News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

USA: George A. Romero, 1968

I suppose it's tempting to see Night of the Living Dead as a bit twee these days, and to a certain extent I agree. On the one hand, the unconvincing make-up effects and wooden acting do detract to a degree from the horror of the material. On the other hand, these elements, not to mention the striking monochromatic photography, clearly date it as a product of a bygone era, making it unfair to hold it up to the standards we would apply to a zombie movie released in 2009. I must confess that I'm not all that much of a fan of this subset of the horror genre, preferring my gialli and tales of supernatural terror to the grubbier, more visceral trappings of the risen dead. Still, I can appreciate this film for what it is: the originator that gave birth to a plethora of like-minded films, some good, some downright risible.

IMDB reference

UK: Tom Shankland, 2008

Personally, I've always found children to be creepy little fuckers, so the idea of a horror movie in which a group of them turn into murderous psychopaths and start bumping off their parents is an incredibly potent one. I didn't have monumentally high hopes for The Children going in, and it turned out to be an extremely pleasant surprise, in many ways the most enjoyable of the various movies I've watched over the course of my birthday week. Strictly speaking, Martyrs is the more ambitious film, but The Children is more straightforwardly enjoyable, and manages to avoid the sort of clichés and plot twists that sunk Eden Lake.

For the most part, writer/director Tom Shankland avoids back-stories and long-winded explanations, preferring to simply plonk his characters into a situation and ratcheting up the tension before unleashing the carnage. It's a simple approach but an effective one, and the isolated location in which the film spends its entire duration is perfectly geared towards this sort of material. The film wears its influences on its sleeve - The Omen was never far from my mind while watching it - but it never feels derivative, and it takes itself seriously throughout, avoiding the pitfalls that a film about killer kids (potentially hokey material if you're not careful) could so easily have fallen into. It's actually a pretty gutsy film, doling out gruesome violence propagated both by and against toddlers and in doing so ensuring that no-one could ever mistake this for a mainstream studio production.

It's not exactly high-brow stuff, but I had a blast with The Children. If like me you can't stand children, or at least find them monumentally creepy, then this should be right up your alley.

IMDB reference

UK/France: Gerald McMorrow, 2008

A quote on the front cover of Franklyn describes it as "as if The Matrix met Donnie Darko", which is rather misleading. I can more or less see a tenuous Matrix connection, in that part of the film takes place in a dark police state controlled by sinister forces, but the Donnie Darko part has me scratching my head...

Anyway, the action unfolds in two completely different worlds. In modern day London, where a father (Bernard Hill) is looking for his missing son, a recently jilted young man (Sam Riley) is trying to rediscover his purpose in life, and an eccentric art student (Eva Green) embarks on a project which involves her filming her own repeated suicide attempts, the purpose of which she is unable to articulate. Meanwhile, in the fantasy world of Meanwhile City, a masked private detective (Ryan Phillippe), the only atheist in a city fuelled by religious mania, sets out to assassinate a cult leader called "the Individual", responsible for the murder of a young girl. As the cliché goes, all is not as it seems, and fantasy blends with reality as the two worlds become intertwined.

First-time writer/director Gerald McMorrow has crafted an interesting premise and has ambition to spare (I'm still trying to work out how he pulled off a film of this scale with only $12 million at his disposal), not to mention a terrific visual eye, which is fortunate given that in many ways he tries to do too much and as a result isn't entirely successful. My brother, who watched the film with me, was less impressed by it than I was, feeling that the connection between the two worlds was too tenuous and that the narrative failed to come together in a meaningful way. I disagree, but only to an extent. I was certainly impressed by McMorrow's vision and what he aimed to accomplish, but couldn't help thinking that, in terms of connecting the narratives and rationalising what was going on, I was having to do a lot of the work that the film should have been doing. A number of elements seem somewhat displaced, particularly with regard to the role of the Sam Riley character, which feels more incidental than I suspect was McMorrow's aim.

The terrific cinematography by Ben Davis, and Joby Talbot's grandiose score (which reminded me a great deal of Danny Elfman's collaborations with Tim Burton), give the film a rich feel and distract from the narrative failings to a degree, but unfortunately the casting of Ryan Phillippe as the atheist avenger, Jonathan Preest (see what they did there?), is a major problem. He's a bland presence, whether masked or not, and tends to indulge in the same sort of monotonous, gravel-voicing growling that set my teeth on edge in The Dark Knight. The scenes in Meanwhile City are filled wall-to-wall with his narration, which a lot of the time seems completely unnecessary. On the plus side, Bernard Hill is very effective as the grieving father, while Eva Green does what she always does and steals the show. She has the ability to command your attention simply by stepping into frame, a rare talent that has served her well in everything in which she has appeared - even Casino Royale, a particularly impressive feat given that Bond girls are not exactly known for for their three-dimensional characterisation. (Her best work for my money remains her arresting - and extremely brave - screen debut in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers.)

I'm going to make a prediction that Franklyn will become a cult classic. Gerald McMorrow is undoubtedly a name to watch, and I look forward to giving the film another look at some point in the future, knowing in advance what the outcome is and therefore able to pay more attention to the subtleties that no doubt passed me by on my first viewing.

IMDB reference

USA: Joss Whedon, 2005

IMDB reference

UK: James Watkins, 2008

My copy of Eden Lake has a sticker on the cover proclaiming it to be "from the producer of The Descent". It really should have said "and the composer too", for David Julyan's bombastic score is the most prominent of many similarities between this, the directorial debut of James Watkins (who has written a number of British horror movies, among them the upcoming sequel to The Descent) and Neil Marshall's excellent 2005 tale of potholing gone wrong.

Eden Lake is a yarn in the grand "yuppies go into the wild and are set upon by local savages" tradition popularised by horror movies like I Spit on Your Grave, Deliverance and The Hills Have Eyes, the "savages" here being a group of nasty little adolescents who, in the space of a few hours, graduate from breaching the peace to grand theft auto before moving on to torture and murder. It's all very reactionary, as many horror movies tend to be: a sort of Daily Mail-fuelled middle-class nightmare. It's been pointed out by many, myself included, that these films are actually often morally aligned with the very people who would like to see them censored and banned. I don't recall there being a public outcry when Eden Lake was released, but then I suppose the gutter press and their ill-informed acolytes are too busy taking umbrage at the video games industry these days to pay any heed to a film that would probably have ended up on the DPP list had it been released in the mid-80s.

You see, Eden Lake is a nasty little film. True, Martyrs (which I watched the previous night) makes it look like a walk in the park, but it's a brutal and at times genuinely unsettling affair. And it would have been more so, were it not for the script's insistence on painting its heroine as a lily-livered drip and, in the final act, piling coincidence on top of preposterous coincidence to the extent that the whole thing collapses under its own weight and becomes unintentionally funny. The biggest problem by far is the supposed heroine, Jenny, who spends the first act skipping around like a small child, infuriatingly unaware of the dangerous situation she's so clearly getting into. Everything about her is intensely irritating, from her general demeanour right down to her voice and the clothes she wears. And, I'm sorry to say this, but the actress playing her, Kelly Reilly, even looks annoying. I recently saw her in an ITV adaptation of Lynda La Plante's novel Above Suspicion, and she was irritating in that too. While, in Eden Lake, she improves to an extent once the blood starts oozing, there's always something about her that seems unconvincing. Her character is also monumentally stupid, the low point being a sequence in which she spends a lengthy period of time hiding in the bushes while the gang of kids take turns stabbing her boyfriend. This goes on for ages, and it is only after every member of the gang has had a go with the knife that she decides to take out her mobile phone and try to get a signal.

Eden Lake is nicely shot, pacily edited and at times genuinely gripping. It's just a shame it's so god-damn reactionary. I'm not for a moment suggesting that there aren't kids like the ones depicted in the film: the problem is that their portrayal is so one-dimensional and cliché-ridden that it becomes borderline offensive. You can, I suppose, argue that the Texas Chain Saw Massacres of this world suffered from a similarly blinkered attitude. My response would probably be "That's no excuse." There's also the fact that these films seemed to be less an attack on a specific group of people and more a post-Vietnam reaction against bloodshed in general. The message of Eden Lake appears to be "If you go down to the woods today, beware of the murderous chavs."

IMDB reference

France/Canada: Pascal Laugier, 2008

Martyrs was... well, an experience, and one that I've yet to develop a definite position on. I certainly didn't hate it, but I came away from it feeling decidedly unfulfilled, which may or may not have been director Pascal Laugier's deliberate intention. It's cold, brutal and nihilistic, and also incredibly distancing: despite the extreme acts of violence and torture (both psychological and physical) in which it revels, I never felt as if I was in the thick of it. I was constantly a voyeur, watching the abuse from a distance but never really connection with either abused or abuser. I find this very strange because it's a horrible film to watch. There's nothing fun about the violence we see in it, and it is for the most part unrelentingly realistic.

By the way, I definitely feel that we need a proper name with which to group the current breed of horror movies that have been labelled "torture porn" by the gutter press. While I personally hate that term, I don't think it can be denied that it refers to a very real group of films: the Hostels, Saws, The Passion of the Christs and now the Martyrs of the world, which immerse themselves fully in the depths of brutality and human suffering, focusing on unprovoked, unmitigated violence against those who can't or won't fight back. Despite what Laugier may have claimed, Martyrs is very much a part of this tradition.

Do my issues with this film stem from its refusal to provide the conventional sense of closure that we're accustomed to finding at the end of mainstream horror movies? Or is it simply that the film doesn't have as much to say about the human condition as it thinks it does? It's definitely more interesting than Laugier's first film, the rather generic Saint Ange/House of Voices, but also more frustrating. Am I guilty of wanting my films to be neatly packaged and easily digestible? I hope not, but Martyrs ultimately left me feeling that I hadn't had a full meal.

IMDB reference

USA: Patrick Lussier, 2009

My good friend the Baron informs me that the original My Bloody Valentine has the reputation of being one of the better examples of the 80s slasher cycle. This could well be the case, but conversely the 2009 remake is one of the worst examples of the 00s revival of said sub-genre. I suspect that the soul purpose of this limp, lazy remake was to play around with digital cameras and show off the 3D effects upon which virtually every shot hinges. At least, I'm assuming this to be the case because there really is absolutely nothing else of any note to be found in this clumsy and pointless film, chock full of bad acting, dreadful dialogue, non-existent characterisation, inept camerawork and clumsily staged action.

I know what you're going to say: "This wasn't meant to be the next Citizen Kane/The Godfather/Profondo rosso (delete as appropriate) - just check your brain in at the door and enjoy the fun." Personally, I think I'm more than capable of switching off my brain and lapping up some mindless entertainment, provided there's actually entertainment to be had. My Bloody Valentine 3D, however, is about as entertaining as getting a root canal, and that's whether you're watching it in 2D or 3D. At least, though, the 2D version is unlikely to make you feel like throwing up: personally, I was able to stomach about five minutes of the 3D version before switching back to the normal "flat" version. Whereas theatrical screenings of the film in 3D used special projectors and 3D glasses to create the three-dimensional effect in full colour, those watching it at home with their regular displays and the cheap cardboard shades that come in the box are restricted to hues of green and purple, which frankly looks awful and induces eye strain and headaches.

And it's not as if the much-vaunted 3D effect is remotely convincing. Rather than giving any true semblance of depth, all that happens is that different objects or characters on the screen stick out like a children's pop-up picture book. Ironically, the "flat" version has more of a sense of depth than its 3D counterpart, since it makes use of the typical cinematic conventions for signifying depth and distance, namely focus pulling and the usual depth of field tricks. I'm not about to write off the notion of 3D completely on the basis of one film, and would definitely like to experience the gimmick in a theatrical environment with the film's full colour palette to get a better idea of what the results are like, but frankly, if the cheap-looking 3D effects on display in My Bloody Valentine are the best the technology is capable of, I struggle to see the fad lasting very long.

As Roger Ebert puts it:

I will say this first and get it out of the way: 3-D is a distraction and an annoyance. Younger moviegoers may think they like it because they've been told to, and picture quality is usually far from their minds. But for anyone who would just like to be left alone to see the darned thing, like me, it's a constant nudge in the ribs saying never mind the story, just see how neat I look.

I disagree with Ebert on one count: I don't think the effects even look neat. Other than that, I suspect he's right on the money.

IMDB reference

More posts