Surrounded (2018)

AKA Frenzy.

I have said it many times before, and will say it many times again. If there's a zombie or a shark in a movie then, for my sins, I WILL watch that movie. Which has led to me watching my fair share of crap. It doesn't always take a lot to put together those movies, and they're all probably guaranteed a certain minimum return, thanks to idiots like me.

Surrounded caught my eye because it had sharks in it. I'd also never heard of it before, which piqued my curiosity further. The plot summary didn't sound great - a group of travel vloggers take a big risk in order to get more viewers, and pay for that risk when their small plane crashes and they find themselves in seawater, surrounded by a few great white sharks - but it sounded good enough to entertain me for the duration.

Unfortunately, it wasn't.

Although things start at an admirably quick pace, I was worried within the first 15-20 minutes, and rightfully so. I wasn't sure if ditching so many characters early on would make the film better or worse, because it then really boils down to the strength of the leads. It made things worse, despite the flashbacks that punctuate the film, none of them feeling like anything other than unnecessary padding once we have assumed that most of the people we are watching are now dead in the water.

Director Jose Montesinos has a filmography that has moved from sex comedy territory (with Barely Legal) to more dramatic and thrilling works, like this one. He has a better handle on the comedic material, in my opinion, and that doesn't require him to work with such variable special effects or film moments that need better pacing and a sense of believability to be more effective. He's also not helped here by the script, by Graham Winter (his first screenwriting credit). Winter doesn't do an awful job, he just doesn't do enough in any one area to strengthen the movie. Characters are thin, the tension doesn't ever build (although that is less to do with the writing and more to do with the ever-changing quality of the sharks being depicted onscreen), and the structuring makes it a chore to get through, despite the fairly brief runtime (it's about 85 minutes).

Aubrey Reynolds is Lindsey, the main character who is at the centre of the majority of the scenes. Her sister, Paige, is played by Gina Vitori, and there's also a character named Kahaia, played by Lanett Tachel. It's a shame that none of them are really strong enough to do the work required of them. Tachel is arguably the best of the three, and has the least amount of screentime.

Look, there are some good moments here and there. The basic idea is good enough, the location is memorable (beside one of those tiny islands that looks as if it's all balanced on a pebble), and you get to see the sharks more than you do in some other movies, for better or worse. It's just a shame that the end result couldn't rise above the level of average.

4/10

Netflix And Chill: Ghost House (2017)

Scout Taylor-Compton and James Landry Hebert star as Julie and Jim, a young couple on holiday in Thailand who end up having quite a bad time of things. All goes well initially, until they are befriended by Robert (Russell Geoffrey Banks) and Billy (Richard Gray). One big night out leads to a trip to a "ghost house" graveyard, which in turn leads to Julie becoming seriously unwell. Medical professionals can't help her. She's either imagining that she's being tormented by an evil spirit or she's actually being tormented by an evil spirit.

Let me begin by telling you what a ghost house is, in case it isn't obvious. They are small houses that are supposed to provide somewhere for spirits to reside (and, in fact, a quick Google search shows that they seem to be more commonly known as Spirit Houses). Offerings are often placed there and it is considered bad form to neglect them. Basically, to my ignorant eyes, it's a birdhouse for the dead.

Written by Kevin O'Sullivan and Jason Chase Tyrrell, from a story by Kevin and Rich Ragsdale, Ghost House is a decent mix of the kind of thing we've seen successfully marketed by Blumhouse in recent years and a healthy dose of Thai flavouring. Most of the scares are jump scares, including an extended sequence in which someone is plunged into darkness and keeps having problems with their flashlight just as something moves around them, but there's no denying that they're well done jump scares, helped by some impressive design work on the main evil spirit.

Rich Ragsdale is also the director, doing a decent job, especially when it would seem to be a relatively low-budget work (not at the bottom end of the scale, by any means, but also doesn't seem to have had any well-known companies offering to help out on the cash front). Whatever the budget was, and I can't seem to find that information just now, Ragsdale has done his best with it.

Hebert is a bit weak in his role, but that's not so bad during many of his scenes with Taylor-Compton, mainly because she does a really good job of showing the toll on her mind and body as she is being continually affected by an evil force. Her performance is so good that I will actually start looking out for her future movie appearances, and she has a few due out in the next year or so, where I was previously unimpressed by the little I had seen of her work (I blame Halloween II - 2009 - for that). Banks and Gray both do decent work as the friendly strangers who may have ulterior motives, Mark Boone Junior is enjoyable in a small, but important role, Michael S. New is very likable as a local guide named Gogo, and both Wattana Koomkrong and Wen-chu Yang do good work as, respectively, the potential saviour or destroyer of our leading lady's soul.

There's easily enough here to appeal to people who enjoy their horror films with some ghost or demonic activity in the mix. Some may resent the amount of jump scares, and all horror fans will recognise that as a common problem in many modern horrors, but I think it provides a decent helping of atmosphere to go along with those jumps.

6/10

The movie might be available here on shiny disc.
Americans can pick it up here.

Who's Watching Oliver (2017)

First of all, let me say that I was kindly offered a preview of this film by some of the people involved in the making of it. According to an email I received, with all of the info required to allow me to watch the film, Who's Watching Oliver "made its rounds on the film fest circuit and has won 11 Best Picture, 4 Best Actor (Russell Geoffrey Banks) and 2 Best Supporting Actress (Sara Malakul Lane and Margaret Roche) among many Nominations and Official Selections. That's quite a decent list of achievements so far, and probably far better than the recognition that I would get for any horror movie I attempted to make.

Yes, as some of you may have suspected, I have started my review with some kind words about the movie from someone else because, well, it just didn't really work for me as well as it has clearly worked for some other people. It's not that I thought this was a bad film. I just didn't see much point to it.

The slim plot sees Oliver (played by Russell Geoffrey Banks) going about his day to day business, which involves speaking to his mother (Margaret Roche) via his laptop, talking to himself a lot, and heading out to find a young woman that he can get back to his flat and abuse and kill while his mother watches from that laptop screen. Things look like they may have to change when Oliver finds himself growing closer to a young woman (Sophia, played by Sara Malakul Lane). Will he be able to resist his urges? Or, more importantly, will he be able to resist the will of his mother?

It's all quite well put together, in terms of the technical side of things. Director Richie Moore, who also worked on the script with Banks and Raimond Huber, keeps the frame neat and tidy most of the time, carefully blocking certain shots and walking a fine line between the nastiness shown and the even nastier stuff that is either just out of shot or edited to save viewers from wanting to scrub their eyeballs. The soundtrack may feel oddly out of place, considering the visuals, but that somehow adds to the feeling that this is a film putting you inside the confused and fractured mind of the main character.

Banks is pretty good in the main role, and Roche is amusing enough in her one-note performance, but it's Lane who gives the best of the main performances. Although it's hard, at least initially, to see why she would even like Oliver, things develop in a way that allow for that to feel slightly more believable, helped by the likability and sweetness of Lane (who has been involved in a number of genre films over the past decade and who I hope to see in many more over the next few years).

The biggest problem with Who's Watching Oliver is the script. The writers seem to have been caught between wanting to create something that was purely a sensory experience and something that tells you a bit about what makes a man into a crazed killer, which leaves the end result disappointingly sitting between the two approaches. It also doesn't do enough to show how Oliver maintains his lifestyle, how he manages to convince so many women to go home with him (one is won over by the prospect of drugs, some are tempted by money, but it's hard to believe that he gets them all so easily, considering the creepy vibe he gives off constantly).

Overall, this is a potentially decent serial killer movie undermined by a weak script and the choice to make two of the main characters sadly lacking in any kind of complexity, or even personality, beyond their evil essence.

5/10

Who's Watching Oliver is available very soon (July 3rd in USA and Canada) and here's a link for the disc release. 
And here is an iTunes link.