Netflix And Chill: Malevolent (2018)

Malevolent starts off well enough. Set in Scotland in the 1980s, it's the tale of a brother and sister (Jackson and Angela, played by Ben Lloyd-Hughes and Florence Pugh) who, along with a couple of friends, make themselves money by going in to locations that are apparently haunted and conducting a "clearance". It's quite an easy gig, and they have their patter down to a fine art, but it's not long into the movie when things start to become a lot less fake than usual. Things start to get odd for Angela during what should be a regular, easy, gig. Then things go from bad to worse when they are hired by a woman (Celia Imrie) who claims to be plagued by the spirits of noisy children in her home.

It's not that the acting here is bad, not really. Imrie may be the veteran, and she's good fun in her role, but the performances from Lloyd-Hughes and Pugh are decent enough, as is the supporting turn from Scott Chambers (playing the other main member of the group; Georgina Bevan is also onscreen but given so little to do that she barely makes an impression). James Cosmo is as good as ever in his small role, Niall Greig Fulton does okay, and that covers the main characters.

The script isn't really that bad either. Written by Ben Ketai and Eva Konstantopoulos (based on the novel "Hush" by the latter), it mixes in enough melodrama and decent ideas to create a heady brew. You have a dead parent who was apparently insane, claiming to be contacted by spirits. You have the dynamic of the brother and sister relationship, with the male pushing his female sibling into situations that she starts to find increasingly uncomfortable. And you have the character played by Imrie, eccentric and mysterious, perhaps innocent but perhaps not-so-innocent. There are even one or two decent scares in the first half of the film. Then the second half starts up, moving everything along to a third act that is horribly muddled and misjudged, sacrificing any creepy atmosphere for violence and any subtlety for crude simplicity. It becomes embarrassing long before the whole debacle draws to a depressingly dull conclusion.

Director Olaf de Fleur Johannesson (credited as just Olaf De Fleur) doesn't help. His background, a filmography that includes a number of documentary features and standard fictions, seems to have left him ill-prepared for this kind of material. This may explain why he does better in the earlier scenes that feature the strangeness developing in the background of the central relationship dynamics. And if it was his decision to accompany some spooky visuals in the second half of the movie with horribly unnecessary "spooky" voices then he really helped to undermine what could have been a decent little ghost story before that sharp turn to the violence.

I started off this review trying to be kind, as usual, but the more time I spent writing about it, the angrier I got. It's just so bloody annoying. Especially after a solid, if unspectacular, opening act. So much is left unexplored (background of the characters, emotional baggage, even the fact that it is set in the 1980s . . . something I assumed would figure into the plot but it never does) that the viewing experience just becomes more and more frustrating.

Some will be able to watch this and not become as irked as I was. Good for them. I suggest most people skip this and instead pick one of the MANY better horror titles available.

3/10

You can grab some horror movies here.
Americans can get some tricks or treats here.

Shudder Saturday: The Witch In The Window (2018)

I was very much looking forward to seeing The Witch In The Window but I couldn't, for the life of me, remember why. And then I took note of the writer and director. It's one Andy Mitton, a man who had previously thrilled me with YellowBrickRoad (a divisive, but downright impressive, feature debut) and the even better, although much more standard, We Go On. Both were horror movies made by someone who knows how to mix unease and subtle details with some perfectly-executed jump scares. But, perhaps tellingly, both were co-created with Jesse Holland.

The story here is all about a father (Simon, played by Alex Draper) and son (Finn, played by Charlie Tacker) who are having some time together while the father attempts to apparently "flip" a house. To flip a property is to buy it, hopefully at a low price, and then do enough decent work on it to be able to sell it for a profit. It's a gamble, but Simon has done it a few times now. Unfortunately, this latest property has a bigger problem than any structural or decorative issues. It has the spirit of a witch (Lydia, played by Carol Stanzione), and she sits at the window. What follows is a supernatural tale that focuses equally on the father and son relationship than the scares.

Despite one or two very good scares, The Witch In The Window feels reminiscent of the darker films that Disney gave us back when they tried to create some family-friendly horror movies. Even the title is close enough to The Watcher In The Woods for me to suspect that this is exactly what Mitton was aiming for. Therefore I am inclined to assume the personal responsibility for my lack of love for the movie. I liked it, it's a nicely put together film, but I didn't love it as I had hoped I would. Of course, I wasn't expecting a sweet father and son movie with occasional creepiness. I somehow expected a nerve-jangling experience more akin to We Go On.

Draper and Tacker aren't the best actors but their relationship feels very real, and that's the main thing. Both are coming to the same point from different directions, with the father wanting to be cool with his son but not in a way that will negate rules laid down by his mother (Arija Bareikis) and the son testing boundaries and getting things off his chest while they have their time together. It's this aspect of the film that works best, that strange blend of familiarity and awkwardness that happens when parents reconnect with their children after any time apart. The small main cast is fleshed out by Greg Naughton (who does okay as a nearby neighbour/handyman who knows the history of the house) and Stanzione (effectively creepy).

There are two standout sequences that should manage to give you goosebumps, making this worth your time (and it runs for just under 80 minutes), but I think it's important for people, especially anyone looking for standard horror thrills, to know that the heart of the film is not a scary or evil one.

Going back then, and reappraising the film for what it is instead of what I was expecting, how does it fare? Well, it's fine. I'm surprised that Mitton couldn't get it to generally look and sound better (sorry, it often feels cheap, which he generally avoided in previous movies). It would have also been nice to get to know Simon and Finn a bit more, and to find out why the parents separated. And it's a shame that the tone just doesn't work. Once the "horror" starts to happen, it rarely has any impact. Everything is shown so plainly and calmly that any tension is washed away, none of the characters feel truly endangered, and the short runtime makes it feel that everything rushes to end just as it was building up to something more effective.

The ending is good, however, with a bittersweet resolution for some of the main characters, and the moments that feel most authentic and honest are the moments that will stay with you after the end credits. Even if, like me, you were hoping for some more scares.

6/10

Get yourself some horror treats here.
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Filmstruck Friday: Les Diaboliques (1955)

Paul Meurisse plays Michael Delassalle, a school principal who is disliked by both his wife (Christina, played by Vera Clouzot) and his mistress (Nicole, played by Simone Signoret). They dislike him so much that they plot together to kill him. But the murder is the easy part. Things start to unravel when the body disappears, an unusual turn of events that puts even more strain on the weak heart of Christina, gives both women reason to mistrust one another, and creates quite the atmosphere of unease at the school.

Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, who has more than one masterpiece in his filmography, this is about as wonderful and twisted a thriller as you can get, with just a tinge of the supernatural to allow it to have one toe dipped in the horror genre (anyone in any doubt about that just needs to remember the final scene). Clouzot is an expert at creating tension, with a number of scenes here akin to a tightened spring, going and going until you just know that it will snap uncoiled at any moment.

The script, adapted by Clouzot and Jerome Geronimi, with some input from others, from the novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, is judged to perfection. Characters are set up quickly in the opening scenes, motivations are established, and then it's on to the more dastardly work, when things start to alternate between that tension and a certain amount of playfulness. Even the finale manages to provide explanations without feeling as if everything has stopped just for the sake of exposition, meaning that not one moment of the (approximately) 90-minute runtime feels unnecessary or wasted.

Mesdames Clouzot and Signoret are both fantastic in the main roles, the former constantly pained and strained while the latter tries to keep her cool in the face of a situation growing ever more improbable and stressful. Meurisse, despite not actually being on screen in non-corpse form for too long, also does a great job, enjoyably delivering lines of dialogue that show just how callous and unlikable he is. There are some other memorable characters here, but Charles Vanel is the main standout, a policeman who offers to help a distraught Christina after she has been to the morgue to identify a body she assumes will be her "missing" husband.

There may be modern movie viewers who watch Les Diaboliques and find themselves looking out for twists and turns, confident that they know how things are going to pan out and feeling as if they've seen it all before. I would ask those people to not do that. Don't try to second-guess the film, just sit back and enjoy it all. Yes, it may do some things that will feel familiar, but this is a film from the mid-1950s, meaning most of the other films that you have seen covering similar territory have most likely been influenced by this. And it's a damn fine film to be influenced by.

9/10

There's a lovely edition of the film here.
Americans can buy it here.

Hungerford (2014)

There are two things I try to remember when writing movie reviews. One, found footage is a style, not a genre. Two, personally insulting anyone who has made a film is neither big nor clever. I may have slipped up once or twice, especially when discussing found footage movies, but I don't think I have ever used a review to launch into a personal attack. I'm not going to change my ways now, but Hungerford made it very difficult.

It's all Drew Casson's fault. He directed Hungerford. He also co-wrote it, with Jess Cleverly and Sarah Perugia. And he gave himself the lead role. And edited it. And did the visual effects. All of those things are commendable, especially when I think of how tough I find it to manage the most minor photo editing tasks on my laptop. It is also often, for micro-budget movies, necessary. If you can wear so many hats at once then that is a few less people who need to be on the payroll. But I can't help thinking that Hungerford is a film that came about because Casson thought he could film him and his other cast members having a lark, use some basic computer knowledge to add to the footage, make up a slight plot that wouldn't need any logic or believability, and then fob it off to undemanding horror fans who will watch any old nonsense. Which wouldn't be so bad if he was good enough in any of his main roles, but he really isn't.

The plot itself is really quite simple. Basically, some young residents of the city of Hungerford get a bit of a surprise when some really bad weather strikes all of a sudden and people start acting odd. The main characters are Cowen (played by Casson, and even the fact that the main character is called Cowen keeps making me irrationally angry, for some reason) and his mates, Adam (Tom Scarlett), Kipper (Sam Carter), and Philippa AKA Phil (Georgia Bradley, the best person in the cast). There's also Janine (Kitty Speed), a young woman Cowen likes. Y'know . . . LIKES likes.

Let's start with the acting then. Bradley does well, but she's the only one. Speed, Scarlett and Carter never seem naturalistic, or even remotely believable, in their roles, and Casson is even worse, because he manages to act badly while also trying to give himself as many heroic shots and flattering angles  as possible.

But even the best actors may have struggled to elevate such a weak script, another area in which Casson had a hand (as mentioned), and another area in which he proves to be, well, just not up to the job (although Cleverly and Perugia can share the blame there). And the material also isn't helped by the direction (Casson), editing (Casson), or VFX (Casson, who shows some potential here, but really should have worked with some minor, unsettling, details to build a bigger picture instead of stretching things too far beyond his reach).

You also get that usual pitfall of many found footage movies; the moments in which you can't believe that someone would keep filming. There are gore gags of varying quality, moments of violence that lack any shock or tension, and a feeling of randomness to almost every aspect of the storyline, from who could end up in peril to trauma from wounds, even right down to the perceived essence of the main characters.

Yet, despite Casson simply not being up to the jobs that he gives himself, I have still decided to bite my tongue and grudgingly give the guy a point for at least getting his film made. In fact, this even has a sequel, which I know I will end up watching some day. There's a slim chance that Casson could deliver some better results with some more money to play with, especially if he utilises different people to write, edit, star, and deal with VFX.

3/10

Here's the site for the film.

Prime Time: The Monster Club (1981)

An Amicus anthology horror movie in almost every way, apart from the fact that it came along a few years after Amicus was no longer active, The Monster Club is a mixed experience for fans of these films, and fans of the stars involved.

John Carradine plays a horror writer who has some blood drawn from his system by a polite vampire (Vincent Price) before the grateful drinker invites him along to the titular club. There, in between a number of stage acts, he is told three spooky stories. The first is all about a creature known as a Shadmock (played by James Laurenson), the second is a comedic tale about a vampire (Richard Johnson), and the third is all about a village full of ghouls.

Carradine may be playing an onscreen version of R. Chetwynd Hayes (the author of the source material, even if the stories changed a fair bit from book to screenplay form, the latter written by Valerie and Edward Abraham), and there may be some obvious winks and gags for horror film fans (such as a character named Lintom Busotsky, a crude and simple play on the name of producer Milton Subotsky), but it's a great shame that the majority of the film avoids other opportunities for some meta humour. What we get, instead, are some moments that show director Roy Ward Baker doing his damnedest to prove that he could supply entertainment for modern horror audiences who had turned their backs on the comforting bloodshed supplied by the likes of Hammer, Amicus, Tigon, etc. I might find it amusing to watch a song performed by B. A. Robertson, and there's a great gag involving a stripper (although the film is a pretty tame affair with no nudity shown), but it's hard to imagine anyone viewing the film in 1981 leaving the cinema with anything other than a sense of disappointment. I have always had a soft spot for it, but that's because I first saw it as a pre-teen.

Price is as much fun as he usually is, Carradine spends most of his time looking around in mild bemusement (no surprise, considering the strange assortment of masks being worn by the people pretending to be monsters in the club), and the best performance in the three tales comes from Laurenson, playing a sweet and tragic, but also dangerous, creature. Barbara Kellerman and Simon Ward are also involved in his story, and both do well enough to make it the most consistently enjoyable one. The second tale, featuring Johnson, is a big step down, with Britt Ekland and Donald Pleasence wasted in their supporting roles, although it's at least fun to see Pleasence given much lighter material in the genre than he was usually given. Stuart Whitman, Lesley Dunlop, and Patrick Magee star in the third, and final, tale. They do well enough, but it's more about the atmosphere, with the main village feeling like a small British counterpart to the location features in The City Of The Dead.

The execution of the material is fairly clumsy, the humour is a lot more childish than viewers may expect (making this a surprisingly okay choice for a family viewing), and it's a far cry from the past glories of the British horror movie industry. Having said that, you get to spend time with some enjoyably familiar faces, the penny-pinching doesn't remove the sheer sense of fun, and there's actually a pretty good punchline to round it all off. It's not a good movie, but it has a charm to it that may lead to you occasionally thinking as fondly of it as I do.

5/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

Incident In A Ghostland AKA Ghostland (2018)

Although it often feels like a step up from his previous feature film (The Tall Man), Incident In A Ghostland once again shows that writer-director Pascal Laugier is a man who knows how to take some great ideas and squander them for the sake of some misguided attempts to wrongfoot viewers.

It's not long into Incident In A Ghostland when things get uncomfortable and nasty. A woman (Mylene Farmer) and her two daughters (Emilia Jones and Taylor Hickson) find themselves terrorised by a pair of vicious home invaders. As things build up, temporary relief from the onslaught comes when an adult incarnation of one of the girls (Crystal Reed) wakes up from a nightmare. She has suffered ever since that fateful night but at least it is all now behind her . . . or is the past about to catch up with her?

Jones/Reed and Hickson/Anastasia Phillips are both very good as, respectively, the younger and older incarnations of Beth and Vera, with the younger actresses having to put themselves through the wringer as their characters suffer through more and more violence. Farmer is also very good as the loving mother who wants to protect her daughters from harm, and both Rob Archer and Kevin Power do as well as can be expected while pigeonholed as the one-note psychos.

It's interesting that this movie begins with a quote about H. P. Lovecraft, for two reasons. First of all, the quote is one of the few moments of humour in the film. It's attributed to the main character played by Jones/Reed, summing up her literary aspirations and her main obsession. Second, it is in his fine essay, "Supernatural Horror In Literature", that I learned of the term conte cruel, a style of storytelling "in which the wrenching of the emotions is accomplished through dramatic tantalisations, frustrations, and gruesome physical horrors." Sound familiar? It's certainly something that Laugier is known for, with others giving it the modern label of torture porn.

Sadly, despite the humour and self-awareness shown by that opening quote, this is a movie that shows Laugier to be uninterested in anything other than pain and suffering, which becomes tiresome rather quickly, especially after scenes that hint at a much better tale to be told. We could have had a very smart and resonant film here. Early scenes show Reed being helpless, and even disbelieving, as her sister continues to suffer and be abused by unseen assailants. There are two possibilities in those moments, considering what we know at the time. Either an abuse survivor is so damaged by her experience that she cannot return to any state of normality, or someone is still being abused while the loved ones around her are unable to see it. Both of those ideas are intriguing, and both are immediately dropped as soon as Laugier can get back to simplistic moments of abuse and torture.

The film manages to avoid being a complete waste of time thanks to the scream-filled performances of the main actresses, some great production design, and the first 15-20 minutes. But everything else ensures that it also manages to be a crushing disappointment, especially if you were hoping for something with a bit of depth to it. Which actually puts it right on par with his previous feature.

4/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

Mubi Monday: Mandy (2018)

Something a bit different this week, and something that keeps me on track with the horror element for the month. MUBI now has a MUBI Go feature, offering subscribers a cinema ticket to one film per week, subject to availability at your local cinemas. And this week they offered up Mandy. Well, it would have been rude to refuse the offer.

Panos Cosmatos made quite a name for himself with his feature debut, Beyond The Black Rainbow. I still haven't seen that film, despite all the praise heaped upon it, but I couldn't resist the pull of Mandy when it was sold to me as, essentially, Nicolas Cage angrily battling demons.

Cage lives with the woman he loves (Mandy, played by Andrea Riseborough) in a cabin in the woods. It seems to be an idyllic life they lead, with Cage working hard during the day so that he can relax and watch Nightbeast with his loved one in the evening. But that is all spoiled when an evil cult member spies Mandy and decides that he has to have her. So he sends some demon bikers along, which is when things start to get completely insane.

The first reason to see Mandy is the glorious visual style of Cosmatos. Almost every frame is painted like the lurid cover of some pulp sci-fi or fantasy novel. This is a landscape that feels like someone has blended the works of Michael Moorcock and Piers Anthony and then poured them directly onto the screen. It's a truly stunning feast for the eyes. Based on this, and from what I had heard already, I really do need to see Beyond The Black Rainbow ASAP. Cosmatos may not have churned out many movies but his quality over quantity approach means I can be fully caught up very quickly.

The second reason to see this movie is Nicolas Cage. The rest of the cast all do a good job (Riseborough is always pretty great, Linus Roache and Ned Dennehy are two of the main cult members, and you get fantastic small turns from Richard Brake and Bill Duke) but Cage is the one going through a transformation here, from simple man living in contentment to grief-stricken victim to, well, a weapon-wielding kind of demi-god. The shooting style helps to show this, as Cage becomes stronger and stronger on his quest for vengeance, culminating in some final scenes that I won't detail here. Let me just say that I would love to see his character able to reappear in some future film that develops him further.

Other reasons to see the movie include the lush score by the late Johann Johannson, a crazy Cheddar Goblin advert (a turning point for the whole movie, created by someone who helped make the viral hit "Too Many Cooks"), a sparse script that still manages to contain a number of chilling lines, and the fact that it's the best Hellraiser movie in almost two decades, even if it's not ACTUALLY an instalment of that franchise.

Well worth seeing on the big screen, you won't believe your eyes and ears. And you may well find yourself, as I did, eagerly awaiting a repeat viewing. It's an audio-visual experience that I can see myself wanting to have again and again and again.

9/10

A lot of people may want to buy the soundtrack here.
Americans can buy it here.

Netflix And Chill: Apostle (2018)

The latest film from writer-director Gareth Evans is a world away from the action movies that made him a favourite among film fans. There is violence here, but it's often slow and excruciating, rather than the wham bam fist and foot work displayed in the likes of The Raid. He has, of course, done horror before (in V/H/S 2), and there are a number of elements here that run alongside that particular segment, but this is a much more restrained and strange bit of work.

Dan Stevens plays a young man, Thomas, who is sent on a mission to retrieve his kidnapped sister. He is to locate her and make sure she is safe, and only then is he to make a payment of the ransom demanded for her. Unfortunately, the isolated religious cult that has her in their grasp is aware that someone will be coming. That makes his mission all the harder, as does the mysterious truth that he starts to uncover about the mystery at the heart of the cult.

Stevens is as good as he always is in the lead role, Michael Sheen plays the leader of the cult with aplomb (and, god, I wish Sheen picked up more roles, it feels like forever since I have seen him really sink his teeth into a role as good as this one), Mark Lewis Jones is menacing as an acolyte who starts to think things should be done differently, apparently for the benefit of the people, and there are excellent supporting turns from Bill Milner, Kristine Froseth, Lucy Boynton, Sharon Morgan, and Paul Higgins.

There's a good film here, it's all put together well by Evans, helped enormously by that great cast that he's assembled, but the biggest problem with Apostle is that it's never as good as the many films that seem to have so clearly influenced it (the main title being The Wicker Man, of course, but there are also shades of Witchfinder General, The Blood On Satan's Claw, and every movie that has come along in the intervening years, from The Village to A Field In England). A number of those movies are hard to equal, of course, but if you're going to evoke them so clearly then you'd better be prepared to pull out all the stops and try your best to get even close to them. It doesn't feel as if Evans tried as hard as he could, instead being distracted by plot elements that come together for a disappointingly predictable climax (which is not the same as a disappointing climax, and it must be said that it fits well enough for the film we are given).

There are a few standout scenes, a couple of them so wince-inducing that even hardened gorehounds may be surprised when they occur, but this is a 130-minute film that still manages to feel as if it doesn't give you enough meaty chunks in the broth it is offering, if that analogy makes sense to anyone but me. You will be entertained at times, you will be intrigued, but most viewers will find that neither of those feelings last all the way through to the end credits.

Apostle is definitely worth your time. Just don't listen to the many articles that have already popped up declaring it as the new unmissable, most terrifying, most brutal movie on Netflix. Hyperbole is where the traffic is, a lack of hyperbole is usually where the truth lies.

7/10

Treat yourself to The Raid movies here.
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Shudder Saturday: Terrified AKA Aterrados (2017)

Written and directed by Demián Rugna, Terrified is all about a policeman (Funes, played by Maxi Ghione) who ends up accompanying three researchers (played by Norberto Gonzalo, Elvira Onetto, and George Lewis) as they try to get to the bottom of some supernatural events that have plagued a small neighbourhood. That's the main part of the story, but that all unfolds after a number of creepy events depicted, almost vignettes, that feature a) a woman telling her husband that she heard voices comeing from the kitchen sink telling her that they were going to kill her, b) a man being tormented every night by a ghost or creature who is stopping him from resting peacefully, and c) a dead young boy reappearing in his home, seemingly still dead but with no explanation as to how he got there. These elements all intertwine during the second half of the film, more or less, but as they play out in the first act it almost seems as if Terrified might be an anthology horror movie.

And, in a way, it is. Although the form starts to adhere more closely to a standard narrative film, despite some playing about with the chronology of events, so many of the set-pieces feel as if they could be individual little tales, presented as they are with either such a great flourish or such a great "punchline". As well as an anthology horror movie, Terrified ALSO plays out very much like a survival horror videogame. I know that may be enough to put many people off but don't be dissuaded. Considering the fact that Ghione plays someone with a medical condition that means he really doesn't want to spend too much time being too frightened, I was very much reminded of my first time playing Silent Hill many years ago, wandering around a mysterious environment while the heart monitor conveyed to me how afraid the main character was, and so how on edge I was while playing the game.

Everyone onscreen does well, acting opposite a variety of special effects, from creepy creatures to levitating home furnishings. As well as the people mentioned, you also have Agustin Rittano and Demian Salomon as two men who have been greatly affected by the events, and Ariel Chavarria is very good as the shaken mother of the strangely-mobile dead child.

But all kudos really goes to Rugna, who starts the film off in an impressively eerie way before taking viewers on a fun thrill ride for the rest of the runtime. This is not a film without humour, but be warned that the humour is only there as a temporary release in between more frights. It's very smart, although I know a few people who prefer their horror movies to have no humour in the mix at all, and allows Rugna to draw out the moments of tension right up to a near-unbearable extreme.

There are flaws. It's hard to see how everything quite fits together, there's no obvious starting point for events (not that there has to be), and a past case is mentioned without enough detail to even make it worth including. Some people may also dislike a few of the computer-generated special effects, although I thought they were generally well done and worked well alongside a lot of the practical work. But all of these things are easy to overlook while being so effectively made to squirm in your seat by Rugna.

If you like a good ghost story, and if you appreciate being in the hands of a filmmaker who can both make you jump by showing you something you didn't want to see and also make you very nervous by NOT showing you something that others are reacting to, then Terrified is highly recommended. It might even leave you . . . well, I am sure you can guess what state it might leave you in.

8/10

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Filmstruck Friday: Carnival Of Souls (1962)

Carnival Of Souls is a film all about a young woman named Mary (played by Candace Hilligoss). She is involved in a car crash at the start of the movie, somehow then walking away from the scene, without any memory of just how, and continuing on her journey. She's moving to another city, where she has been hired as a church organist. Unfortunately, she starts to see a strange, ghoulish, figure appearing in her life, a silent man who frightens Mary and makes her feel that she is going crazy. But the truth may be even worse than that.

Considering how effective and influential it is, Carnival Of Souls STILL doesn't really seem to be as celebrated as it should be. And trying to praise it without going into too much detail is difficult, but essential to preserve the impact of the movie for many who have still not yet marked it off their viewing lists.

Director Herk Harvey (who also plays that ghoulish man) somehow managed to take his limited resources and make a genre classic, albeit one that cherishes atmosphere and nightmare moments over decent acting or dialogue. Not to unfairly dismiss the script, written by John Clifford. There are some decent exchanges here and there, especially during a bizarre date scene between Mary and a young man named John (Sidney Berger), but the film has actual spoken words low on the list of priorities.

The same can be said for the actual acting. Hilligoss does okay in the main role, often looking wide-eyed and frightened, but it's hard not to think of many actresses being able to do a better job. That may all have been down to Harvey, of course, who obviously had a certain vision in mind, and her acting at least works better accompanied by the fine, creepy, score from Gene Moore. It's not often that I highlight the excellent use of an organ outwith the realm of adult sex films, but this is definitely worth mentioning. Back to the cast though, and you also get Berger doing just okay in his role, Frances Feist as a landlady, and Art Ellison as the minister who has hired Mary for her new job. Most of these cast members have very few other film credits, Berger only appearing in this and the 1998 (loose) remake, but they do what Harvey needs them to do.

You could say that Carnival Of Souls is a film all about the ending. It's certainly an effective and memorable finale. But it's so much more than just that, mainly because the whole film builds towards it, with Harvey proving to be quite a dab hand at creating and sustaining an atmosphere of foreboding and dread. It's a shame that he never gave us any more feature films (the rest of his filmography is made up of documentary shorts) but it would be a much greater shame if people stopped remembering him as a great talent, a creator of one outright classic little horror movie that casts a very long shadow over the genre to this day.

9/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy the movie here.

Eyeball (1975)

Eyeball, directed by Umberto Lenzi (who also co-wrote the film with Felix Tusell), is a giallo film that almost slavishly follows the established rules of the form. If you know what to expect then you're going to have a lot of fun. If you are looking for some of the best examples, the more stylish and gorgeous ones, then this isn't the film for you.

The premise is simple. A killer starts to slice their way through the tourists who are all on the same coach trip. The killer wears red and has a thing for removing an eyeball from each of his/her victims. Who could be the knife-wielder? Is it Mark Burton (played by John Richardson), a man who thinks his own wife might be the culprit due to his infidelity with Paulette Stone (played by Martine Brochard)? Is it the clergyman who seems to be going out of his way to look more suspicious than most of the other tour group members? It could be anyone, although the list of possible suspects starts to narrow down as the corpses start to pile up.

Although you may struggle to figure out who the killer is, with the exception of viewers who may have an unerring nose for sniffing out culprits, it becomes more and more obvious as Eyeball plays out just who ISN'T the killer. If you're being shown someone close to every murder scene, if they are walking around under a mobile neon sign that says "killer, killer", then it's unlikely to be them. Both the script and direction play up this side of things, with Lenzi clearly setting out to make something fun more than something to be celebrated as a masterclass in tension and horror, and it is all part of the film's charm.

Richardson and Brochard are the leads, both doing decent work for this kind of film (including moments of overacting, of course, and some casual callousness towards others as the situation starts to get worse), George Rigaud is that twitchy and suspicious clergyman, Andres Mejuto is the Inspector trying to find the killer, and the stunning Mirta Miller plays a stunning female photographer. You also get Ines Pellegrini, playing a model being photographed by Miller, Daniele Vargas and Silvia Solar as a married couple, and Marta May as the wronged wife of Richardson's character, as well as quite a few others (special mention to Raf Baldassarre as the leering tour guide, Martinez).

There are so many things that Eyeball isn't. It's not the best giallo, it's not the best Lenzi movie, it's not the best cast, and not even the best film about a killer removing eyeballs from victims. But that doesn't really matter. What matters is that it IS an amusing bit of entertainment from start to finish. You could even say that it's . . . worth keeping an eye out for (bdaump-tsshhhhh).

6/10

There's a fine Blu-ray presentation here.
Americans can buy a version of it here.

Prime Time: The Ferryman (2018)

The Ferryman is one of those little movies that I wanted to like more than I did. It's obviously not able to compete with other films that have bigger budgets (a bigger budget, in this instance, being anything over about £100) but that doesn't deter writer-director Elliott Maguire.

Nicola Holt plays Mara, a young woman who wakes up in hospital after an attempted suicide. She is embarrassed and angry, especially when she is then greeted by her father (Garth Maunders), a man who has never been in her life before now. Trying to move on with her life, Mara starts to hear and see a figure who tells her that others will pay for her living, and what that means becomes clear as people around her start to die.

Look, I have still never made my own movie. I'm sure it's an achievement just to get something completed and out there to an audience. That being said, The Ferryman comes in at the very minimal end of that scale of what could be considered a feature film. Shot on an iPhone, it's a murky mess in many scenes, not helped by some inconsistent sound design that doesn't always stay sharp enough during standard conversations but usually improves in moments that are focused on horror.

Holt and Maunders both try hard in their roles, although the seemingly small age gap between them makes it very difficult to believe that they are daughter and father, and they certainly stand out as being better than most of the other people onscreen (Azz Mohammed being the worst of a bad bunch, playing a detective as if he was being fed his lines just seconds before reciting them).

On the plus side, the runtime is relatively short and sweet (about 75 minutes) and Maguire has tried to tackle some interesting ideas. It's also to his credit that he didn't make this yet another found footage movie to add to the ever-growing pile. Sadly, the interesting ideas are buried under a lot of dull visuals and a weak script.

Any horror fans will be able to see how things are going to pan out after the first few scenes, which makes the rest of the film little more than a waiting game until you get to the predictable finale, sadly. With some more resources, and a better script, Maguire might be able to come up with a follow up to his debut feature that will better showcase his talents, but he's sold himself short here.

Having said all that, IF you have nothing better to do for 75 minutes and you're struggling to find a horror film that you haven't already seen then there are worse films to give support to. It's pretty bad, yes, but it's admirable that Maguire didn't take any easy options, and at least tried to do something a bit different.

3/10

The Ferryman is available on Amazon Prime now.

MTOS: Asian Horror

If you saw the last #mtos post here then you should know what it's all about. Basically, a load of questions are set that will provide us with the opportunity to discuss a movie topic on Sunday (hence Movie Talk On Sunday) with the hashtag #mtos helping you to find everyone involved.

October is the month of horror, of course, and last week saw a great discussion on British horror from #mtos host Film File. This week we're moving away from the UK. It's time to discuss some fine Asian horror. I hope you join us in . . . .  seven dayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyys. Sorry, five days. I meant to request that you join us in five days.

1) Kwaidan and Onibaba were both released in 1964. Have you seen them, as influential as they are, and do you have a favourite of the two? #mtos

2) Hausu is a VERY different kind of horror film IMO, and it's madder than a bag of badgers, but it's a kind of mad I love. Please tell me I'm not alone. And how you came to love it. #mtos

3) It's fair to say that the love (or resurgence of love) for Asian horror was kicked off by Ringu, and The Grudge series. What was your entry point, and what impressed you the most about it? #mtos

4) A number of tropes have been established in Asian horror movies. Is there one that makes you roll your eyes (Sadako style) every time it crops up, or are they part of the fun? #mtos

5) Sadako Vs Kayako (2016), was this the ultimate battle of evil that fans never knew they wanted? Was it too silly? And who did you want to win? #mtos

6) Takashi Miike, Takashi Shimizu, Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, Kim Jee-woon. So many great directors. Who has a filmography that you are most familiar with, and what do they bring to the genre that makes them worth seeking out? #mtos

7) I Saw The Devil, Cold Fish, The Chaser, there are also many horrors from this area with non-supernatural villains. Do you prefer these to the familiar ghosts, and do you have an outright favourite? #mtos

8) Culturally, why do you think Asia, and specifically Japan, manage to craft such creepy films within environments that are often modern, sleek, and heavily populated? #mtos

9) As well as spooky, Asian horror can provide some extreme fare. Have you seen any of those (e.g. the infamous Guinea Pig movies, Grotesque, The Butcher) or do you wonder how anyone can enjoy such nastiness? #mtos

10) Let's end with a recommendation. Tell people the one Asian horror movie that you feel is underseen or just essential viewing for genre fans. #mtos

And that is that. Don't let any of this conversation make you nervous as you get ready for bed this evening. Just relax, make sure the TV is unplugged, don't answer any anonymous numbers on your mobile phone, ignore the creaking stairs, and stay away from anyone with their personal collection of acupuncture needles and piano wire . . . "kiri kiri kiri, kiri . . . kiri . . . kiri."

Ben (1972)

Following on immediately from the end of Willard, this is a mediocre film that suffers greatly in comparison to the greatness that preceded it. Although you still get some dangerous rats, there's very little else here that we got in the first film, from the characters to the quality of acting to the overall tone of the whole thing.

Where Willard gave you a young man that you could root for, Ben gives you a boy who is very hard to like. His name is Danny Garrison, and he's played by Lee Montgomery. Danny is a bit lonely, so that makes him the next obvious choice to be friends with Ben and his large pack of ratty friends. While the police try to track down all of the rodents and kill them off, Danny amuses himself by making up songs about his new friend ("Ben" sounds pretty good when Michael Jackson is singing it, not so much when Montgomery is doing the vocals), playing with marionettes, and not dutifully handing over all rat information to the relevant authority figures.

Directed by Phil Karlson, Ben doesn't really know how it wants to play out. The script, by a returning Gilbert A. Ralston, doesn't help, moving from the finale of the first movie to an uninteresting tale of a boy finding a rat and holding on to him like some kind of fluffy action figure. There are moments of rat mayhem here and there, but they don't feel like anything other than filler in a film where they should be some of the main set-pieces. Hampered by the central idea, Karlson makes everything worse by keeping the whole movie tension-free and strangely chipper.

The cast also don't do anything to help. Well, the human cast anyway. Montgomery isn't very good. In fact, he's pretty awful for most of the movie. Rosemary Murphy and Meredith Baxter are better, playing Beth and Eve Garrison, respectively, and Joseph Campanella, Arthur O'Connell, and Kaz Garas are able to stand around, ponder the rat problem, and look determined about sorting things out.

It may be unfair to compare this so much to the first film, and I get that every film should be judged on its own merits, but the fact that it uses the opening scenes to show the end of the first movie and to then continue the storyline "seamlessly" doesn't do it any favours. Viewers are immediately reminded of just how great Willard was, to then be almost immediately disheartened by how lacklustre this is.

There are pluses. Not many, but they are there. First of all, some scenes do feature an impressive number of rats scrabbling around and over one another. Second, you get to hear Michael Jackson singing over the end credits. Third . . . actually, no, there is no third. There are two main positives to take away from my viewing of this film, and I'll give it a point for each, plus one whole point for the acceptable work of the actors who aren't named Lee Montgomery.

3/10

This is the best way to buy the film (because you get a better film with it).
Americans can get the movie here.

Willard (1971)

Considering how much I love the 2003 remake of Willard, it is surprising that it took me this long to get to the original film. Especially considering the fact that the cast includes Bruce Davison in the lead role, and support from Ernest Borgnine, Sondra Locke, and Elsa Lanchester.

Davison plays Willard Stiles, a young man who isn't being treated very well by those around him. His frail mother (Lanchester) makes a lot of demands on his time, his boss (Borgnine) seems to revel in the fact that he can keep him overworked in the company that used to belong to his deceased father, and his family home is in need of some repair, which would be easier to deal with if he had any decent amount of money for it. When asked by his mother to deal with a rodent problem, Willard instead starts training them, and he's soon in charge of a multitude of rats.

Director Daniel Mann may not have a lot of other horror movies in his filmography, although it's an eclectic selection, but he's certainly given fans a bit of a minor classic with this one. Based on a novel by Stephen Gilbert, this is equal parts character study and creature feature, with both serving each other well. Mann, working from a script by Gilbert A. Ralston, builds things up perfectly, using three acts to show, in turn, the mistreatment of Willard, his befriending and training of the rats, and his eventual use of them to help make his life better. The first half of the movie may be much lighter in tone than the second half, and horror fans may find themselves growing impatient for signs of actual horror, but it brilliantly sketches out the history and nature of the central character, making it all the more satisfying when we get to see him fighting back.

Davison is absolutely brilliant in what could well be his finest role. Considering his huge body of film work, it's easy to forget just how great he can be in films more deserving of his talent (I am thinking more of films like this one and Short Eyes than, say, Titanic II). Borgnine is an entertainingly loathsome baddie, which viewers will already know from some of his other performances, and he has some slimy acolytes in the shape of Michael Dante and Joan Shawlee. Lanchester does well in her small role, as frail and whiney as she has to be, Jody Gilbert is someone who tries to help Willard, but only to really also help herself, and Locke brightens up the screen as arguably the only person who sees how badly Willard is being mistreated and taken advantage of by those around him.

What could have easily just been a tale of a boy getting rats to attack his enemies is instead turned into something incredibly bittersweet and, yes, surprisingly moving. It may focus on the rats, and the damage and death they can cause, but it's equally about the need for companionship, the emotional support that can be gained just from knowing friends have your back, and how difficult it can be to move forward with your own life again once you have developed such a strong connection with others.

8/10

There's a double-pack available here.
Americans can get the one movie here.

Mubi Monday: I Love You Phillip Morris (2009)

Also . . . there's a horror movie review coming along later. Not going to miss a day here just because MUBI hasn't yet put up any genre offerings.

Co-directed by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, who also wrote the script based on the book by Steve McVicker, I Love You Phillip Morris is a fantastic comedy, an amusing look at the life of a con man, and an astounding true story.

Jim Carrey stars as Steven Russell. Steven seems to have his life in order. He's a police officer, he plays the organ at church, he has a loving wife and two daughters. He's also very much gay, something that he keeps a secret until a bad car crash leads him to realise that he cannot go on living a lie. Well, he cannot go on living THAT lie. All other lies are fine as long as they allow him to spend lots of money he otherwise wouldn't have to treat himself, and loved ones, to a lavish lifestyle. This leads him to prison, which leads to him meeting Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor). And so begins a series of audacious cons as Steven aims to spend as much time as possible with his new love, whether in prison or enjoying their freedom.

I don't want to spoil things for anyone who hasn't seen this movie, suffice to say that the biggest con that Russell pulls is as incredible as it is reliant on some very human oversights/errors and it's the focus of the third act, quite rightly so. The script takes great pleasure in sprinkling events with a few little rug-pulls here and there, making it easier to accept some of the more unbelievable true details of the story.

Requa and Ficarra do a good job with the direction too, keeping things light and upbeat (helped by a wonderful score from Nick Urata that often tiptoes very close to emulating "Aquarela do Brasil" by Ary Barroso). There may be no such thing as a victimless crime but this is a lot easier to enjoy thanks to the targets picked by Russell, usually either financial corporations or those in positions of power in the US penal system.

Carrey is on top form in the central role, flying through most of the scenarios with a mixture of optimism, charm, and bullshit. McGregor is also very good, acting very sweet and making it easy to see why the relationship between the two could blossom so quickly. Leslie Mann does well in her small role (she's the loving wife who somehow doesn't outright resent and hate her husband when she is told the truth about him), Rodrigo Santoro is fun as Carrey's first main male partner, and Antoni Corone and Brennan Brown are two businessmen who enjoy Carrey making money for them without noticing that he's taking a decent amount for his own account.

As much about the things people will do for love as it is about someone who seems unable to stop living a life that requires theft, lies, and fraud, I Love You Phillip Morris is an entertainingly light treatment of material that could have easily been dark and painful. You may think it's the wrong approach, but I happen to think it works perfectly.

8/10

You can buy the shiny disc here.
Americans can buy it here.
Or you can click on those links and buy whatever the hell you like.

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.

Shudder Saturday: Arachnid (2001)

Note: I watched Arcahnid on Wednesday evening. I went to check a couple of scenes from it on the Thursday. It had been removed from Shudder, dammit. But I watched it. It WAS on Shudder. I own it, so could revisit those scenes I wanted to see. And this review stands (apologies, however, that Arachnid isn't on Shudder at this time, but perhaps it will come back).

I hate spiders. Hate them. Or, to put it more accurately, I am terrifed of them. Yep, a big arachnophobe, that's me. I know all of the arguments against my irrational fear, especially considering the relatively small varieties that we have here in the UK, but I can't help it. That's why it's an irrational fear. As much as I am afraid of spiders, I am also drawn to horror films that feature the eight-legged horrors. And I thought that Arachnid was going to be a decent, low-budget, killer spider movie. I was wrong.

Things start with a pilot who goes down with his plane. He wanders around an island, sees a weird alien creature, and then he's killed. Time passes. A group head out to the same island, including a woman (Loren Mercer, played by Alex Reid) who is the sister of the missing pilot. They wander about the foliage for a while. Someone gets internal problems from nasty ticks, there are various arguments between members of the group, and then the third act is time for the main creature to be showcased, a giant spider out to kill them all.

The fact that Brian Yuzna was attached as a producer got my hopes up. He's given me a number of very enjoyable horror movies over the years. Unfortunately, his name attached to this as producer doesn't mean that the end product is anything like his directorial outings. Arachnid is bad. The script by Mark Sevi is poor, full of slapdash plotting and horribly cliched dialoge, and the direction from Jack Sholder doesn't help any. The whole thing feels cheap and rushed, although it's saved from being a complete waste of your time by a couple of decent gore gags and the main creature.

Reid isn't a good enough female lead to hold viewer interest, and neither is Chris Potter (her male co-star). But it's easy to see why they bagged the lead roles, certainly in comparison to the selection of fairly dire people supporting them. Rocqueford Allen is okay, the rest are almost unbearable for the entire duration of their time onscreen.

It's not hard to make a spider-centric horror movie that I will enjoy. Whether they're of normal size of turned into giant monstrosities. Hell, I have fond memories of The Giant Spider Invasion. So I struggled with my low rating of this one. But there's just not enough here to make it even passable. Which is a shame. If they had taken away the sci-fi moments, focused more on the simple fun of people being chased by a giant spider, and thrown around some more bloodshed and nastiness, this could have been an amusing way to waste 90 minutes.

3/10

There's a cheap DVD available here.
Americans can buy it here.
Or just click on those links and go shopping for better movies.

Filmstruck Friday: Freaks (1932)

I don't have as much reading time nowadays as I used to. That's by choice. I watch a hell of a lot more movies, and I tend to also review a lot of them. So between that and work and, you know, other stuff that takes up my time I just tend to leave reading until I find myself with a free 15 minutes. But I used to be a voracious reader, from a very young age. And it helped that, as a child, my mother had books piled up all around our home. One of those books was about the lives of famous "freaks". I didn't actually read that book, but I did look at the section of photographs. I saw General Tom Thumb (named because of his diminutive stature), a man with no lower half of his body, and Prince Randian. This last figure was the one that stuck with me the most. He had no arms or legs (I believe the book referred to him as "The Human Caterpillar") but was shown in photographs making his own cigarettes. Having been fascinated by these people, I am very surprised that I didn't get around to this classic Tod Browning movie until I was in my late twenties. I think I may have still been silly enough to think that a film from the 1930s couldn't possibly retain the power it had all those years ago. I was wrong.

Prince Randian is not a main character in Freaks, but he does make a brief appearance. As does someone credited as Half Boy (played by Johnny Eck). And probably a number of other people who were featured in that book. This film is all about people who make their living as circus sideshow attractions, as the title none-too-subtly tells you. It gives you a glimpse into the lives of many extraordinary characters, focusing on the main storyline of a midget named Hans (Harry Earles) and his love for a trapeze artist named Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova). Cleopatra doesn't love Hans, yet she figures that she can pretend to for a while until she gets her hands on his large inheritance. And she can make that happen sooner by poisoning him. Because, despite her outward physical appearance, Cleopatra is the ugliest character in this film. Greedy, callous, manipulative, and murderous. She's also pretty blatant about her motivation and intentions, which allows viewers to sit back and wait for her eventual comeuppance.

Written by Willis Goldbeck and Leon Gordon, Freaks remains a wild and incredible film, even by the standards of today. The characters being shown onscreen are fascinating (as well as those mentioned you get to see the Siamese twins named Daisy and Violet Hilton, the human skeleton named Peter Robinson, and Elvira and Jenny Lee Snow playing "Pinheads"), the main storyline is complemented by some enjoyable subplots, and you have the famous utterance of "one of us, one of us". Cleopatra may be written as a bit of a pantomime villain, at times, but that's the way it has to be to take everything where it needs to go for that intense finale.

Director Tod Browning must have known that he was going to shock audiences at the time, and kudos to him for staying true to his vision, even if it did ultimately bring his directorial career to a premature end (he is only credited on a couple of films after this one, which is a great shame indeed).  Bringing together such an authentic cast may have led to quite a range of quality in the acting, although it has to be said that most of the main players are very good in their roles, but it also makes it a lot harder to accept the movie as JUST a movie. This remains an experience that is at times bewildering, at times infuriating, and at times absolute nightmare fuel.

I am sure that others have discussed this more thoroughly, it's another one of those occasions when I suspect that adding my own review of an established classic on to an overflowing pile is probably redundant, but I will just take this opportunity to encourage every horror movie fan to seek this out. Considering how influential it is, and how impactful it remains, you would be doing yourself a great disservice if you dismissed it as being too old or too tame for your more modern sensibilities.

10/10

This shiny disc is available to buy.
Or, in American territories, here.

Raw (2016)

Written and directed by Julia Ducournau, Raw is to the cannibal movie what Ginger Snaps is to the werewolf film, to start this review off with some obvious Shorthand 101. Both are coming of age tales, both provide moments that you expect with a number of twists that you don't, and both are anchored by excellent female lead performances.

Garance Marillier is Justine, a young woman starting her university education to become a vet. She is enrolled in the same institution as her older sister, Alexia (played by Ella Rumpf), and ends up sharing a room with a gay man named Adrien (Rabah Nait Oufella). She also ends up finally eating meat as part of her diet, now that she is away from her parents and their vegetarian lifestyle. This leads to her getting a taste for more than just the selection available from any butcher shop.

What starts off as a simple tale of a young woman overwhelmed by a new stage of her life at university, and all of the freedoms and opportunities that come with it, chances to both succeed and fail, soon develops into a tale of, well . . . . actually, a young woman overwhelmed by a new stage of her life at university. She just happens to also develop a taste for VERY fresh meat. Justine changes quite quickly, admittedly, but it's not an immediate transformation, and a lot of the first half of the movie shows the typical "growing pains" of any teenager suddenly away from their parents and deciding to create, or rather recreate, their own identity as they move further into adulthood.

Marillier is fantastic in the central role, believably transforming from a shy and sheltered young woman into someone who loses a lot of her inhibitions and starts to wear her difference from others like a badge with "Fuck You" printed on it. Rumpf is equally good, and the two really convince as sisters who always seem to love one another, even during times when they fall out. Oufella has the easiest of the three main roles, but he does well to portray a supportive and friendly figure who doesn't mind anyone else being a bit weird, up to a point.

Ducournau manages to tell this story without making every scene a gross-out one, although she also puts in a number of scenes that definitely aren't for the squeamish (probably best not to watch this while eating a meal). It helps that she has done such a great job with the development of the lead characters, making viewers hope for the best for them, even as things start to look worse and worse. The technical side of things cannot be faulted, especially admirable as this is the first solo feature from Ducournau (having previously given us one short film and a TV movie co-directed with Virgile Bramly, which also happens to be about an eating disorder), and there's also a fine score by Jim Williams accompanying the visuals, as well as a few lively tunes on the soundtrack.

Some viewers may wish they could have more moments of gore, and there's a "punchline" that could divide opinion (I thought it was great), but this is an interesting cannibal film that comes very close to being as good as the excellent, but a lot more darkly comedic, Ravenous.

8/10

Raw can be bought here.
Americans can buy it here.
Alternatively, you can always click on either of those links and then shop for whatever you want. Which also helps me while letting you treat yourself.

Prime Time: The Last Shark (1981)

Stop me if you've heard this one. A great white shark starts to cause problems by munching on oblivious people who are trying to enjoy time in the sea. There's a big event coming up (it's a wind-surfing regatta), a local official who doesn't want a pesky shark problem interrupting the festivities, and so it comes down to one determined man (Peter Benton, played by James Franciscus) and one shark hunter (Ron Hamer, played by Vic Morrow) to try and deal with the shark before it snacks on any more funseekers.

Directed by Enzo G. Castellari, The Last Shark is a terrible film. The script, by Marc Princi, is hilarious, the shark is hilarious, and the way the film so closely parallels Jaws is also hilarious (it's one of a number of films that you can easily describe as Jawsploitation). But being hilarious wouldn't have been bad if it all hadn't also felt so lazy and careless. There isn't even the kind of content you get from other Italian . . . "homages" to blockbuster hits. No excess of gore, no gratuitous nudity, there wasn't even one grizzled warrior with an eyepatch and a flamethrower attached to a severed arm. Any of these elements would have improved the film, and having none of them just feels like a huge missed opportunity.

Remember the famous scene in Jaws that has Roy Scheider scooping chum into the water and being startled by the sudden appearance of the shark into uttering THAT line? The Last Shark knows it cannot compete with that level of brilliance. But it does have someone dangling a large chunk of meat from a helicopter as part of a plan so dumb that even the shark looks bemused for a few seconds (or maybe I was projecting at that point).

Morrow is very enjoyable in his role (a mix of Hooper and Quint, with a terrible attempt at an Irish, or maybe Scottish, accent), and both Franciscus and Joshua Sinclair (playing that optimistic, ambitious town official) do what's asked of them, with Sinclair gamely taking part in what is most definitely the silliest scene in the entire movie.

But what of the shark itself? Surely that is the star of the show. Not quite. In fact, when it rises out of the water you could be forgiven for thinking that a balloon has somehow floated up from below the tideline. A balloon covered in paper mache, with melted buttons to give it eyes. You get the idea. It's not exactly convincing or scary. Does this mean that Castellari and co. take a leaf out of Spielberg's book and hide the shark away for most of the runtime? No it does not. It could have been worse, but the shark is given far too much screentime, and the situation isn't helped by scenes featuring footage of an actual shark that never matches with the main creature that we're supposed to be watching.

Castellari has some decent titles in his filmography, especially if you're a fan of Westerns or post-apocalyptic films. This is not one of his better efforts. It still has me smiling while I type out this review, however, and it's hard to resist its goofy charm if you know what you're letting yourself in for.

4/10

Do you really want this on DVD? Here it is.
Do NOT pay for this one, but use the link to find other goodies.

Killer Party (1986)

Coming relatively late in the day, certainly when you think of the "golden period" of slasher movies, Killer Party is a film that doesn't get mentioned much, in my experience, and doesn't seem to get any love. That's a shame, because it's a hugely entertaining horror film that takes a sharp turn in the final act to make it stand out from the slasher crowd. Those who have already seen it may be smiling already, those who haven't seen it should give it a go.

The basic story concerns three young women who pledge to a sorority. There are pranks and humiliations, of course, but they manage to get in. The women are then told to turn a house into a suitable location for a Halloween party. They do, and on the night of the party they also have a surprise guest, in the form of a tormented and murderous spirit.

While it may not deliver the highest bodycount in the subgenre, and while you don't really get the required death every 10 minutes, Killer Party makes up for that with a tone that very effectively blends the scares with some comedy. From the double fake start, including a music video sequences that plays out like a rock riff on Thriller, to a prank involving bees and females in a hot tub, this is a film that aims to provide fun, first and foremost. If it didn't get that tone just right then the finale would be ridiculous, quite frankly, but it instead just feels a bit offbeat and goofy.

Sherry Willis-Burch, Joanna Johnson, and Elaine Wilkes are the three main characters, all do decent enough in their roles, and Martin Hewitt and Ralph Seymour do okay as the two main males onscreen. There are plenty of others joining in with the fun but these five tend to be the ones that viewers are asked to keep an eye on as the party unfolds.

Director William Fruet (no stranger to the genre, he also gave us the enjoyable Funeral Home, which was, well, quite a bit worse than this) seems to enjoy playing with the audience expectations here, especially throughout the first half of the film, and writer Barney Cohen gives him good material to work with. It's easy to like our leading ladies and the film moves along nicely until things start to get crazy in the third act.

If you like your slasher movies to have the usual selection of tropes - a prank that backfires to create a motivation for revenge, plenty of kills with weapons that are usefully near to hand, locals warning youngsters of the peril, etc - then this may not be the film for you. But if you like the idea of a film in which a possessed woman, at one point, attacks others with a trident then this is definitely one you should watch.

7/10

There's a DVD available here.
Americans can get it here.

Mubi Monday: Antiviral (2012)

Directed by Brandon "son of David" Cronenberg, Antiviral is a debut feature that feels very much like something his father would have done back in his early years. There is, however, a lack of the wit and intelligence, and even frame composition, that Cronenberg Senior would have laced throughout, but it's not a bad first full-length film.

Caleb Landry Jones stars as Syd March, a young man who works in a strange, thriving, industry. He sells illnesses to people. Those illnesses are harvested from celebrities and the people wanting to buy them are obsessed fans. To make himself some extra money, Syd smuggles diseases out in his own body, making use of a work device that he has stashed in his home. It's an obviously flawed system, and nobody should be surprised when Syd starts to become more and more unwell.

Cronenberg is working with his own screenplay here, and you can also feel the clear influence from his father in the plotting and main ideas. The illnesses are commodities, but they can also be weaponised, and can lead to those infected with them having strange hallucinatory moments. With Syd a pawn who cannot see the big picture around him, there are many moments here that feel bastardised from Videodrome. It's just that instead of seeking out more extreme content, these people are warped by "celebrity culture" (pun intended).

Jones is very good in the main role, carrying most of the movie even as he grows weaker and looks ready to shuffle off the mortal coil at any moment. There are many other characters who pop up throughout the film but the focus stays on Syd, what he can do for them and how valuable he can be, which allows Jones to stay front and centre at all times, even when he's being given a lot of exposition by Malcolm McDowell. Joe Pingue and James Cade both do well, playing a creator of celebrity foods and a virus "pirate", respectively, and Sarah Gadon portrays one of the most sought-after celebrities on the market.

The look of the film is often, as you would expect, sleek and sterile. If you're going to see blood coughed up then it may as well spatter against a pure white surface, right? But the work environment is juxtaposed against some living conditions that are much less sleek and stylish. They're not exactly squalid but it's easy to see that employees certainly don't get to reap the rewards from the business that the management do.

Although it's a bit of a mess at times, losing focus and building towards an ending that doesn't feel worthy of everything we've gone through, Antiviral shows a lot of promise. Cronenberg can be forgiven, more than most, for being a bit too heavily influenced by his father. And, hey, there are far worse directors out there to be influenced by.

5/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.