★★★½
“Better living through abuse?”
By coincidence, I watched this not longer after the not very good Hunt Club, which covers a not dissimilar topic of women being hunted for sport. This, however, does considerably better with the concept, though it does take a while to get to that point. It begins with Erin (Bendz) going with her boyfriend, Adam (Nelson), to meet his parents for the first time. Also there is his brother and his new girlfriend, Sarah (Whillans). A few ignored red flags and a glass of drugged wine later, the two girls wake to discover themselves the latest in a long line of unwilling blood donors, ready to have their juices extracted and sold to the rich as rejuvenating formula.
And it works, too, as is proven by ageless matriarch Margret (Svetek). However, what the family don’t realize, is Erin is not the helpless victim they wanted. She had been abducted while very young, and subjected to years of horrific treatment, before escaping, brutally killing her kidnappers in the process. So this isn’t her first rodeo, and she’s not happy about it. Inexplicably – and this definitely had me rolling my eyes – Margret does not simply kill Erin, even after becoming fully aware of the threat posed, opting to make her one of the “rabbits” for the hunt. Later, Margret again has the jump on Erin, but opts instead for the old hand-to-hand combat thing. Guess how that works out for her?
Yeah, the story has issues. Such as this supposedly being set in Scotland (and it was indeed filmed there), where the family settled in the 19th century. Yet there’s no Scottish accents to be heard. I’m personally offended. To be honest, the basic concept sounds like some crazy conspiracy theory; if Margret had shape-shifted into a lizard person, I probably would not have been surprised. The notion of Erin being a ticking time-bomb reminded me a bit of Jolt, and its “intermittent explosive disorder”, though some more background might have helped. Perhaps Eric could have escaped from a psychiatric facility? It’s hard to imagine someone who committed multiple murders, even given the circumstances, simply being given a lollipop and released back into the community, with a pat on the head.
Fortunately, this kind of thing never relies on the story. We’re here for the carnage, and the film doesn’t hold back there, with only occasionally unconvincing CGI blood squibbing. The rest is full-on practical, with the heroine ending up wearing a full crimson mask – and it’s not her own blood. Most of the action choreography is solid, though there a few shots where the distances don’t quite match. But it’s nicely terse, with the highlight likely the fight between Erin and Margret in a disused churchyard. There’s some overlap of personnel with Army of One, yet this is notably better. Or, at least, notably more fun, and I’ll happily settle for entertaining nonsense over plain nonsense, any day.
Dir: David Ryan Keith
Star: Hannaj Bang Bendz, Antonia Whillans, Marta Svetek, Derek Nelson


On Amazon, this is subtitled, “A full-throttle Thailand thriller,” but that’s a little bit of a misleading label. The bulk of the story – at least, the bits that matter – actually take place in China. The book itself goes with “A full-throttle thriller throughout Asia,” Except it starts off in the not-exactly Asian setting of San Bernardino, California, where Bree Thomas is just about to graduate. This is despite the problems of her adopted family, who she was sent to live with after her parents were killed in Thailand. She gets a chance to escape it all, in the form of an apprentice program with the Meng Foundation, a charitable group who help refugees around the world.
To be honest, I enjoyed this a good bit more than the rating above would indicate – probably another star or so. But I have a particular tolerance for cinema with rough edges, which I know not everyone will share. This is such an entity. I can’t really recommend it, since most people won’t be able to get past the micro-budget anesthetics, which the film rarely bothers even to try and hide. But I could appreciate the obvious passion that went into this. Put it this way, if I had twenty quid with which to make a movie, it could end up looking something like this. Probably not with such a kick-ass poster though.
In one of the odder remakes I’ve seen in a while, this is a repurposing of the French 2013 film, Les reines du ring, which translates as “Queens of the Ring”. The core concept is retained, but the location is changed from France to Mexico, and the idea is expanded to a ten-part series. These changes make for a bit of a mixed blessing. Pro wrestling is certainly a more well-established part of the cultural landscape in Mexico, where lucha libre is extremely popular. On the other hand, the multiplication of the running time a factor of about four, leads to the necessary injection of superfluous storylines, which definitely reduced the entertainment value as far as I was concerned. It’s less a wrestling soap-opera, than a soap-opera with wrestling in it.
I was going to go with “Tree’s company” as the tagline, before I realized I’ve actually used that in three separate, forest-set movies. So I decided to adjust it slightly, and what’s above is indeed very apt. There is a cast of three (3) and the entire thing unfolds in the woods. There isn’t a single set or interior shot in the whole film. Indeed, if you’d asked me, I’d have said this had all the hallmarks of a COVID-era project, designed to be shot with a small cast and in a nicely sanitary, outdoor location. Not so, even though Tubi dates it as 2020. There was a screening in April 2019, well before anyone had heard of Wuhan, and the IMDb gives it a year of 2017.
I had quite forgotten that Rose was part of John Wick: Chapter 2 in 2017. That
I think I can point almost to the exact point where this one jumped the shark. It had started well enough. Jamie Austen works for the CIA, taking down human traffickers across the world, in conjunction with a non-governmental organization called Save the Girls. Now, I have questions here: why exactly would the CIA
After a year which has been filled with disappointments and films which have failed to generate much reaction beyond a mild “Meh,” it’s nice to see one which certainly surpasses expectations. Indeed, with about two months left to go in 2023, this would certainly be a finalist for GWG Film of the Year, were there to be such an award, and potentially could walk away with that hypothetical trophy. It’s the kind of movie which, even when you know exactly what’s about to happen, still delivers in a way that can generate an undeniable reaction. Considering my expectations going in were not much more than the made-for-TV level – this being a BET channel exclusive – it surpassed those greatly.
The heroine is
At times this feels more like a fancy dress party than a film. People dressed up as nuns. People dressed up as clowns. People dressed as priests. This probably isn’t surprising, considering that it feels like Patrick is cosplaying as a film-maker. There’s little or no evidence to indicate he knows how to construct a coherent or interesting narrative. Instead, he proceeds by simply dropping in scenes which, I gueaa, are supposed to be “amusing”, without rhyme or reason. I called Aureille the heroine above, though there’s precious little to make her so. I presumed she is supposed to be the “good guy”, because there are no other credible candidates for that role, so she earns it by default.
I can’t recall seeing an action heroine movie with