Author: Jim McLennan

The Yard: seasons 1 + 2

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★★★½
“Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?”

I really must get round to reviewing Wentworth. The Australian women-in-prison drama certainly deserves coverage here, and has provided some of the best television we’ve enjoyed in the 2010’s. I keep intending to do so, but suspect that will now likely have to wait until after the show comes to a conclusion, following its ninth and final season in 2021. In the meantime, however, I do get to review the Turkish remake of the show. If you’ve seen Wentworth, this version is perhaps as unnecessary as any Hollywood remake of a familiar foreign film. Yet there are enough differences – both in story and culture – that I didn’t mind too much.

The central character is Deniz Demir, a married woman whose husband is shot in murky circumstances, and is sent to prison while the investigation proceeds. There, she falls in with one of the jail’s two “queen bees”, long-term inmate Azra Kaya (Moray). Azra is engaged in a power struggle with her rival, Kudret Ozturk (Kose), the matriarch of a criminal family on the outside. Initially, Deniz is simply trying to keep her nose clean and her head down, while waiting for resolution to her case. However, it’s never as simple as that, and she soon finds herself in deep trouble, especially after being found standing over the corpse of the facility’s warden, holding the apparent murder weapon. Meanwhile, things on the outside are equally troublesome, as Deniz’s teenage daughter, Ecem (Akar) has started a relationship with Alp – who just happens to be the son of Kudret.

When compared to Wentworth, there are some interesting differences, both in content and style. The melodrama here is definitely cranked up several notches: after one tragic moment, it feels like Deniz spends the next six episodes weeping in her cell. However, what you won’t see here is any lesbian canoodling, or even insinuations of such things, I imagine in deference to the still fairly religious nature of Turkey. What this version does, and particularly well, is use music as background to the drama as it plays out. This begins with the domestic clash which opens proceedings, and draws out of a broad tonal range, from 17th-century classical (Henry Purcell’s Dido’s Lament gets used to great effect in the final episode) through to Turkish contemporary pop songs.

I read that, apparently, it aired in Turkey in 2½ hour chunks. Netflix has, wisely, cut these up into 45-minute episodes. It also managed to ruffle the feathers of some authorities, who proclaimed – before it was shown, naturally – that the show would “Feed into public perceptions that prisons impose torture [on inmates]… The promotion of such perceptions of prisons serve the purposes of some terror organizations.” I wouldn’t say it was as good as that… But it’s certainly not bad at all, and if I weren’t aware of its inspiration, this could well be looking at a seal of approval. As is, I do have to ding it slightly for familiarity, and would still point you in the direction of the original instead.

Dir: Yüksel Aksu, Hülya Gezer and Safak Bal 
Star: Demet Evgar, Ceren Moray, Nursel Kose, Eslem Akar
a.k.a. Avlu

Gone (2012)

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★★½
“But not ENTIRELY forgotten…”

The life of Jill Conway (Seyfried) is slowly returning to somewhat normal, following her abduction by a serial killer in the Pacific Northwest.  She was held in a forest pit, and barely managed to escape with her life. However, the lack of physical evidence and a history of mental health problems, helped cause the authorities not to believe her story. When Jill’s sister Molly vanishes, she’s certain the same killer is responsible, and when the police again fail to take her seriously, begins investigating herself. But when the cops find out this former mental patient is packing heat, Jill becomes a fugitive herself.

This largely falls into the category of competently forgettable. There’s precious little here that will stick in the mind either way, for positive or negative reasons. Seyfried is admirably feisty, refusing to let anything interfere with her single-minded goal of rescuing sis. This persistence and raw guts displayed make her previous escape from the psycho’s clutches that necessary bit more plausible. Post-abduction, Jill comes over as a little unhinged, and you can see why the police might find it difficult to believe some of her claims. Yet this actually works to the benefit of her investigation, because when she starts waving her gun around, you can understand why whoever the business end is pointed at, would be concerned.

There’s just precious little in the way of surprises here. For instance, we never doubt she was telling the truth about her previous experience, or that the killer is indeed real, despite her willingness to lie to anyone and everyone in pursuit of Molly. More ambivalence about this – heck, make Jill the killer in the end! – would at least have separated this from the slew of other “Is her brain making it all up or not?” thrillers. Might also have saved the director from having to resort to one of the oldest cliches in the book, the Cat Attack Scare. The lack of any meaningful background on the killer is also a problem, leaving him a vague threat of no particular intent: why does he dig a pit in the woods for his victims? Any film like this is always going to be compared, probably unfavourably, to Silence of the Lambs. But Jim a.k.a. “Digger” here, is definitely no Buffalo Bill.

This motivation matters, because some of his actions – which, unfortunately, I can’t detail in a non-spoilerish way – are hard to make sense of. I get he’s annoyed that Jill escaped him. But his plan to lure her back into the woods at the dead of night… It offers little a well-chloroformed rag would not have been able to accomplish, with considerably less fuss. The movie did just about succeed in holding my interest, and the lack of any romantic element for the heroine was pleasant. However, you won’t have to have delved very deep into the genre, to find example of this kind of thing, done considerably better.

Dir: Heitor Dhalia
Star: Amanda Seyfried, Daniel Sunjata, Jennifer Carpenter, Sebastian Stan

Women of Mafia 2

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★★★½
“Poles apart, once more.”

I was enormously surprised to see this one pop up on Netflix – it’s not as if the first movie is available on the platform (at least, not in the US), which you would expect to limit the market for the sequel. Perhaps it’s tied into the director’s recent, impressive feature, The Plagues of Breslau having been bought by the streaming service, and packaged as a Netflix original? This isn’t quite at the same level. Parts of it are awesome, alternating between hysterically funny and savagely brutal, in a way that feels like a Polish version of a Guy Ritchie film. But there are too many disparate stories here: I could fill the rest of the standard 500 words of length with the various synopses. And this leaves the good ones feeling a bit under-developed, while the less interesting ones – though never boring – come across more as a distraction.

To be honest, I don’t remember many of the details of its predecessor, but that shouldn’t impact viewers here too much. The main new character is actually Colombian. Aida (Cepeda) is involved in a deal for a ton of coke with the Poles under Daria (Dygant), that goes badly wrong. Aida ends up in Poland on a mission to find and punish those responsible. There’s also Stella (Grabowska), the mobster’s daughter who takes a dislike to Aida after she hooks up with her father. Tangentially, we have the glory of the scatterbrained Anna (Warnke), who starts off in prison, but ends up becoming a best-selling author, via a stint as a checkout girl. She’s the best character here, even though I can see how she might be highly irritating to some viewers. Finally, there’s Siekiera, who is in North Africa, and ends up getting radicalized, to become a suicide bomber back in Poland.

Did I miss anyone? Probably. As the above suggests, there are about five different films here, of wildly varying tone and content, all fighting for dominance. They don’t always mesh well, yet the style does help make it less jarring than it could be: it does feel like they all take part in the same universe. As the poster suggests, there’s no shortage of violence on view here, and much like Plagues, this is not for the squeamish. In particular, there is enthusiastic wielding of chainsaws, not leas by Aida. But there’s also a brutal interrogation sequence, which is capped off with a file being used on the victim’s teeth. You won’t be laughing at the end of that. And neither will he.

The promise at the end if that the Women of Mafia will return, and for one, I would not mind. However, it feels like Vega has so many stories he wants to tell, that the extended canvas offered by a television series might be a better way to give them the room they both need and deserve, in order to blossom. At least, give Anna her own show. That, I would certainly watch.

Dir: Patryk Vega
Star: Angie Cepeda, Agnieszka Dygant, Aleksandra Grabowska, Katarzyna Warnke

The Empty Hands

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★★½
“Hands of fate”

The title is the English translation of “karate,” yet seems oddly appropriate for a film which barely clears the necessary quota of action to qualify for this site. I can’t say I felt my time was wasted, as such. Yet if you’re looking for a plethora of martial arts, you’ll be disappointed, despite the poster and a story which certainly could have gone in a much more action-oriented direction.

Mari Hirakawa (Tang) is the daughter of a Japanese karate teacher (Yasuaki): she had been taught by him while growing up, but quit the sport at age ten, after an incident at a competition, and now loathes it. When her father dies, she returns to claim the dojo as her inheritance, intending to turn it into apartments and become a landlord. Only, he bequeathed 51% of it to a former student, Chan Keung (To), who plans to keep running the place, helped by the late master’s faithful henchman, the aptly-named Mute Dog (Au). After much crossing of swords between Mari and Chan, he makes her an offer. Take up the sport again, enter a karate competition and simply survive – not even win – the opening match on her own two feet. He’ll then hand over his share to Mari, to do with it as she pleases.

It’s certainly a cliched plot, yet I’d have been fine with it, providing the end result contained a good volume of high-octane action sequences. That’s not the case: there’s really only one, the first-round contest. To the director’s credit, it’s not the point in his telling of the story. Chan’s offer, for example, doesn’t even turn up until after the half-way mark. He’s much more interested in a character study of a disaffected young woman, who is unhappy with her current situation, yet isn’t sure of what she wants from life. Mari isn’t even a very nice character, not least for her affair with a married man which ends up becoming more than slightly stalker-ish. Though Tang’s performance is good enough to keep her sympathetic, if not likeable, and I found myself rooting for her to find her direction.

The ending probably becomes semi-inevitable, after we learn that Mari’s recollection of past events is not necessarily an accurate reflection of what happened. Even there, however, the script manages to subvert expectations, and it turns out that her father was clearly considerably smarter than it seemed. There are some moments which perhaps make more sense to local viewers, such as elderly people doing keep-fit, to a jaunty Cantonese pop-song whose lyrics go – and I wrote them down, they were so bizarre – “If I do not love the motherland, the sun will explode!” On the whole, it’s not a film I would recommend to site visitors, unless they are also open to art-house drama and character studies, and the score above reflects that. On purely cinematic terms, you can certainly add a half-star, possibly a full one.

Dir: Chapman To
Star: Stephy Tang, Chapman To, Kurata Yasuaki, Stephen Au

Curiouser and Curiouser by Melanie Karsak

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Literary rating: ★★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

If you thought “Alice in Wonderland was okay, but it really needed more air-ships,” then this book is for you. It’s a steampunk take on Lewis Carroll’s classic tale, set in an alternate universe version of Victorian London. Specifically, 1851, when the renowned Great Exhibition took place in Hyde Park. Though it doesn’t actually feel particularly “alternate”;  this angle lives mostly in its trappings, such as people using air-ships to get around, or clockwork cats, rather than in elements necessary to the plot. But that’s okay, because at its core, the story is strong enough to stand on its own.

The heroine is Alice Lewis, an orphan who, along with her sister Bess, was rescued from the workhouse and brought up by the Jabberwocky, one of the leaders of London’s underworld. She fell in love with William, another of the Jabberwocky’s employees, but Alice walked away from both the criminal life and William, after being morally unable to handle the actions it required from her. But several years later, she gets dragged back in, and has to re-unite with William on a job to steal the famous (and cursed) diamond, the Koh-i-Noor, which belongs to Queen Victoria, from the Great Exhibition. It’s the only way William can pay off a debt to the occultist known as the “Queen of Hearts,” who intends to use the Koh-i-Noor in a ritual to make her immortal. And that’s far from the creepiest thing about the Queen, since her role-model is Countess Bathory.

Karsak does particularly well with her world-building, to the extent that this feels like an established universe. The timeline bounces back and forth, between the present and the various incidents which brought Alice to where she is. It’s an approach which could easily be disruptive, but I felt this was admirably pulled off, and balanced nicely. I was, however, a bit disappointed that much of the book seems to be directed towards a final-act heist, to which I was quite looking forward. Only, the plot makes a left-turn in the later stages, which renders the heist superfluous. This sends the book onto somewhat thin ice in terms of believability on a couple of aspects, and an alternate method of resolution might have worked better.

All told though, this is a fun insight into a world that is both familiar and strange, with both heroine and villainess being strongly characterized and memorable. You probably need to be at least somewhat aware of the works of Lewis Carroll – otherwise some of the terms might seem more like unpleasant STDs (“I caught a bad dose of Bandersnatch”). But Alice in Wonderland is deeply enough ingrained into the collective unconscious that this isn’t likely a major issue for most potential readers. I look forward to the Guillermo del Toro adaptation in due course. Well, we can dream, can’t we?

Author: Melanie Karsak
Publisher: Clockpunk Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 4 in the Steampunk Fairy Tales series.

Sweet Justice (2009)

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★★
“In need of significant support.”

Four women run a charitable agency in Texas, helping single mothers track down and obtain child support payments from deadbeat dads. However, they don’t limit themselves to the simple serving of legal papers. The women adopt a more… hands-on approach, shall we say, first luring their targets in with the promise of sex, then threatening them at gunpoint, to make sure they pay up. For obvious reasons, the cops soon take interest in this string of unusual armed robberies. Meanwhile, the city’s white mayor, is dealing with a domestic crisis of her own, thanks to her daughter having had a child by (gasp!) a black man.

Y’know, woeful though this is in many ways, I actually somewhat respect the intent and the topic: at least its heart is in the right place. It seems like I have seen a lot of female vigilante films of late, and too many of them seem to descent into undiluted man-hating. This does a better job than most of avoiding that. There are times when the agency’s female clients are actually wrong, identifying the wrong man as their “baby daddy”, and some men are actually trying to do the right thing as well, such as the father of the mayor’s grandchild. It’s all considerably more even-handed than I expected, and does a decent job of highlighting just how screwed-up the current system is, failing almost everyone involved. However, social commentary, no matter how well-intentioned, is generally pretty low on the list of things I’m looking for on this site.

It doesn’t help that the execution is laughable in most regards, with few of those involved in front of the camera giving any indication of being genuine professionals. To be fair, the actresses generally come off slightly better than the “actors,” who appear to be a selection of wannabe rappers. But the story is ridiculously implausible as well, and morally dubious, too: is armed robbery really an appropriate and measured response to failure to pay child support? You’ll definitely have time to consider such things, during the many slacker-paced scenes. The cops are spectacularly incompetent too, though this is stupidity necessary to the plot, otherwise the vigilante squad would be locked up inside fifteen minutes. This perhaps therefore deserves slightly more slack.

There isn’t even any particular escalation or closure to be seen here. The sole thread which gets properly resolved involves the mayor, who eventually comes to terms with her grandchild’s parentage, and quits the re-election race in favour of her family. That’s nice. The vigilantes just continue on their serene way, as if this were some kind of pilot for a banal TV series. It all feels less like a coherent or interesting feature film, than an excuse for the director to hang out with a few of his pals and some local musicians. To anyone outside that clique, there’s little here of interest, and it’s certainly as forgettable as its remarkably generic title.

Dir: Arthur Muhammad
Star: Tammy Thomas, Reagan Gomez-Preston, Shannon Ashe, Z-RO
a.k.a. Black Angels

Gone by Dawn + Gone by Dawn 2: Dead by Dusk

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Gone by Dawn ★★★½
Gone by Dawn 2: Dead by Dusk ★★½
“Stripped to kill.”

I decided I might as well combine these two into a single review. Having watched them back-to-back, even though made and set three years apart, they felt very much like the continuation of a single story about the same characters. The main one is Roxy (Mele), who is a dancer at a Wisconsin strip-club run by the sleazy Stag (Therrien), mostly as a money-laundering front for local organized crime. When he and his pal rape an employee, Alana (Pearce), Roxy along with the victim and another dancer, Crystal (Fierman), decide to take revenge by robbing Stag. That means getting into the safe in his office where the money is, and he’s not exactly going to give up the combination freely. Still, nothing that a piano-wire garrotte round the testicles can’t solve, surely? Except, as usual in this genre, the heist doesn’t go smoothly. Stag’s office quickly begins to resemble a mortuary, as unwelcome guests need to be handled.

This was, to be honest, better than I expected. There is, of course, the usual tension in grindhouse-style films about strippers – wanting them to be seen as more than T&A… while simultaneously being required to depict them as T&A. But the movie manages to strike a good balance here: while certainly not short on nudity, the lead actresses deliver performances which manage to make their characters feel like real people. The script also avoids people having to act like idiots too much, and the issue of the safe’s combination is solved in a way which is actually kinda clever. The low budget is a bit obvious in the limited locations and cast – we don’t get much outside of the club and an apartment – although in some ways, that works as much for the feature as against it. For example, it’s likely a factor in story-telling which certainly doesn’t hang around; maybe 65 minutes between opening and closing credits. And while there may be honour among thieves, there doesn’t appear to be much among strippers.

I didn’t think the sequel worked as well. While Roxy returns, she has been recast, being now played by Matheis – I’m not sure what happened to Mele. Still, I did laugh when one supporting character greets her with, “You look different!” Oddly, while the first film started with Roxy skipping town, the second sees her back, working at the same venue where she was involved in a multiple homicide. I know strippers are renowned for making poor decisions, but still… It turns out, having absconded with nine hundred grand of the mob’s money isn’t a good idea. They want it back, and to this end, have sent a trio of hired killers, named the Three Bears by Roxy. They’re prepared to do anything, up to and including both kidnapping and murder. But Roxy, along with Jesse (Radzion), a friend of Alana’s, and another dancer, Alura (Laventure), plots to turn the tables on the Three Bears, by robbing their boss.

Quite why the mob waited three years to take any action isn’t clear, and it’s just one of the problems with the story. Remember how I said the small-scale worked for the first film? That feels less true here, with the expanded script resulting in a bunch of loose ends and an unnecessarily stretched running-time of 107 minutes. For instance, we are introduced to a pair of cops, but they’re effectively unnecessary, and the same goes for a subplot which has Roxy visiting Stag in prison (one of the few players to return from the first film). Generally, I think I preferred Roxy 1.0 as well; I was just never quite convinced by Matheis in the role of an exotic dancer. The bits that work e.g. the ‘snake in the grass’ are mostly borrowed from its predecessor, though again, the movie does a good job with its characters.

Together, they make for a decent double-bill, though if you’re short on time, you might as well watch only the opener, since the sequel adds little in the way of development.  It’s perhaps telling that I must confess to getting distracted in the middle of GBD 2 by a lengthy article on location Club Pierre, one of the oldest strip-clubs in Edmonton. So, not Wisconsin at all. :) But it probably says something when a movie’s location is more interesting that the film.

Dir: Shaun Donnelly
Star: Gone by Dawn – Saleste Mele, Hannah Fierman, Katelyn Pearce, Jayson Therrien
Gone by Dawn 2: Dead by Dusk – Allana Matheis, Skylar Radzion, Ashley Laventure, Koreen Perry

Paradise Hills

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★★★½
“A small-scale beauty.”

And there I was, thinking Maleficent: Mistress of Evil would be the prettiest picture I saw in all of 2020. There’s a new champion, and whoever assembled the look of this one should have been honoured at the Oscars. Shot in Barcelona and the Canary Islands, it beats Maleficent by almost entirely avoiding CGI, in lieu of stunning locations such as the former residence of sculptor Xavier Corberó: “a mazelike estate constructed from cement that features nine connected structures and 300 arches.” That quote comes from a feature in Architecture Digest, which is not something every film gets, shall we say. And it deserves one, for the entirety of this is a 95-minute coffee-table book. Even when the plot stumbles, you can wallow in a remarkable visual style, achieved for the relative pittance of $10 million.

That plot concerns Uma (Roberts), who has just refused the hand in marriage of the young man chosen by her family. She is sent off to the titular establishment, on a remote island, to be “re-educated” into a more pliable form, under the guidance of The Duchess (Jovovich). Uma meets others going through the same treatment for various reasons, but plots to escape, with the help of the one she truly loves. Only for this to be derailed when the true nature of the “re-education” is revealed, explaining why Paradise Hills has a 100% success rate with its patients, despite a very low-key approach, mostly consisting of yoga. Yet, it turns out to be an method which can perhaps be leveraged against those who seek to control Uma.

As a modern-day fairy-tale, it works quite nicely, driven particularly by the visual style which feels like the dream of a mad interior designer. However, it’s not as clever as it thinks it is, and occasionally descends into the painfully obvious, such as The Duchess clipping thorns off roses. ‘Cos the roses represent the young women, being shorn of their individuality and essence, y’see? Yeah, I rolled my eyes a bit at that. You also wonder why they bother with flashy stuff like cranking Uma up to the roof on a carousel pony, in order to show her holograms of her intended. It seems entirely unnecessary, given the… considerably more physical, shall we say, nature of Paradise Hills’ true solution.

But it’s fun to watch Jovovich in a role which doesn’t require her to kick ass – except, perhaps of the psychological kind. For she still exudes menace, even when being extremely polite, or perhaps due to this. Managing to make “You’re just a prickly little pear” into a dire threat is no small feat. While Roberts is decent enough, the rest of the supporting cast of inmates (González, Macdonald and the ever-clunkily named Awkwafina) seem largely redundant. We’re never given much reason to care about their characters, and I found the film achieved greater impact when it stayed focused on Uma. But given the beauty on display, I’m largely prepared to forgive its other flaws.

Dir: Alice Waddington
Star: Emma Roberts, Milla Jovovich, Eiza González, Danielle Macdonald

The Rhythm Section

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★★★
“Not really worth the wait”

The action-heroine genre has seen its share of high-profile flops in the past. But this long-delayed entry, originally due out in February 2019, is among the worst, setting a record for the lowest ever opening at the North American box-office for a wide release. It took in only $2.8 million from 3,049 theaters when it opened in January, and ended with a worldwide gross below $6 million, against a budget of $50 million. While smaller in scale, that’s a Cutthroat Island level of failure. Did it deserve such a fate? Well, it’s not that bad. It ain’t great. But it seems almost defiantly unlikable, going against cinematic norms in a way that’s brave – and, I suspect, ultimately foolish. The result is something whose commercial demise is unsurprising, beginning with a title that makes only tangential sense, even after you’ve seen the film.

It’s the story of Stephanie Patrick (Lively), whose family died in a plane accident, causing her to go into a downward spiral. Three years later, she’s a crack whore, when contacted by journalist Keith Proctor (Jaffrey). He tells her the crash was actually a terrorist attack, basing this claim on information received from a source with intelligence connections known only as “B”. After Proctor is murdered, Stephanie finds B (Law) and convinces him to help her acquire the necessary skills to become an assassin. Stephanie then goes after all those involved in the attack, including the shadowy figure known only as U-17. To do so, she takes on the identity of Petra Reuter, an assassin killed by B, and uses the resources of ex-CIA officer Marc Serra (Brown), now working as an intelligence broker.

I think viewer expectations may have played a part here. Reading the above, and with the film coming from the producers of the 007 franchise, you are likely imagining a slick, Bond-esque slice of escapism. It’s not that. First off, Stephanie is… Well, let’s be honest, a bit shit as an assassin. When she asks B how long it’ll take for her to become good, he replies, “Your menopause will be a distant memory.” They don’t have that much time, and the results are consequently rough around the edges, not least because she almost completely lacks the necessary killer instinct. She has the motive, just not the method.

Frankly, she’s very, very lucky to survive the first couple of missions, and that’s only one of the aspects which strains credibility. The makers get a demerit for using Ireland to fake the North of Scotland, and it appears remarkably easy to track down international terrorists. Perhaps the book on which this was based did a better job? Given the gritty nature of proceedings, I was expecting a greater level of intrigue and deception. For example, despite being officially “unattached”, I was predicting B or Marc to still be working on behalf of their former employers, manipulating Stephanie towards their ends. Maybe I’ve just watched too many episodes of Homeland.

There are some impressive elements. Probably the most outstanding is a car chase, filmed to look like one take, shot entirely from inside Stephanie’s vehicle as she flees the scene. It’s almost as good as the one from Children of Men, the gold standard for such things. I also did like Lively’s performance: she has rather more to do here than she had in The Shallows, and acquits herself well, both dramatically and in the action scenes (she smashed her hand up badly while filming a fight scene with Law). However, on reaching the end, I found myself unmoved, and given the general lack of spectacle present, this isn’t one I’ve much interest in revisiting.

Dir: Reed Morano
Star:  Blake Lively, Jude Law, Sterling K. Brown, Raza Jaffrey 

Darlin’

  By

★★★½
“Mother of all predators”

This strange little film probably makes more sense if you’ve seen The Woman, in which a feral cannibalistic woman, played by McIntosh, was captured and kept in the basement of a dysfunctional family. While this features McIntosh in the same role, it does work as a standalone film: its predecessor may help explain some of the background. Here, the woman drops off her equally uncivilized teenage daughter (Canny) at a hospital. Unsure of quite how such an unusual child should be handled, Darlin’ – called that, because of a bracelet spelling that out which she is wearing – is handed over to the Catholic church.

In particular, to St. Philomena’s Home, a dubious institution run by an even more dubious Bishop (Batt). He sees in Darlin’ the chance for his parish to make a name for itself by “redeeming” their new ward in the name of the Lord, which would help them stave off an impending financial crunch. But when the Woman returns to the hospital, and finds her daughter is no longer there, it quickly becomes clear that she will go to any lengths to recover Darlin’ and punish those who are trying to exploit her. And even though the teenager is no longer quite the wild child she was, as the saying goes: You can take the child out of the woods, but you won’t necessarily take the woods out of the child…

McIntosh is probably best known for her work on The Walking Dead. But on this site, we adore her for Let Us Prey, and her directorial debut is little if any less savage. However, it is probably fair to say that the script – also written by McIntosh – tries to cram too many things into its pages, and comes up short as a result. Not to say there aren’t moments of supreme effectiveness. Just that they are diluted by the film’s desire to go in so many different directions. For example, despite the Woman’s apparently inexorable quest for Darlin’, she vanishes for much of the second half, instead just hanging round a homeless women’s encampment to no particular purpose. It’s a shame, as I don’t think I’ve seen a more genuinely scary female character in a film for a very long time. [Though Darlin’ doesn’t fall far from that tree, at least initially]

The rest is more hit or miss. Going after the Catholic Church for child abuse is… Well, it feels kinda obvious, though there’s a righteous anger here which does at least seem honest. And the civilized version of Darlin’, despite now being able to communicate through speech rather than growls, seems less interesting, as if she had lost much of what separated her from any other teenage girl. Neither of these really work so well, as the more linear concept of a mother prepared to do absolutely anything to reclaim her daughter, which is when the film is at its best and most memorable.

Dir: Pollyanna McIntosh
Star: Lauryn Canny, Bryan Batt, Nora-Jane Noone, Pollyanna McIntosh