Tag: psycho

Scorned

  By

★★★½
“Hell hath no fury, like…”

RIP James Caan. I mention his passing, because by coincidence I watched this the same day, and there are a couple of nods to Misery, one of Caan’s most famous works. There’s a character called Mrs. Wilkes, and we also get an explicitly acknowledged re-enactment of that scene. You know the one. That aside, I’d be hard pushed to call this a good film, yet I can’t deny I largely enjoyed it. It feels like an influence on Knock Knock, and if perhaps not quite coming up to that mark, it’s only marginal below, and I’m still a sucker for a full on, scenery chewing psycho bitch. In Sadie (McCord), we certainly get one.

She and boyfriend Kevin (Zane) are starting a romantic getaway in a remote cabin. Well, that’s his plan. Sadie’s is rather different, having found incriminating text messages on his phone – worse still, to her best friend, Jennifer (Bianca). Not helping matter: Sadie recently discovered she was pregnant, and out of concern for her unborn child, stopped taking her lithium and anti-psychotic meds. Kevin wakes to find himself tied to a chair, with some very awkward explaining to do, and Jennifer is being lured to the cabin with a not-so-genuine text message saying Kevin had split up from Sadie. Adding to the mix, a scary looking convict (Drucker) has just escaped from the prison just down the road, and is headed in their direction.

There’s one scene where I fell… well, I won’t say in love with the movie, but I’d not mind a one-night stand with it. It’s when Sadie has Jennifer and Kevin tied to the bed. She drags a microwave in there too, slaps Sadie’s pet in there and demands Kevin go down on his other woman, “or I will start this microwave, and her little doggie will cook from the inside out.” No, seriously. It’s clear that this film is not to be taken seriously, and the three performances at the core are perfect for that, with Zane and Bianca dead-panning their way through the carnage, playing the straight man and woman to good effect, in contrast to McCord’s over the top, dramatic excesses. For she is going to make Kevin and Jennifer pay for their betrayal. PAY, I tell ya!

Turns out she was brought up in a mental facility and given electroshock therapy, after an incident when she was 12. She is, in essence, the poster child for “Don’t stick your dick in crazy.” Which makes it all more fun to watch her tormenting the errant couple for their sin. It all builds, inevitably, to a climax which is just as gloriously silly. I mean, who keeps a loaded spear-gun on their sideboard? Kevin, meanwhile, is moving with the agility of a gazelle, considering what happened to his ankle previously. All that said, I genuinely didn’t know who would survive at the end. I’ll say it again: I enjoyed this considerably more than I would necessarily recommend it, and the rating above reflects the former.

Dir: Mark Jones
Star: AnnaLynne McCord, Billy Zane, Viva Bianca, Doug Drucker 

Evangeline: Memoir of a Teenage Serial Killer, by KC Franks

  By

Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

When I see “Reader discretion is advised,” on an Amazon page, I tend to take it with a grain of salt. I’ve been enjoying media at the outer edges for longer than most readers here have been alive, and so am not easily shocked, disturbed or offended, to put it mildly. I’m ussure this quite managed to do any of those, but I will definitely say this: yes, reader discretion is advised. This is a rough, nasty and often unpleasant read. But it’s dealing with rough, nasty and often unpleasant topics, so the approach is entirely in keeping with the subject matter and not inappropriate.

The “heroine” – and I use quotes advisedly – is Angeline Gottschalk, a teenage girl who lives in rural Nebraska and has a truly unfortunate life. Her mother is mentally ill, she’s bullied at high school (in part due to having a stutter), and her stepfather, a local deputy sheriff, has bee abusing Angeline in the most vile ways imaginable since she was aged eleven. Eventually, Angeline’s psyche snapped, and split off an alternate personality as a way of handling the abuse – basically, acting as her psychological stunt double. Evangeline, as the other part of Angeline is named, calls herself “Defender of the weak. Champion of the abused. Bold. Fearless. And extremely pissed-off.” But the title of the book is arguably more accurate: serial killer. 

Oh, her targets are more than a little Dexter-like, to be sure – beginning with the stepfather, who will not be abusing anyone, ever again. But Evangeline then decides to target the deserving, in her mind, sex offenders who live in the local area. Rather than just being a stand-in for Angeline in the darkest hours, she begins to act independently, setting up a conflict between the two personas, which only one can win. For Angeline wants nothing more than to be left alone – ideally with her crush, Caleb Quinn. Except, Caleb’s brother, Billy is one of her biggest tormentors, and he has friends whose intentions and actions a) are even worse, and b) make them prime targets for Evangeline’s brutal methods of summary justice.

As you can perhaps guess, it’s all going to get very messy, both in the emotional and blood-spattered senses. The writing style feels a little rough and ready, almost bordering on the literary version of torture porn in some scenes. Franks tears into the violence with much the same glee that Evangeline tears into her victims: male readers may find themselves crossing their legs uncomfortably from time to time. There’s a near-total lack of empathetic characters in this: even Angeline is little more than a human piñata for life’s torments. Still, it’s sometimes good to peer over the edge into the abyss of humanity’s darkest depths, and this book certainly delivers on that. A stand-alone novel is fine. Any concept of a series here would not be something of interest.

Author: KC Franks
Publisher: Seven Crows Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Stand-alone novel.

Grotesque

  By

★★
“Plastic surgery disaster.”

Mildred Moyer (Chamberlain) has a problem, and it’s as plain as the nose on her face. Actually, it is the nose on her face, which would not look out of place – as one callous workmate points out – on a certain wooden boy of fairy-tale renown. Needless to say, her life has been made unpleasant by cruel comments from strangers and acquaintances. Finally, she has had enough and goes to a shady plastic surgeon to get it fixed. Unsurprisingly, this goes wrong – the fact her appointment is at 11 pm in the basement of a strip-club might have been a clue – and she is left horribly disfigured as a result. This drives her over the edge, and she vows savage revenge on all those who had wronged her.

There’s a really weird tone to this. You would think, given the subject matter, that it would be a dark movie, but Rhiness seems to be aiming more for humour as the over-arching atmosphere. Now, there’s obviously an overlap for horror and comedy, but it’s a cross-pollination of genres which is hard to pull off. The likes of Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson and Stuart Gordon can do it. Rhiness… not so much. Indeed, if you told me you didn’t find this either horrific or funny, that would feel like fair comment. Occasional moments do briefly achieve a solid foot in either camp, in my opinion. But not for long, and none manage to combine them effectively.

It is clear that the director is going for parodic excess in many elements: Mildred’s nose is so extreme as to be a clear indicator of that, and a lot of the performances go down similarly broad lines. Her ultimate nemesis, Blanche (Whelan), could not be a more broad depiction of a “mean girl” if she tried, and I strongly suspect she was, indeed, trying for that. But I felt the switch in Mildred from meek and milquetoast to mass-murdering psychopath felt sudden and forced. Perhaps it was having watched Joker the previous night, which took its time to bring the audience along on that transition, rather than just going “Hey, it’s time for her to go berserk.”

The killings are a mixed bag, and that’s being kind. Even allowing for the low-budget some of the effects are simply not good enough. Again, the deaths don’t generate much of anything on the viewer, only occasionally going sufficiently over the top to be amusing. However, Rhiness and team do deserve credit for keeping things simple: the goals here are not exactly lofty, and the lack of ambition and pretension is likely for the best. Chamberlain also helps to keep the project’s head above water, and even when the story isn’t doing enough to sustain your attention, her performance is quirky and engaging. But I can’t help thinking the whole project would have been better off deciding to be either a horror film or a comedy, and sticking with one or the other.

Dir: Brandon Rhiness
Star: Elizabeth Chamberlain, Julie Whelan, Hudsynn Grace Kennedy, Jaime Hill

Orphan: First Kill

  By

★★★
“This sister is still doing it for herself.”

I’ve not seen the original Orphan. I suspect this does not matter very much, since what we have here is a prequel. I will admit to having been lured in by the barking mad central idea. It does justice to the lunacy, though can’t sustain itself entirely, and at least somewhat collapses under its own weight. We begin in Estonia, where Leena (Fuhrman) is a very, very angry 31-year-old. Not without justification, being trapped in a 9-year-old’s body due to a hormonal condition. Previous violence has got her committed to a secure facility, but Leena breaks out and decides to adopt the identity of Esther Albright, an American child who went missing years previously. 

This plan works surprisingly well, with few questions being asked and no pesky DNA tests. There is some precedent: the documentary The Imposter chronicles the story of a con artist who convinced a Texas family he was their long-lost son. There is also a good reason why Mom Tricia (Stiles) and brother Gunnar (Finlan) don’t want to rock the boat. Quite why Dad Allen (Sutherland) doesn’t do his due diligence is less clear. So the film can happen, I guess. It’s all very awkward, especially when “Esther” starts having most undaughterly feelings towards her not-father. Yeah, the whole thing is creepy on a variety of levels, and gets increasingly so, the more we learn about the Albright family and their assorted dysfunctions. 

I have to say, the makers did a startling job with Fuhrman, who in reality is now thirteen years older than she was at the time she starred in Orphan. They use a combination of makeup, forced perspective shots and child stand-ins to have her play a nine-year-old, and you truly cannot see the joins. Just a pity the same level of effort and craftsmanship was not applied to the story elements. Having read a synopsis of the original movie, if not exactly an everyday story of normal folk, it seems it might not require the same helping of what Chris calls “I’m so sure…” This likely goes to a solid 11 in that department. 

Not that it matters, providing you are fine with a pot-boiler of lurid elements, that exist largely to make the viewer feel uncomfortable. Which is, I guess, I point of most horror, admittedly. The tension between mother and “daughter” escalate like a pressure cooker, leading to a final confrontation, pitting them against each other in a burning building which is… Well, I’d say it is undeniably in line with what has got us to that point. In other words, it’s ludicrous and overblown, yet I’d be lying if I said I was not entertained. I do wish they had gone full-throttle into the possibilities of the scenario, for example sending Esther off to school to interact with actual nine-year-olds. The implications of the scenario are, overall, probably more horrific than the way it plays out on the screen. 

Dir: William Brent Bell
Star: Isabelle Fuhrman, Julia Stiles, Rossif Sutherland, Matthew Finlan

Mercy Falls

  By

★★★
“Come to beautiful Scotland! And die!”

Even though I haven’t lived there since the eighties, I remain a sucker for a Scottish film. This delivers, with no shortage of rugged mountain landscapes, beautiful lochs, a ceilidh band and trees. So. Many. Trees. The foliage is understandable, because most of it takes places in the woods, where Rhona (Lyle) and her friends are looking for a cabin, deep in the wilds, which belonged to her late father. To help find it, they enlist the help of local Carla (McKeown), whom they meet down the pub when they have a pre-trip planning get-together. She initially seems fun to be with. But once they’re away from civilization, a shocking incident proves she… has issues, shall we say. And might not be the only one in the party.

The “trip into the woods goes wrong” subgenre of horror has been a staple of the industry for decades – not least because, it’s cheap to do. Why bother with expensive sets, when you can just run around a forest for the bulk of your running time? [Though from previous conversations with Scottish film-makers, the dreaded blood-sucking local insects know as midges, might make that choice of location a decision to regret!] There’s not a lot new in this incarnation of it. Having the threat come from inside the party is a moderate twist, as is having both leads being women. But horror, generally, isn’t something which requires innovation. It’s considerably more about the execution. Or, perhaps, the executionS.

There, this film is a bit of a mixed bag. If the supporting characters aren’t much more than stock characters: the slut, the jackass, the nerd (that would be the guy reading Homer in the woods!), they serve their purpose, which is mostly to die at the hands of Carla. The effects are limited, but I’d say, respectable enough. One extended impalement is likely the highlight, helped by the victim’s enthusiastic selling of their injury. The script is perhaps the weakest element, with a few moments which had us rolling our eyes, in particular the “we might be going to die, so let’s go ahead and have sex” scene. At 103 minutes, trimming might be warranted, as this stretches the material a bit thin. On the other hand: did I mention the lovely scenery?

It all builds as you’d expect, to a somewhat decent face-off between the heroine and villainess. It is somewhat problematic, in that the latter’s background should give her such an edge, as to be able to wipe the floor with Rhona inside ten seconds. Something like handicapping Carla with an injury could have helped make the playing field feel less one-sided. However, we were still reasonably invested in things by this point, and McKeown definitely makes for a convincing nemesis, capable from flicking an internal switch and going from friendly into “you are all going to die” mode in a moment. Nobody could accuse this of ambition, yet it does what it does well enough to entertain us.

Dir: Ryan Hendrick
Star: Lauren Lyle, Nicolette McKeown, James Watterson, Layla Kirk
Mercy Falls is available now on Tubi.

Sever

  By

★★
“When you order À l’interieur on Wish…”

The French film À l’interieur (a.k.a. Inside) is one of the most ferocious and intense of all action-heroine films. It’s the story of a pregnant woman who has to defend herself and her unborn child from an absolute psycho who turns up on the doorstep of her remote house one night. This film, more or less, has the same plot. It is, however, a pale imitation in just about every single way. Where À l’interieur was spare and taut, this is bloated and meandering. When it had nothing but excellent performances, the ones here are largely poor or worse. And while the French movie delivered on its hellish premise, this possesses almost no impact at all.

The targets here are Cord (Caillouet) and Mindy (Kavchak), an apparently happily married couple, who are having a weekend getaway at their family retreat, deep in the Rocky Mountains. Their vacation is interrupted by the arrival on their doorstep of a stranger, a woman who claims to need help. With the cabin having no phone, and ‐ this is my thoroughly unsurprised face – being out of cellphone range, Cord invites her to stay the night, without even consulting his wife. This is the first of many truly poor decisions the couple will make. For the woman is Martha (Cruz), who recently staged a brutal escape from the psychiatric facility in which she was incarcerated, and is now intent on making her unwitting hosts, Cord in particular, pay for the sins of the past.

Which is part of the issue: the resulting narrative is so convoluted it becomes ridiculous. Though especially in the final act, I actually found myself thoroughly amused by its excesses. The problem is, I think I was supposed to take it seriously. Yeah, that’s gonna be a “No” from me, dawg. The other big flaw are the performances of Kavchak and, especially, Caillouet. The former is flat and thoroughly unconvincing as a woman in peril of her life. She is still Oscar-worthy compared to the oak wardrobe which is her on-screen husband, delivering lines with all the energy of an airport departure announcement. A cord of wood might have made a better Cord.

The only thing which kept this watchable was Cruz (credited as Batya Haynes). Her bible-spouting religious fruitcake was a genuinely scary creature, truly devoted to her philosophy of life. If it may not be one with which you can agree, it is possible to see where she’s coming from. You certainly have to admire the commitment to her chosen purpose, even though such fanaticism is terrifying at the same time. It’s just a shame it’s not a performance in the service of a better movie. I’ve just realized I’m not even sure if Mindy actually was pregnant. If so, it never played much part in proceedings. I suspect I may simply have spliced that plot-point in from another, far superior one. No prizes for guessing where.

Dir: Matthew Ryan Anderson
Star: Batya Cruz, Maia Kavchak, Garret Caillouet, Phyllis Spielman

Ride or Die

  By

★½
“Die, please.”

This is not to be confused with the rather higher profile i.e. it’s available on Netflix, Japanese film with the same title, made the same year, and covering a not dissimilar theme. Both are about a woman who is prepared to commit murder, in order to save their best friend from an abusive relationship. However, after the killing in question, the films take divergent paths. The Japflix version becomes a road-trip movie, with the killer and her friend going on the run. This, however, focuses heavily on the killer, whose already fragile mental state falls apart completely, after she discovers that things weren’t quite as she had been led to believe. It’s not her first time at the homicide rodeo either.

For that to work, it needs to have a convincing relationship at its core, and this fails miserably on that level. Ashley (Allen) may be willing to do anything for Mandy (Brooks), but we are never shown why this might be the case: just told it, and expected to accept this at face-value. It’s less credible than the BFFs in Jennifer’s Body, and that is a low bar indeed. It doesn’t help that Brooks is, to put it bluntly, one of the worst actresses I’ve seen given a major role in a movie for a very long time. Yet she’s not ever the worst in this movie: that goes to the “grandmother” who recites her lines from off-screen. My granny would have delivered them with greater conviction, and she has been dead for approaching forty years.

Allen is, at least relatively, watchable, with a smokey voice which makes her resemble a young version of Yancy Butler. The film did manage to hold my attention for about 20 minutes. This began with Ash shooting the abusive boyfriend (Rehman) in the face, and having to deal with an unexpected witness (Blundon), and runs through the revelation that upends Ashley’s worldview. However, the movie singularly fails to do anything significant with it, and all the hallucinatory nonsense thereafter, with Ash being visited by her victims, was completely unable to re-ignite my interest. There is zero development, and too many strands are painstakingly set up, only to go nowhere, e.g. the nosy waitress, another performance which it would be kind to call thoroughly wretched.

The complete lack of any official interest in the killing spree is understandable, the budget clearly not stretching to any forces in authority. Yet this does not excuse the second half degenerating into dull scenes of Ashley driving around, mindless chit-chat or PG-rated lesbian canoodling with more people who can’t emote their way out of a moist paper-bag. In (marginal) defense, they are not helped by a number of scenes apparently being re-dubbed in post, or a musical score that doesn’t so much complement the on-screen action, as compete vigorously with it for attention. It’s a race to the bottom there, and neither aspect gets out of here alive.

Dir: Aly Hardt
Star: Vanessa Allen, Hannah Brooks, Celeste Blandon, Raavian Rehman

The Girl Who Got Away

  By

★★★
“The plot that got away.”

This isn’t the first movie I’ve seen, in which a woman escapes apparent death at the hands of a serial killer, only for them to track her down years later. However, the twist in the narrative here, which perhaps pushed it over the necessary boundary for inclusion on the site, is that the killer is also female. The victim is Christina Bowden (Johnson), who as a young girl was the sole survivor of Elizabeth Caulfield (Tuckerman) and her “child farm”, for want of a better phrase. Bowden has slowly put her life back together and is now a school teacher. She’s also looking to adopt another troubled teen, Lisa Spencer (McCarthy), and pay it forward. Then she gets a visit from local sheriff Jamie Nwosu (Iwuji).

For Caulfield has escaped during a transfer, and may be heading to finish what she started. Jamie does what he can to offer protection, but the stress is clearly taking an increasing toll on Christina and her psyche. Her relationship with Lisa disintegrates ad she tries to keep her in the dark about her own past.  Then dead bodies start to pile up. At first, it seems Caulfield is the obvious suspect, until the victims become people about whom she wouldn’t even know about, let alone have any reason to kill… If you are anything like me, you’re perhaps a bit ahead of the story, and there are some elements where you wonder why everyone is so slow to put the pieces together.

To the film’s credit it doesn’t stretch these aspects excessively. On the other hand, I still have questions about a number of the developments in the final act, some of which had me muttering “Hang on a moment…” under my breath. I’m prepared to cut it a certain bit of slack, for what had been a slow burn to that point, suddenly turned on the nitrous, and went fairly intense grand guignol. It’s a trade-off I’m usually prepared to make. It does help balance a movie that does feel overlong at 116 minutes, with elements in the early going, that never come to any particular fruition. I’d rather have seen more of Caulfield, who is backgrounded too far to be a truly effective horror threat.

That may at least be somewhat deliberate, as this isn’t exactly the horror movie implied by the poster. It’s perhaps more of a psychological drama, with thriller components. Regardless of genre or marketing, the performances are generally solid though. Johnson does an effective job of playing someone with a rough past, whose future suddenly does not look all that bright either. Over the course of proceedings, it’s certainly one hell of a character arc, and the audience are more or less compelled to go along with her, willingly or not. I can’t say it’s entirely successful as an entity, yet there are moments here that are effective enough. It may have been almost two hours, yet I didn’t feel they were entirely wasted.

Dir: Michael Morrissey
Star: Lexi Johnson, Chukwudi Iwuji, Willow McCarthy, Kaye Tuckerman

A Serial Killer’s Guide to Life

  By

★★½
“Too politely British for its own good.”

Lou Farnt (Brayben) is stuck in her life, with a dead-end job, no apparent friends to speak of, and still living with her domineering mother (Ball). She seeks escape from one self-help guru after another, spending her money on their books, DVDs and audio-tapes, though with little or no apparent positive results. Then, she meets the unconventional Val Stone (Roe), who lives in a seaside caravan and promises to change Lou’s life forever. After some qualms, she agrees to depart with Lou, who does indeed deliver on her promise. For, as the title suggests, Val is a psychotic if smart killer, who is specifically targetting those same gurus. Either she regards them as a curse on humanity with their vapid schemes, or she simply wants to dispose of the competition.

It seems clear that writer-director Roe holds a strong, likely personal grudge against self-help tutors, in order to create a movie which is largely based on showing their flaws, and then killing them off. This isn’t a cause I particularly care about: if not my cup of tea, I’m sure some people find them helpful. So this naturally limited my buy-in to the concept here. Kill off social media “influencers,” reality TV celebrities or Los Angeles Dodgers fans, and I’d be right there with you. Motivational speakers? Meh. It is somewhat amusing how naive Lou is, in regard to Val’s extra-curricular activities, and how long it takes her to realize she is taking life advice from a psychopath.

When she does, her reaction is little more than a shrug, admitting it feels quite empowering to kill. The movie really needs to buy into this concept considerably further, rather than gently nodding its head. The likes of Killing Eve have shown even we British can engage in a gleeful embrace of the darker side of things. The script here is simply too gentle for the subject matter, not least with much of the violence happening off-screen. We never get much insight into what makes it particularly empowering, since there’s no sense of catharsis for Lou. These aren’t people who have wronged her in any way, more than the most superficial. Unless “being annoying” is a capital crime? In which case a lot of people are in trouble…

I enjoyed Roe’s performance, which does have much of the same failure to give a damn as Villanelle in Eve. But how much you get out of it may depend on two things. Firstly, how long you see the end twist coming before it’s announced. Note: not if, when. For it’s one that most viewers will see coming, especially if they are familiar with a couple of cult movies from 1999 and 2003, the latter reviewed here. The other issue is how much this bothers you. Personally, less than I’d have expected. Though that may reflect the film’s general lack of impact. It feels like the kind of horror-comedy which would rather invite you in for a nice cup of tea than horrify you.

Dir: Staten Cousins Roe
Star: Katie Brayben, Poppy Roe, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Sarah Ball

Rendez-vous

  By

★★★★
“There’s so many crazy people out there…”

I did not originally expect to be reviewing this here. I watched it because of the technical elements, which I’ll get to in a bit. However, by the end, it does qualify – though you certainly wouldn’t think so from how things begin. It gets underway with Lili (Puig) waiting for a date arranged over the Internet with Eduardo (Alcantara). He shows up late, very apologetic after having been mugged, and having had his phone taken, but is utterly charming, and the chemistry with Lili is immediate. They end up back at his place for dinner. But as he’s cooking on the kitchen, the tone of the evening changes, when she hears his supposedly stolen phone going off in his jacket…

That’s the beginning of a shift in content from warm romance into something considerably darker, and in which the dynamic changes several times before the final credits roll. As the above indicates, it initially seems that Eduardo is the problem. However, it’s considerably more complex, with Lili also having her own secrets. Quite how it’ll play out remains in doubt until the final scene, with the best-laid plans going astray along the route. I will say this though: if I ever engage in a kidnapping scheme, I won’t be answering the door to visitors. This does deliver some black comedy, when a drunk pal of Eduardo swings by, and wildly misinterprets the situation unfolding in front of his booze-filled eyes.

I mentioned the technical side. The hook here is the movie unfolds in a single, 100+ minute shot. Even more startling is what director Arrayales said: “We couldn’t afford another chance to shoot the movie again, so the movie is the only take we did. We really prepared hard, for three weeks with the actors, and a week with the DP just to plan the whole movie. That was about it: four or five weeks of rehearsals and one chance to make it.” Hard not to be impressed. While certainly not the first to use a single shot, most either fake it or, at least, get to use multiple takes. It’s a tribute to the makers that, after initially being the focus, you largely forget about the gimmick, with the story and characters taking over.

A good portion of the proceedings are more mental than physical. Eduardo pushes Lili for what he believes to be the truth, while she is resolute in stating he has got the situation very, very wrong. However, it eventually becomes more direct in its action, with a hunt unfolding around the two levels of Eduardo’s house (complete with make-up and effects artists sneaking around to apply their art out of shot!). You may well figure out the final direction before it happens, yet I’d be impressed if you accurately predict the specifics of the resolution. Though it’s not especially important if you do. Between the technical execution and the other elements, there’s more than sufficient elsewhere to justify the experience. 

Dir: Pablo Olmos Arrayales
Star: Helena Puig, Antonio Alcantara