For It Is Man's Number: ryûhei kitamura

Showing posts with label ryûhei kitamura. Show all posts

Saturday, 28 September 2024

Shudder Saturday: The Price We Pay (2023)

It's a pretty standard horror movie trope to put some bad people in a place where they end up being the lesser of two evils. The worse the people, the worse situation they can find themselves in. The Price We Pay, written by Christopher Jolley, developing a story co-created by himself and director Ryûhei Kitamura, makes use of this trope. It has a decent cast to work with, but there's nothing much else brought to the table.

Alex (Emile Hirsch), Cody (Stephen Dorff), and Shane (Tanner Zagarino) burst into a pawn shop to commit a violent robbery. At least one person is killed, and the men flee with a hostage (Grace, played by Gigi Zumbado). Making use of Grace's car, which doesn't look as if it can drive on for many more miles, they end up reaching a farm in the middle of nowhere, somewhere they figure that they can hide out for a while. And that's when things start to go off the rails.

While I have enjoyed the work of both Hirsch and Dorff in many other movies, they're unable to do anythng here that distracts from a weak and tired screenplay. Zumbado is also just as hampered, but has the benefit of not having to go through the standard crime movie grimacing and circular arguments. Zagarino makes much less of an impression, due to his role being "the wounded one" for most of his screentime, but at least viewers get a supporting role for Vernon Wells, which should be enough to make up for some of the failings elsewhere. Tyler Sanders isn't too bad as an apparently timid young farmhand named Danny, and Erika Ervin gets to have fun underneath some face-altering make up.

It's easy to see where this went wrong though, even if you like the cast as much as I do (and I appreciate that many others won't). Jolley is one of those people who has become quite prolific over the past decade, aiming for quantity over quality as he moved from gangster and hooligan movies towards more and more horror project. I can easily imagine him pitching this idea to Kitamura, probably not believing his luck when the director decided to take on the project. While he can deliver great horror fare (the last feature that I enjoyed from him was Downrange, back in 2017), he seems unable here to find a way to twist and freshen the material, leaving him at the helm of a disappointingly dull affair.

It's coherent enough, and it all seems fairly logical (for the premise), but there's nothing to really enjoy here. None of the nastiness is impressive, nor is it presented in a way that could make the gleeful sadism of some of the main characters more fun, relatively speaking, and the technical side of things is what you might call perfunctory. Thankfully, if you watch this on a streaming service, as I did, then the price to be paid for watching The Price We Pay is only the 86-minute runtime, instead of any monetary amount. That may still feel too pricey for some.

3/10

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Saturday, 2 November 2019

Shudder Saturday: Nightmare Cinema (2018)

The main thing to take away from Nightmare Cinema is this; if you're in a cinema and you find out that Mickey Rourke is smirking as he projects the movies onscreen while slinking his snakehips up and down the aisles to chat to the patrons then you need to get the hell out of there.

The second thing to take away from it is not to be fooled by an anthology horror movie that tries to squash together some big names alongside some lesser-known names to provide solid entertainment for horror fans. This is not solid entertainment. It is, sadly, quite the disappointment.

There are five main tales here, framed by the scariest element of the whole thing (that Rourke-shaped projectionist), and only two work as well as they should. First up is a strong opener, The Thing In The Woods, written and directed by Alejandro Brugués. It's a fun romp through familiar territory until viewers are given an extra piece of information that turns everything on its head. Great fun, a decent twist, and a solid ending. Exactly what you want from a short film/anthology segment. Next up is Mirari, written by Richard Christian Matheson and directed by Joe Dante. I wanted to love this, it's been a while since the last thing I saw from Joe Dante, but that wasn't to be the case. It's not bad, and becomes increasingly twisted and gross in the second half, but it's all far too close to a very famous episode of The Twilight Zone (that I won't namecheck here, it gives too much away). Things get worse from there, with Mashit, which is written by Sandra Becerril and directed by Ryûhei Kitamura. This tale of demonic possession gives you nobody, and nothing, to care about. And it goes on for far too long. This Way To Egress is directed by David Slade, who also co-wrote the tale with Lawrence C. Connolly (writer of the short story it is based on). Funnily enough, although this is a big step up after the previous two tales, the biggest problem it has is that it's VERY similar to one of the newer episodes of The Twilight Zone. Again, naming the episode would give too much away, but it will feel very familiar to anyone who saw the latest series. Last, ending with a whimper instead of a bang, is Dead, written and directed by Mick Garris.

As uneven as the cast are throughout this selection of horror stories, that feels slightly unimportant anyway, considering the main draw for many people will be those involved behind the camera. And yet . . . just how many of these names ARE a big enough draw for all but the most die-hard fans of their work. I'll watch anything Dante does, his name is the hot ticket here, but I can take or leave the rest. Brugues and Slade have, for the most part, worked on TV content or other shorts over the past few years, which perhaps explains why they do better within this format. Kitamura impressed me with the vicious Downrange just a couple of years ago, but he's still not someone I would necessarily seek out. As for Garris, I remain perplexed by his "master of horror" status. It always seems like a little club he made up for him and his friends after spending a number of years riding the coat-tails of Stephen King (and this is coming from someone who has a major soft spot for The Stand).

It's glaringly obvious where the main flaws lie here, from the stories that have the weaker scripts to the general inability to pare things down to a more appealing runtime. Both Mashit and Dead would have been improved by being cut down to about 50% of their current length, for example, and cuts could also have been made elsewhere. There's also a feeling that not every director was paired up with material best suited to their style. Dante, for example, has to work with a tale that is set largely in a sterile hospital environment. Who thought that was a good idea? His "home ground", as it were, is American suburbia, either realistic or cine-realistic, and something that allows him to use everything he has genuine affection for in ways that he always makes fresh and more entertaining.

There's not much more to say. I don't want to make this feel like a review of the worst anthology horror movie ever. It's still worth a watch for the better stories (and other viewers will have different opinions on what works and what doesn't). It's just disappointing for those who want something a bit more memorable. Having said that, it's STILL largely better than the new Creepshow series.

5/10