Warigami

★★★½
“Card sharks”

This feature-length entity is the omnibus edition of a series created for Canadian streaming service, CBC Gem. Originally 10 x ten-minute episodes, they’ve been combined into one entity, though the joins are still pretty visible. It is, however, a brisk and generally entertaining work, with a good twist to the usual martial-arts shenanigans.

Wendy Ohata (Piggford) lives with her grandfather, a martial-arts master who is the guardian of a scroll that potentially will confer great power on its owner. Wendy has never been able to tap into her talents, until one day she meets Vincent (Bradbury) and his pal Mark (Julien) – while they are burgling her house. Their choice was not a random one: Vincent felt a strong pull towards the house, and it turns out he and Wendy are long-lost siblings. More significantly, when they are within 50 feet of each other, they both become kami-jin. Those are people who are able to manipulate the density of paper at will, turn it into a lethal weapon in their hands.

Unfortunately, when these talents are used, they attract the attention of the villainous Teramoto clan, who want to use the scroll to return Japan to a more pastoral state, blaming technology for the evils of modern life. Their leading agent is another kami-jin, Sadako (Suzuki). She kidnaps Wendy’s grandfather and holds him hostage, demanding the scroll for his release. Can she, along with her new-found brother and his pal, locate the Teramoto lair, and rescue Gramps?

The show got my attention with an opening scene where Sadako is detained at the airport – it doesn’t end well for the agents trying to hold her – and didn’t let go for much of the way thereafter. This does a good job of balancing between the serious and the silly, no small task given the potentially ludicrous nature of the skill at its heart. About the only moment where it descends into full-on silliness is when Vincent dons a complete outfit of samurai armour made from paper – and even there, you can only admire the effort involved from the costume department. Wendy and Sadako make for a solid yin and yang at the center of things, with both acquitting themselves well on the martial-arts front. Director Lapeyre also deserves credit for not letting their talents be obscured by frenetic editing.

There are a couple of plot moments which have questionable plausibility: both the Teramoto lair and its underground entrance are discovered way too easily. And the ending is rather obviously pointing towards a sequel, though it’s one I’d be interested in seeing, and hopefully the makers are given the chance to deliver it. For, given its origins, this was better than I expected from a web series. That’s especially true for the way the talents of the kami-jin are portrayed, which varies from okay to flat-out impressive, on occasion. I was left with a strong urge to find a pack of playing cards and start working on my wrist strength.

Dir: Jason Lapeyre
Star: Emily Piggford, Kai Bradbury, Miho Suzuki, Akiel Julien.

Daughter of the Wolf

★★
“Bit of a bad dog.”

The cinematic goodwill Carano accumulated as the result of her electric debut in Haywire, is rapidly evaporating. I understand that you can’t expect to work with Steven Soderbergh every time, but the returns have been diminishing with a relentless steadiness since for her. This is certainly the worst one yet, though in her defense, the problem are less to do with her performance. They are more the results of a script which takes several, widely disparate ideas, and doesn’t just fail to connect them into a coherent whole, it also manages to screw them up on an individual level, to the point where most of them become little more than silly garbage.

We join a kidnapping already in progress, as Charlie (Gillis-Adelman), the son of Clair Hamilton (Carano), having been abducted by “Father” (Dreyfuss), a cult-like leader who has long held a grudge against Clair’s dad. Quite why he bothered waiting until after the target was dead to take his vengeance, is one of the many things this film fails to explain adequately. At the supposed handover of cash for Charlie, a fire-fight breaks out, which is right in the wheel-house of Clair, a former soldier. Two of the three kidnappers end up dead, the third, Larsen (Fehr), is not such a bad guy, and ends up saving her life after she falls through the ice. Still, she makes him take her to Father, and matters are complicated by the presence of a pack of wolves, who appear to have their own agenda.

About the only thing which saves this are the amazing Canadian landscapes, lushly photographed by Mark Dobrescu. There’s one location in particular, an ice waterfall, which is jaw-droppingly beautiful to an almost implausible degree, forming the backdrop to one of the movie’s less than impressive action sequences. Of course, someone goes over the edge, plummeting to their doom. Oh, wait. My mistake: they subsequently show up again later, with little evidence of damage beyond a somewhat annoyed expression on their face, as if mildly inconvenienced by an out of service elevator. This implausible approach reaches its nadir in Father three-ironing a canine off a precipice with his rifle butt, a moment which genuinely made me laugh out loud. And not with the movie.

Indeed, the wolves are set up as if they’re going to be important, only to vanish from the film, before inexplicably returning for  a tacked-on coda which had me rolling my eyes. While I did like the concept of leaping right into the action, the resulting attempts to fill in the backstory are painfully clunky and add little if anything. It’s definitely a case where less would have been more: simply making it Clair vs. the kidnappers should have been sufficient. We certainly don’t need a distaff cross between two Liam Neeson films, Taken and The Grey. Carano still does have a physical presence that possesses potential. But she really needs to be making better choices.

Dir: David Hackl
Star: Gina Carano, Brendan Fehr, Richard Dreyfuss, Anton Gillis-Adelman

What Keeps You Alive

★★★★
“Predatory lesbian.”

In the modern, politically-correct era, it’s less common to see a film which has a sexual minority as an unabashed villain. Something like Basic Instinct got a lot of flak at the time, and would likely be rejected out of hand by gay-friendly Hollywood these days, as would Silence of the Lambs. So it was kinda refreshing to see a movie which brings us an unashamedly psycho lesbo in the form of Jackie (Anderson). Yet it’s not her sexuality which makes her evil, though she does feel she was “born this way” – or, as Jackie puts it: “It’s nature, not nurture.”

Certainly, the warning signs are there early, when she and her wife Jules (Allen) go for a first anniversary weekend in Jackie’s remote family cabin by a lake. Strike one: we rapidly discover Jackie is a fake name, something she hadn’t told her other half. Strike two: singing a song to Jules with lyrics like “There’s a demon inside / Blood, let it out.” Strike three: telling a story about a childhood hunting trip and a deer, ending in the line, “I just stood over it for the next 20 minutes and I watched the life slowly fade from her eyes.” If you’re not hearing alarm bells ringing loudly, you’ve clearly not seen enough movies. Jules, blinded by love, is about the only one apparently oblivious to the foreshadowing.

To the film’s credit, it doesn’t stretch this out [the trailer, below, is similarly open about the dynamic here], and it’s not too long before Jules is propelled off a cliff to her apparent doom. Except, by the time Jackie meanders down to the foot, ready for a tearful call to the authorities, the body has gone. The fall wasn’t as fatal as intended, and the rest of the film plays like a two-person version of Revenge, with Jules deciding, “I’m not going to let you do it again.” For did we mention Jackie’s first wife? Or the childhood friend who ‘drowned’ in the lake? Because she certainly does…

Almost inevitably for the genre, some suspension of disbelief is needed here. The injuries suffered by Jules in the initial fall are all but forgotten by the end, and there’s other foreshadowing which seems less than subtle, such as the very obvious gun hanging on a wall And was Jules a failed medical student? There’s one line of dialogue hinting towards that, and it would go some way to explaining a number of things. Couldn’t it perhaps have been made clearer?

Yet these are minor issues, which certainly did not impact my sheer enjoyment of this very much. There are two excellent lead performances, in addition to solid work by Minihan, which cranks up the tension impeccably – a rowing race across the lake is a particular highlight. It all makes for a sharp improvement on the director’s previous feature, It Stains the Sands Red – which also starred Allen and put her character in similarly perpetual peril – and is a fine example of a B-movie that punches above its weight.

Dir: Colin Minihan
Star: Hannah Emily Anderson, Brittany Allen, Martha MacIsaac, Joey Klein

Mission NinetyTwo

★★★
“Tree’s company”

The German-Canadian co-production is split into two feature-length parts – “Dragonfly” and “Energy” – but is absolutely a single entity, so that’s how it’ll be covered here. I was braced for something truly dreadful, after reading some particularly scathing reviews, and seeing no less than four directors listed in the credits for part one. In reality, it’s not bad. Not great, admittedly, but the three hours passed without my losing consciousness, which puts it ahead of certain recent genre entries I could mention.

The heroine is Sonia Engelhardt (Dordel), a scientist specializing in trees, who is carrying out research funded by a lumber company. She is on the verge of a major breakthrough when they suddenly yank her funding away. Sonia decides to proceed regardless, and in the forest, stumbles across something which puts her life in danger, along with those of local cops Bill Jones (Breker) and Analena Tempest (Reimer). They’re looking into shady ties between the lumber company, and other groups, not least a biker gang. Helping the good guys out in the subsequent investigation, with cryptic phone calls, are a shadowy, apparently governmental organization called “Libelle” (German for dragonfly, not that this is ever explained or relevant).

Part 1 ends with our trio having to high-tail it to Germany. Part 2 is much more of a solo story. Sonia gets thrown back onto her own resources – which includes, as the poster suggests, dying her originally blonde hair dark. She’s forced to become rather less of a pacifist, going all Katniss Everdeen on the baddies instead, as she eventually finds out what was going on, back in the forests of Canada. To be honest, I’d figured that revelation out quite a bit earlier (there’s a clue in the title). But as a cheerful gallop around rural Canadian and urban German landscapes, it’s not bad, and between Sonia and Analena, as well as villainess Jasmine Chang, there’s a decent quota of action heroines.

Digging into the background a bit, it appears this was originally a web series of 16 episodes, which explains both the rather odd 2-part structure, and probably also the multiple directors. It appears to have been a passion project for Dordel, who actually does hold a PhD in forest science from the University of British Columbia: she’s not just playing a scientist. As such, I can cut it some slack, and forgive the occasional rough edges. However, there are still problems too large to ignore with the script, which doesn’t flow at all, jerking abruptly from one plot point to the next, and with rather too many things happening without credible explanation, e.g. the ‘Libelle’ calls.

It’s a shame, as I like the underlying idea. A bad-ass ecologist, wielding a (very environmentally conscious!) bow and arrow against those who are destroying the planet – preferably involving the giant fireball depicted on the cover? Where do I sign up? Shame there’s a bit too much of a gap between that concept, and the execution which is delivered here.

Dir: Brent Crowell, Neil Every, Kryshan Randel, Guido Tölke
Star: Julia Dordel, Eric Breker, Anita Reimer, Michael Teigen

The Contract

★★½
“We’re from the government. We’re here to help.”

I bumped into this one on a stand of ultra-bargain DVDs, at a truck stop on the way home with Chris from an anniversary trip to Las Vegas. The cover, understandably, piqued my interest: the film didn’t manage to make such an impression, except in intermittent bursts. Hannah (Black) is an assassin, working under the tutelage of her father, Luc (Imbault). He spurns a lucrative contract, smelling a rat: Hannah goes behind his back and takes the job, only for Dad to be proven right, when the hit goes wrong. Luc is killed, leaving Hannah and her oblivious artist boyfriend James (Oliver) on the run from Senator Harmon (Williams). He’s a CIA honcho, who has just announced his plans to run for higher office, and needs to clean up certain elements of his past – now including Hannah and James.

Some of the action here is not bad, particularly a well-staged brawl in Hannah’s apartment while James is out for food (or something). It’s an impressive bit of hand-to-hand combat, which packs a wallop and leaves the apartment in severe need of redecoration. The hotel hit which starts the ball rolling is another highlight. Unfortunately, there are just not enough of these scenes, with the bulk of the movie being Hannah and James running away, or trying to find out what’s going on. This includes a spectacularly bad bit of technological babble. James suddenly reveals hacking skills, we discover that “You can trace the email using the graphic code,” and watch as the text of the message changes into numbers. Wot, mate? Do you even computer? I know this was back in the primitive days of 1999, but still…

The plotting is, in general, equally underwhelming. It took me a while to realize Luc was supposed to be Hannah’s father – I guess I should just have looked at the British DVD cover (right, and a bit spoilery)… Quite what Harmon is trying to do is also somewhat vague: it seems to be related to a long-ago black operation, which begs the question, why did he wait so long before deciding to tidy up all these loose ends? Williams makes for a half-decent villain and Black is also solid and watchable as Hannah. That isn’t enough, however, as the bland predictability of the storyline, one we’ve seen rather too often before, drags down the positives.

It all builds to the inevitable face-off, after Hannah tracks down the only surviving person who knows the truth about Harmon, who is now working as a school janitor. I guess being a government sponsored assassin doesn’t come with a decent pension plan. The final battle is actually the most disappointing bit of action here, swapping out the close-combat fights showcased earlier, for opponents standing some distance apart and popping off rounds at each other. You’re left with a solid appreciation for why this has been consigned to the discount racks at gas-stations.

Dir: K.C. Bascombe
Star: Johanna Black, Matthew Oliver, Billy Dee Williams, Laurent Imbault

Strange Empire

★★★★
“Strangely appealing.”

strangemepireThis Canadian TV series ran for 13 episodes, but was not renewed at the end of the first series, leaving the double shock which occurred at the end of the final episode, with no hope of resolution. That’s a shame, since there was a lot to like about its grubby portrayal of 1869 life, just north of the border between Canada and Montana. It begins when a wagon train of settlers, passing near the mining settlement of Janestown, is attacked and almost all the men are killed or driven away, leaving the women to fend for themselves. In particular, there is Kat Loving (Gee), a half-Indian sharpshooter who seeks the truth about her husband’s fate, and Rebecca Blithely (Farman), a female medical researcher, something almost unheard of at the time. But they are up against John Slotter (Poole), who runs Janestown as his own personal fiefdom, and whose wife Isabelle (Jones) is a match for the new arrivals in terms of her wits, and likely surpasses them when it comes to crafting of intrigues.

It’s the characters – the three women, and let’s not forget John, who eventually becomes the glue that binds them together in common cause – which drive this. Kat is certainly the most conventionally “heroic,” becoming the town’s sheriff, a position which brings her into direct conflict with Slotter; yet, she also has a murky past, being a wanted woman for the murder of a surveyor. Rebecca is the most difficult to get a handle on; while possessing a brilliant mind, she has a near-total lack of “people skills”, to the point of near-sociopathy. Finally, Isabelle possesses no scruples and is prepared to do absolutely whatever may be necessary to achieve her goals and escape her low-born upbringing – including seducing her husband’s father, when access to his money becomes necessary. They make a fascinating trio, well-drawn and well-portrayed by the actresses concerned.

The past year has seen a number of new takes on the Western genre, from Bone Tomahawk and The Hateful Eight to The RevenantEmpire does, perhaps, try somewhat too hard to be subversively revisionist, not least in the gratuitously transgender “cowboy”, who seems to have been added to the story for no reason than to appeal to trendy modern sensibilities. It’s much better when not attempting to pander to those, sticking with the Slotters’ efforts to keep their teetering mine business afloat, along with its probably more profitable brothel sideline, by any means necessary. This is balanced with Kat’s refusal to let John act like some kind of medieval baron, and insistence that he face the consequences of his murderous actions, which are becoming increasingly more frequent – if she can’t get justice for the massacre of the male settlers, perhaps there are other crimes that can be pinned on him.

While there are a number of side-threads (the strong role of Chinese businessman Ling is also very interesting), it’s this which drives the plot forward, and I was kept watching in the fervent hope of seeing Slotter get what he deserves. It’s to the show’s credit, with its unwillingness to collapse into a simple “black hat/white hat” mentality, that the outcome remained in doubt until almost the last few minutes of the final episode.

Created by: Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik
Star: Cara Gee, Melissa Farman, Tattiawna Jones, Aaron Poole

Hooker With a Rocket Launcher

promo6Some titles conceal their meaning behind layers of depth. Needless to say, this is not one of those – but it is, instead, one that demands your attention, and I was not surprised to hear that, according to its Canadian creator, Chris Greenaway,”The title definitely came first.” However, inspiration for this short came from a number of sources. Most obvious among those is Hobo With a Shotgun, the fake trailer originally part of the Grindhouse double-bill, directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, before eventually becoming a real (and wonderfully trashy) movie, starring Rutger Hauer.  But Chris says the project additionally “drew inspiration from 80s ‘hooker movies’ such as Angel and Vice Squad. As Misty’s weapon of choice indicates, we were also heavily influenced by the awesome Cannon Films action movies of the 80’s like the Death Wish sequels and Delta Force.” I’ll pause here, for anyone of a certain age to sigh nostalgically.

Lead actress Adrianne Winfield needed no convincing, having worked with Greenaway previously: “Adrianne enquired about the role when I posted a casting call so I didn’t actually have to pitch it to her at all. She really liked the premise.” The actual production was relatively quick, just 2-3 evenings – one of those a reshoot day – with between two and four hours of shooting each night. Perhaps surprisingly (or not, if you have experience of how tolerantly placid our Northern cousins tend to be!), the film-makers didn’t have any problem toting large weaponry round the streets. “We had no issues with the rocket launcher because up close it looks VERY fake,” laughs Greenaway. “We also shot at night when most people were out of the downtown area.”

Chris came relatively late to production. Originally a writer, of everything from comic strips to travel articles, he transitioned into making films after returning home in 2006, after teaching English in Japan. He recalls, “I went through a number of training workshops, and worked as a P/A on a number of sets while making the transition into writing screenplays.” He has been making web series since 2008, with six to his name so far, as well as a host of shorts, and directed his first full-length feature, Witchstalker, in 2013, which was released by Screamtime Films the following year. His IMDb filmography reads like a love-letter to pop culture and bad film, with titles such as Beach Blanket Lucha, Ninjas of the Caribbean and Escape From Ridgemont High.

But what of Misty, whose armaments would make the residents of Sin City‘s Old Town deeply envious? “The reactions have been very positive from the get go. We’ve had several very positive reviews and feedback from my existing fans on Youtube has also been great,” says Greenaway, who would like to see Hooker follow in the footsteps of its Hobo predecessor, and blossom from a trailer into a full-blown movie. “We’re hoping to do a crowdfunding campaign to make it into a feature film. Once I’m done with a few other projects I’m involved in at this time, we can go all in with this!” We certainly hope that’s a project which comes to fruition – some day, we will get to utter the immortal line, “Play Misty for me…” Here’s the film, in its glorious, full 132 seconds.

Garm Wars: The Last Druid

★★½
“In serious need of more tell, don’t show”

garmwarsOshii is best known for his anime work, but this isn’t his first foray into live-action; we already reviewed Assault Girls, and this has much the same strengths and, unfortunately, weaknesses. It looks wonderful, but the script here is virtually impenetrable, leaving the viewer on the outside, looking in. I had to watch this twice, because an hour into the first time, I realized I had absolutely not been paying the film any attention for at least 15 minutes. The setting is the planet Annwn, where a long, ongoing war has reduced the original eight tribes to Columba, who rule the air, versus the land-based Brigga, who also have the support of the few remaining members of the Kumtak tribe, who specialize in information technology. When an Brigga escape pod is retrieved, it contains Kumtak elder Wydd (Henriksen) and a druid (Howell), which is a shock, because druids, who provide a direct line of communication to the gods, are supposedly extinct. Wydd offers the druid’s potential power to the Columba in exchange for his tribe’s freedom, but the Brigga mount an attack and re-capture them. Pilot Khara (St-Pierre) leaves in hot pursuit, but is forced to crash-land and team up with Brigga warrior Skellig (Durand, a ringer for Benicio Del Toro), as Wydd’s agenda becomes clear.

Well, somewhat clear. Like many of the other plot elements, it’s never quite clarified to the point you’d be willing to swear to them. For example, the druid’s power is shown when plugged into the central computer, resulting in… a swirling, red-tinged CGI sphere. What is it? Why should we care? Oshii is untroubled by such concerns, being more concerned with creating a universe that, like Sucker Punch, appears almost entirely green-screen. It looks very nice, certainly, but only occasionally provokes anything more than wondering “Is this available in a format suitable for framing?”. An early narrated sequence gives you the setting; after that, you’re on your own, and the visuals come wrapped in some particularly leaden and indigestible pseudo-philosophical dialogue, that is neither as deep nor as interesting as Oshii seems to think.

Once the foursome reach their heavily wooded destination, things perk up somewhat, with a nicely-staged battle against a set of robotic guardians that is likely the film’s high-point. There are other potentially interesting, yet under-explored aspects, such as the way dead soldiers on both sides are resurrected to continue fighting – Khara is currently on her 23rd incarnation. However, the film ends just as things look about to kick off seriously, in an Attack on Titan kinda way, with far too many plot threads left unresolved. I can only presume this is intended to be the first in a multi-episode saga, since on its own, it feels severely incomplete. If I can’t argue with Oshii’s amazing eye for visuals, he really needs to ensure his scripts are  better developed.

Dir: Mamoru Oshii
Star: Melanie St-Pierre, Lance Henriksen, Kevin Durand, Summer H. Howell

Hellions

★★★½
“More than a trick, yet just short of a treat.”

hellionsJust in time for Halloween comes this atmospherically and spooky tale, in which teenager Dora (Rose) has a day – and a night – to remember. It begins with her discovering that she’s pregnant, news which initially causes her to stay home and brood over her future. She changes her mind and texts her boyfriend to come pick her up; he never shows, and instead she finds herself increasingly tormented by young, masked figures, who repeatedly knock on her door. The doctor (Sutherland) makes a house call, only to discover Dora has gone from four weeks to four months pregnant in just a few hours. Dora is also being plagued by nightmarish visions sacrifice, and it becomes clear that those little figures have some very unpleasant plans for our heroine and her baby-to-be.

The religious symbolism here is not exactly subtle: Dora’s Halloween costume is that of an angel, and once you see one of the creatures dissolve when accidentally exposed to salt, it’s clear they’re from down below (well, clear if you’ve ever watched Supernatural, at least!). It’s an angle I’d like to have seen better explored. The script perhaps needs a Peter Cushing type, to pop up as Reverend Exposition and lay some groundwork, instead of forcing the audience to figure everything out on the fly, such as the rules to the occult universe this inhabity. What it does deliver, is atmosphere by the bucketload, with McDonald drenching the screen in every kind of filter imaginable, creating a world where you’re never sure what’s real, and what’s a product of Dora’s escalating and deranged imagination. It’s helped by a very creepy score from Todor Kobakov and Ian LeFeuvre, which takes the first four notes of Silent Night, and riffs on them to impressively unsettling Carpenter-esque effect.

There’s also something thoroughly striking about the image of a shotgun-wielding angel (as shown), even if the cartridges have been re-loaded with salt, and Rose makes for an engaging heroine, who manages to be smart, without toppling over into Juno-esque slappability. McDonald was also responsible for the off-kilter zombie film, Pontypool, and the film is at is best when Dora is engaged in an Assault on Precinct 13-style – again, more Carpenter – battle against the ongoing siege of the hellions, with the help (or is it?) of a local cop (Patrick). Unfortunately, the story can’t quite sustain that pace, and runs out of steam notably in the final reel, which brings us round to where the film started, with Dora waking up in hospital. You could do worse in terms of a choice for your own Halloween viewing than this; if not quite a full-size chocolate bar, it’s definitely better than a stale Tootsie Roll.

Dir: Bruce McDonald
Star: Chloe Rose, Robert Patrick, Rossif Sutherland, Rachel Wilson

Mutant World

★½
“Well, it’s no Sharknado 2. It’s not even Sharknado 3.”

mutantworldThis SyFy original movie takes place mostly after an “Earth killer”-sized meteor has struck the Eastern seaboard of the United States. A group of Doomsday preppers, with slightly more warning than most, are able to take shelter inside their refuge, a former missile silo, and settle down to wait out the apocalypse going on above ground. 10 years later, they’re forced to send a small group back up to the surface as the result of damage to their solar panels. Leading that patrol is Melissa King (Deveaux), whose father Marcus (Kim Coates, whom you will recognize if you’re a Sons of Anarchy fan) was the leader of the group, but was trapped outside their sanctuary when the meteor hit. The patrol discovers that the radiation resulting from the impact has wiped out most of humanity – but the survivors have been mutated by it, and turned into thoroughly unpleasant monsters. Exploring further, they find what appears to be sanctuary, populated by other survivors, only to discover that when the sun goes down, they too are no longer human. Fortunately for them, assistance is at hand in the former of the Preacher (Ashanti), a motorcycle riding, warrior-priestess, who appears to be in contact with the actual remnants of mankind.

Oh, dear. The potential is here, but is buried deeper than a nuclear fallout shelter, because there is hardly any aspect that is not badly botched, right from the start: Coates, the only real “name” in the cast, is barely in the film, the kind of bait-and-switch which is rarely a good sign. The script is just terrible: what’s supposed to be a quick mission up top to fix the power, somehow spirals off into a jolly road-trip, with no apparent regard for the people back in the bunker. While the mutants’ glowing green eyes are kinda cool, that is about as far as both the imagination and the budget goes; there’s no explanation provided either, for why some people are totally mutated, some are only mutated at night (!), and others, like the Preacher, are apparently entirely untroubled by mutantism, despite wearing no more protection than a long trench-coat. And don’t even get me started on Ashanti’s performance, which is about as unconvincing as you’d expect from a singer-slash-dancer-slash-whatever.

The film is clearly trying to establish Melissa’s credentials as some kind of a bad-ass, judging by the poorly-choreographed fight she has with the shelter leader, before heading up top [also worth noting: no-one appears to have aged or been changed in the slightest by the passage of a decade, whether underground or on the surface]. Outside of very intermittent moments, it doesn’t work, though in comparison to Ashanti, Coates is positively an Oscar-winner. I did somewhat appreciate the element of role-reversal found here, with the most bad-ass roles given to the actresses. However, good intentions are never enough to overcome execution as horribly flawed as we see here. By the end, I was hoping for another meteor strike, to put both the characters and the viewers out of our mutual misery.

Dir: David Winning
Star: Holly Deveaux, Ashanti, Amber Marshall, Jason Cermak