking for logic and believability should look elsewhere, and the long runtime starts to take a toll as the third act starts to outstay its welcome. For the most part, however, this is a great example of a director having a lot of fun with his audience. Nothing is done in a way that seems too cheeky or arrogant. It's just light fare covered in dark wrapping.

I doubt that this will be the number one choice when you ask people "what's your favourite Fincher movie?" and that's fair enough. But I'd love to think that it's not going to be consistently forgotten every time someone discusses highlights from his filmography. Because, as far as I'm concerned, this is definitely one of them.

8/10

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Michael-Douglas/dp/B000069HZP/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1415889512&sr=1-2&keywords=the+game

Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

I enjoyed the movie version of Silent Hill. I have fond memories of playing the game many years ago and the movie recreated a lot of imagery that I'll always remember with fondness (fondness = paralysing fear as I played the game at night with the lights out and then started to panic whenever I heard a siren signalling the approach of "the darkness"). So when I started to hear the negative reaction towards this sequel I still held onto hope. Some people had, after all, hated the first movie.

Alas, the majority were right on this occasion. Silent Hill: Revelation is rubbish. It's a lot of cool imagery from the games created thanks to some varying CGI with nothing substantial to call an actual plot. Of course, the plot of the first movie wasn't exactly anything to write home about, but it did enough to get by while the atmosphere was heaped on in thick, thick spoonfuls.

Adelaide Clemens plays a young woman who lives a transient, anonymous life. This is all done because her dad (Sean Bean) has warned her that Silent Hill wants to claim her. He's right. But changing address and keeping a low profile isn't enough to stop Silent Hill reaching out and trying to get what it wants. The darkness starts to fall, bringing strange visions with it.

Written and directed by Michael J. Bassett (who, of course, had the mythology of the games - adapted into a movie idea by Laurent Hadida - to work from), this film just doesn't work as a film. There are individual moments that manage to impress, such as a sequence involving the famous, creepy, nurse characters, but these are few and far between. Any twists and turns can be predicted well ahead of time, the CGI varies wildly between great and godawful and there are exactly zero characters that viewers will care about.

Clemens is okay in the lead role, she's just stuck with bad material, and Sean Bean and Radha Mitchell don't have much time onscreen as her parents, but everyone else is wasted, with Martin Donovan almost managing to be the exception. When a film with so much potential manages to squander the talents of Deborah Kara Unger, Carrie-Anne Moss AND Malcolm McDowell then it deserves any critical lashing that it receives (and this did receive a fair bit already). As for Kit Harington, his role is such a bag of cliches and signposted moments that he's not really required to give any kind of performance, he just has to hit his marks and spout horrible dialogue. Okay, okay, he has to give SOME kind of performance, of course, but it's impossible to judge thanks to the treatment of his character, which seems to have been written by a particularly low-level Auto-scripting program.

There's enough here, on the surface, to almost make the movie worth a watch. It's below average, but some of the visuals are enjoyable and I, for one, like getting to revisit parts of Silent Hill. Your best option, however, is to simply rewatch the first movie. Or, if you're a gamer, replay the videogames.

4/10

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 

Silent Hill (2006)

I'm not a big gamer. I've never been that talented when it came to playing videogames so I never threw myself into them as some of my friends did. In fact, playing FIFA was just like reliving a miserable childhood at high school in which I was always picked last for the football team, because of my innate inability to actually play all that well. But there were some games that managed to get me hooked. Games like Destruction Derby and Gran Turismo on the Playstation. Games like Resident Evil and Tomb Raider. And, yes, even Silent Hill, which was a nerve-jangling blend of images culled from the nightmares of the most fevered brain. A number of videogames from that generation have been made into movies, with varying degrees of success. I never thought that Silent Hill would lend itself particularly well to the medium of film, but I was happily proven wrong when I saw the final result.

The film begins with two parents (Sean Bean and Radha Mitchell) worried about their adopted young daughter (Jodelle Ferland). She's prone to sleepwalking and has been muttering about a place called Silent Hill. At her wit's end, the mother takes off with her daughter to visit Silent Hill and find out just where their little girl came from. As she approaches the town she is a suspicious police officer (Laurie Holden) attempts to stop her, which leads to a bit of a driving malfunction. Moments later, the mother is looking for her daughter in Silent Hill, the police officer is pursuing the mother and the father is setting off to find his family, having not been informed of the plan. It's not long until the sirens wail in Silent Hill and The Darkness descends.

Written by Roger Avary, with some creative input from director Christophe Gans and Nicolas Boukhrief, Silent Hill may not be the most densely plotted horror movie ever, but that's not a problem when the visuals and atmosphere are so impressive. Everything is in line with the game, or at least my memories of the game, and there are plenty of nice touches here and there for fans to spot and enjoy (the radio crackling static when danger is nearby being one of the most obvious).

The cast is solid for a film of this type. Radha Mitchell and Sean Bean are pretty bland in their roles, as is Laurie Holden, but Jodelle Ferland outshines her adult co-stars, and support from Deborah Kara Unger, Kim Coates and Alice Krige helps a lot. Krige, especially, revels in a role that feels as if it was written with her in mind. And then there are the many physical performers who managed to bring alive the stranger inhabitants of Silent Hill, the creatures and humanoids who can raise goosebumps just in the way they move around. Fans of cenobites will love the bizarre and horrifying menagerie of monsters on display here.

With a decent backstory teased out en route to a grand finale, Silent Hill manages to be more than just a bunch of impressive visuals (unlike the sequel, THAT review is coming soon). It's respectful to the games that it sprang from, and it's also respectful to horror fans in the way that it keeps creating the chills while also never skimping on some great, gory moments.

I understand people being hesitant to check out any movie based on a videogame - we've all been burned at least one time too many - but this is one well worth checking out.

7/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Silent-Hill-Blu-ray-Radha-Mitchell/dp/B001E8V6GE/ref=sr_1_3?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1382909454&sr=1-3&keywords=silent+hill