Category: Review

La querida del Centauro

  By

★★★
“This land is Yolanda…”

A sold enough entry, this benefits from a well-written script, but gets marks taken off for having a heroine who is rather too passive. Yolanda Acosta (Paleta) is sent to a higher security facility when she is recaptured, following an escape from her previous prison. It’s a mixed-gender facility (common in Mexico), and she comes to the attention of Benedictino Suárez (Zurita), a.k.a. “Centaur”, a  local crime boss who is also incarcerated. He falls hard for Yolanda – the title translates as “Centaur’s Woman” – and when his escape plan comes to fruition, offers to bring her along with him, to the ranch on which he’s hiding out. And that’s where the problems really start for Yolanda.

Firstly, her teenage daughter, Cristina, is on the outside, being taken care of by Yolanda’s sleazy step-mom., who is trying to sell off Cristina’s virginity. Second, is the ensuing power struggle between Centaur and a rival; using Cristina as leverage, Yolanda is coerced into going undercover at a local gym where they operate. Third? Local cop Gerardo Duarte (Brown) who wants to use Yolanda to arrest Centaur. Initially, he offers immunity to her, but eventually their relationship becomes more… personal. Finally, and by no means least: did I forget to mention Centaur is married? And his wife, Julia (de la Mora) does not take kindly to rivals; on her orders, one of Yolanda’s cellmates has an eye gouged out.

You have to feel for the heroine, whose chief concern is simply wanting the best for her daughter. But every time Yolanda tries to do the right thing, circumstances conspire to foil her, and she inevitably ends up mired in deeper trouble. It reaches almost Shakespearean level of tragedy, with death following in her wake, from prison to the ranch. Even Duarte ends up believed by most to be dead, though this is mostly for the benefit of his health. since there’s a mole inside the police department who is funneling information to the cartel. He’s left to carry on his investigation as a “ghost”, with the help of allies on the force, which complicates his efforts to help Yolanda and Cristina extricate themselves.

The performances are solid enough, and the characters here almost all occupy a morally grey middle-area. You may not endorse their actions, yet you can see why they decided there was a need for them. I was particularly impressed by de la Mora, whose portrayal of Julia puts her over as both smart and brutal. She knows her position as Centaur’s “legitimate” woman leads to both power and risk, and wields the former to mitigate the latter. She also keeps incriminating evidence about Centaur elsewhere, with a “dead woman’s switch” of regular text messages, and instructions to release it in the event the messages stop. That’s genius.

I’d like to have seen Yolanda be rather more active. Admittedly, her options are limited, especially once her daughter comes under the control of Centaur as well. However, she is set up in the prison as a character with no qualms about getting tough when necessary. Once she’s back on the outside, that physicality seems almost to evaporate for 30-odd episodes. When she goes undercover in the gym, she ends up having to face Lola, a relation of Centaur’s rival who has taken a dislike to Yolanda, in an unsanctioned match. Otherwise, she seems curiously reluctant to get her hands dirty, even in defense of Cristina, and with no shortage of firearms around, of which she could take advantage.

The rest of the show, however, is quite savage for a TV series; one death in particular is by head-shot of impressive nature, more befitting The Walking Dead. It ticks along quite nicely, though it’s never less than obvious whereabout we’re going to end up, more or less from the point Yolanda arrives on the ranch. We eventually get there, and the table is set for a second season. Not sure the sequel will exactly become a priority, yet I’ll leave this show on my Netflix watch-list for potential viewing.

Created by : Lina Uribe and Darío Vanegas
Star: Ludwika Paleta, Humberto Zurita, Michel Brown, Alexandra de la Mora

BuyBust

  By

★★★
“Slum dogs and millionaires.”

The unapologetically brutal war on drugs being waged in the Philippines by hard-line President Rodrigo Duterte has come in for criticism abroad – and this film chips in to the argument from his home turf. Philippines DEA agent Nina Manigan (Curtis) is assigned to a new team, the sole survivor of her previous squad, killed after being betrayed to the drug gangs. Their new mission is to arrest leading boss Biggie Chen (Atayde), luring him out of the slum where he operates to a more vulnerable spot. However, at the last second, Chen changes the location of the meet, and despite misgivings, the squad enter the Gracia ni Maria area which is Chen’s home turf. To no great surprise, this turns out to be an ambush. Half the squad is wiped out in the initial assault, and with Chen jamming their calls for backup, Nina and the surviving members have to try and make their way out of a severely hostile environment.

The closest cousins are probably a couple of other foreign-language cop pics: Brazil’s Elite Squad and Indonesia’s The Raid. It has the moral ambivalence of the former, being set in a world where “by any means necessary” is the standard credo of law enforcement. This is combined with the relentless, action-driven approach of the latter, pitting a small group of cops in a confined space against a numerically superior and highly-motivated enemy. One problem is, those two movies are among my all-time favourites, both certainly ranking in the best action films of the 21st century. That’s a high bar for BuyBust to match, and it comes up short. What I took away was, there is a limit to how long you can go, before running gun-battles in murky alleys eventually become a bit tedious. And it’s considerably less than the 128-minute running time here.

It works better when adding more variety to proceedings, such as when the threat comes instead from the mercurial locals, whose loyalties cannot be relied on – they’re as fed up of the collateral damage caused by the police, as of the drug gangs themselves. And Curtis herself is surprisingly good, given her cinematic background hardly suggests hard-core action (she’s been a daytime TV host in the Philippines for almost a decade). She gets decent support from MMA giant Vera, who basically plays a tank, in a role surely destined for Dave Bautista in the inevitable Hollywood remake. Yet there’s clearly more to survival than mere size, just as there’s clearly more to making a good action film than copious quantities of ammunition.

In this case, editing half an hour of the less interesting stuff might well make for a significant improvement. These sections are more or less a group of faceless grunts exchanging fire with another group of faceless grunts, while scurrying through a poorly-lit slum. Less of this, and more of the start and end, where motivations become considerably clearer than what we see (or, rather, don’t see) in the middle, might have allowed this to live up to the level of its inspirations.

Dir: Erik Matti
Star: Anne Curtis, Brandon Vera, Arjo Atayde, Nonie Buencamino

The Serpent’s Fang, by Ryan Mullaney

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

“Cara Loft, Room Trader…”

This book comes with a fairly lengthy note at the end, in which the author explains how he came to the idea here. Five words are all that were necessary: “I ripped off Lara Croft.” Because this is the closest I’ve yet seen to the literary version of an Asylum mockbuster movie, such as Tomb Invader. Globe-trotting locator of lost artifacts? Check. Remarkable gymnastic abilities? Check. Orphan? Check. I think it was when I read “Simone started to tie her hair into two braids”, that the eye-rolling began in earnest.

The story begins with her discovery of a lost city in Cambodia. While Simone Cassidy is recovering from that, she is recruited by a secretive quasi-governmental organization, to help them recover the titular blade. This ancient Aztec dagger is laden with legendary mystical energy, and the government want to stop it from falling into the wrong hands, those who would misuse its powers [not something a government would ever do, of course…] Initially reluctant, our heroine is lured into joining up with the promise of information about her parents – who, wouldn’t you know it, were also treasure hunters, before their untimely death. Cue more eye-rolling.

Naturally, they’re not the only ones after it. There is also Heather Severn and her colleagues at SWANN. Do not ask me what that stands for, because we are never told. We don’t learn much about their aims and motivations either, other than that they are “A private organization skilled in tactical combat.” They work for Felix Enderhoff, a private collector of artifacts who wants the Fang… because for him, it appears to be like Pokemon, and you gotta catch ’em all. When word seeps out that a clue to the location of the blade has been found in Mexico, he dispatches Heather and her team, aiming to beat Simone and her quasi-governmental colleague, Lincoln and April, to the punch.

From there, it’s a race through Mexico City to the clue, some gratuitous library-fu, then off into the jungle, and on towards the goal. The main thing we discover is that SWANN are actually more than a bit crap at tactical combat, failing on numerous occasions to take out Simone and her team, despite heavily out-numbering them, and Simone having virtually no fighting experience. Though her psychological qualms about using violence are actually one of the book’s few redeeming merits, and certainly fit in better than her pathological fear of… automobiles? While a result of the car crash which killed her parents 25 years earlier, all I could think of was an Indiana Jones-like line: “Cars. Why did it have to be cars…”

It’s all not very interesting, with little here you won’t have read or seen before. You don’t get much insight into either Simone’s character or the world which Mullaney wants to build. The Fang is no more than a McGuffin, and even when its powers are revealed [Felix, like all megavillains, simply has to be there at the denouement], they’ll provoke little more than “is that it?”. The book itself will probably do the same.

Author: Ryan Mullaney
Publisher: Sunbird Books, available through Amazon, only as an e-book.
Book 1 of 3 in the Treasure Huntress series.

Molly

  By

★★★★
“Dutch treat”

Up to a certain point (which I’ll get to in a bit), this low-budget post-apocalypse picture from the Netherlands has been solid if unspectacular. The limited resources have shown themselves in a world which almost entirely consists of running about sand dunes and light forest. The fight scenes have been grubbily realistic rather than impressive, with the kind of amateur flailing around with limited weaponry you’d probably actually see after armageddon has actually taken place. And the main focus of the plot has been the usual warlord type, Deacon (Bolt) who turns people into “supplicants” – drug-crazed pit-fighters for his personal amusement. Standard practice for a post-apocalyptic leader, really.

The main point of note is the titular heroine (Batelaan), who runs – entirely deliberately, I suspect – counter to expectations of what such a woman would be like. Molly is a scrawny teenage red-head, almost helpless without her glasses, and as noted above, hardly skilled in the martial arts – Imperator Furiosa, she is not, shall we say. She does have some assets: she’s not bad with a bow and arrow, and has a pet hawk. Most significantly, she has some kind of psychic abilities, that tend to come out when she’s upset. It’s these which bring her to the attention of Deacon, and to ensure she complies with his interests, the warlord kidnaps Bailey (de Paauw), the kid whom Molly has just befriended.

Which brings us to where this goes from “Not bad, works within its limits quite nicely, though not exactly original” to “This one’s a keeper”. Because Molly storms the off-shore stronghold where Deacon is keeping Bailey. In one 30-minute take. Okay, it’s clearly as much “one take” as Hitchcock’s Rope was – you can spot any number of moments where cuts have taken place. Yet, even attempting to put something like this together is extraordinarily ambitious for any low-budget film, and that the result works as well as it does, is simply amazing. The segments pitting Molly against Deacon’s lieutenant, Kimmy (Appelhof) and her mechanically-enhanced arm, are particularly well-done.

Some of the earlier scenes are shot similarly and work as appetizers; yet about eight minutes into the grand finale, I still suddenly went, “Hang on. When was the last cut?” If you’re like me, you’ll immediately be rewinding to watch it from the beginning. Elsewhere, the film is helped by crisp cinematography and an effective soundtrack, which sounds bigger budget than the movie. Perhaps wisely, the directors keep Batelaan’s performance largely driven by her actions rather than her dialogue. She fares considerably better than Bolt in this regard, and the ending is almost painfully abrupt.

All told though, and despite the over-familiarity of some aspects, the elements that are new and refreshing are really new and refreshing, from the non-fighting through to the awkwardness of the heroine. However, it’s the glorious mess of her final battle, which will stick in the mind of just about anyone who watches this. The trailer won’t prepare you for that level of awesomeness.

Dir: Colinda Bongers and Thijs Meuwese
Star: Julia Batelaan, Joos Bolt, Emma de Paauw, Annelies Appelhof

Vixen: The Movie

  By

★★★½
“For fox’s sake..”

Having dipped my toe into the animated DC World with their 2009 version of Wonder Woman, I thought I’d scope out this more recent entry. It collects together both seasons of the Vixen web series, as well as new footage. The series began in 2015, with six five-minute episodes under Tucker, and six more followed the following year, directed by Geda. It’s a cross-over from the “Arrowverse”, with appearances from the Flash, Green Arrow and Black Canary, among others – some of the voices here are done by the same actors as the live-action TV shows.

The focus, however, is on Mari McCabe (Echikunwoke), a orphan from Africa who was brought up in Detroit by a foster family. Virtually all she has linking Mari to her original roots is a necklace, and this is no ordinary trinket. The totem allows the wearer to tap into animal spirits and gives them their powers, e.g. strength of a gorilla, speed of a cheetah, etc. This comes as a bit of a shock, not only to Mari, but also to the rest of the Arrowverse, who were under the impression superpowers were only the result of exposure to intense radiation.

Regardless, several problems result for Mari from this. Firstly, she has to try and figure out how to control and harness the potential abilities. Secondly, her older sister, Kuasa (Rose), feels the totem belongs to her, and their struggle for control forms the focus of season one. In the second series, we discover it is just one of five elemental artifacts, and when the “fire” totem is discovered, former general Benatu Eshu arrives in Detroit, intent on acquiring it, for… the usual reasons power-hungry former generals want to get their hands on relics of great import, I guess.

While more or less your standard superhero origin story, there is an underlying awareness, occasionally bordering on self-mockery. This certainly helps, given I’m no real fan of the superhero genre in general, so seeing this poke fun at itself – albeit gently – basically beat me to the punch. Some of the background characters were occasionally an issue for a novice like me, who is almost entirely unaware of the Arrowverse. I imagine most viewers will not be in that boat, but I felt it worked better when concentrating directly on McCabe, and exploring her background and development.

The animation seems cut from the same cloth as Wonder Woman, which means it makes for nicely fluid action. Although in some of the more talky sequences, I was occasionally distracted by the absence of movement anywhere except the lips. They do a good job of crafting a feature out of something episodic, even if the join between the two seasons is fairly obvious. Fans of Arrow should stick around for the post-credits sequence which (I’m informed!) ties into Echikunwoke’s subsequently appearance in a guest role as Vixen in Arrow. Yet even for someone like me, outside that group, this was a character I liked, and wouldn’t mind seeing more of – whether in animation or live-action.

Dir: James Tucker + Curt Geda
Star: Megalyn Echikunwoke, Anika Noni Rose, Neil Flynn, Sean Patrick Thomas

The Spy Who Dumped Me

  By

★★★
“Competence. It’s VASTLY over-rated.”

A breezy yet slightly odd mix of comedy and ultra-violence, this drops Audrey (Kunis) and her gal pal Morgan (McKinnon) into the middle of a spy caper, after Audrey’s boyfriend Drew (Theroux) dumps her, only for Audrey to discover he was a CIA spy. He tells her she must deliver a statuette to a Viennese cafe, or the world will be in great peril. After the peril rapidly arrives, heavily-armed, she and Morgan head off to Europe, with no idea of who they can trust. In hot pursuit – whether for reasons good or bad – are MI6 agent Sebastian Henshaw (Heughan), and the agents of “Highland”, a criminal syndicate also very keen to get their hands on the statuette and what it contains. A whirlwind tour of European cities follows, including Budapest, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin.

I’ve rather more time for Kunis than McKinnon; I have previously found a little of the latter’s shtick tends to go a long way e.g. the Ghostbusters reboot, and that’s the case again here. There’s not just much of a character arc for Morgan: she starts the film off being loud and obnoxious, and more or less maintains the same, honking note throughout. Audrey is more restrained, both as a character and in Kunis’s performance, and I found that worked considerably better, to the point the film might have been fine with just her as the lead on her own. Although that might have made the obvious comparisons to Spy all the more apparent. As is, it lacks quite the same level of supporting presence given there by Miranda Hart and Jason Statham.

Surprisingly, it maybe works better as an action film than a comedy, despite Fogel’s almost non-existent work in the area previously. [Some second-unit magic being worked?] Drew and Sebastian do much of the heavy lifting, yet not all of it. In this area, there’s a great car chase, and I enjoyed the supporting role of Ivanna Sakhno as Russian gymnast-assassin Nadejda, as well as Gillian Anderson as Henshaw’s deadpan boss. Nadejda also has one of the drollest comic moments: ordered to assassinate “two dumb American women,” she’s confounded by discovering just how many dumb American women are present in Europe. The hitwoman ends up battling Morgan on a trapeze. Because Morgan went to circus school. As you do. Yeah, the script here will occasionally make you roll your eyes like that.

The end hints at some kind of franchise, which has the potential to be more fun than this origin story, the pair becoming fully-fledged agents on their own, rather than operating in the shadows and under the protection of their male counterparts. There’d be something to be said for a film featuring a pair of spies who simply pretend to be those “dumb American women” for cover purposes, while actually being smart and entirely competent. Such a film likely would need to feature someone else other than McKinnon, however. I’d be perfectly fine with that.

Dir: Susanna Fogel
Star: Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Sam Heughan. Justin Theroux

Women of Mafia

  By

★★★½
“Poles apart.”

This is new territory for me, being the first Polish film to qualify here. Turns out, director Vega has, largely single-handedly, driven a bit of a new wave of cinema from that country. Rather than the lugubrious dramas of Krzysztof Kieślowski, Vega is more like Guy Ritchie, making violent gangster flicks. In this case, the script came with direct input from the gangsters themselves, one of whom contacted Vega after being annoyed by their portrayal in a previous movie. Probably wisely, he opted to take their criticisms on board here…

It’s very much an ensemble piece, covering the stories of five different women. Though perhaps the film’s biggest issue is they’re not quite different enough, and for some time, I was sure that two were the same person! It starts with police officer Bela (Bołądź), being recruited to go undercover and infiltrate the Mokotowska organized crime gang, whose boss Padrino (Bogusław Linda) rules Warsaw with an iron fist. She becomes the lover of one of his top henchmen, known as Cieniu (Fabijański). When he eventually is arrested, his wife Anya (Warnke) and their nanny, Daria (Dygant), take on the mantle, and start working for Padrino instead.

It was Bela and Daria I conflated, initially thinking that Cieniu [which is Polish for “shadow” – never say we’re not educational here!] had got Bela a job in his house, after falling for her. I was eventually disavowed of that, not least because Daria has a real talent for the criminal world, in particular the brutality necessary to survive. This becomes particular apparent after the film’s most harrowing scene, where she takes her revenge on another gang who tried to muscle in on her drug-running business. By the time she’s done, all that’s left of them is their teeth. To be honest, Vega might have been better concentrating on her character, as Daria’s transition from mild-mannered nanny to bad-ass is awesome.

The rest of the stories and character arcs are more of a mixed bag. Bela largely vanishes from the film in the middle, which concentrated on Ania and Daria – the former is a real trophy wife, dumb as they come, and interested only in being able to spend money. There’s also Padrino’s daughter, known as “Futro” (Julia Wieniawa-Narkiewicz), who is the apple of her daddy’s eye – made apparent in a great scene where he praises her singing talent… and we then hear what she sounds like. That affection can be used against him, and when Futro’s drug use becomes a problem, Bela poses as a therapist to get into her father’s house that way. The fifth woman… I literally have no recollection of: Siekiera, played by Aleksandra Poplawska. Sorry. 

Even at 138 minutes long, the film is perhaps spread too thin: a mini series might have given the material more room to breathe. However, this is still an impressive, entertaining watch, and the time flies by. It’s slickly produced, and populated by figures who bear the shape of real-life – albeit perhaps in an exaggerated form. Vega has stated his intention is to make a trilogy, and the end certainly points that way. I’m looking forward to the next installment.

Dir:Patryk Vega
Star: Olga Bołądź, Sebastian Fabijański, Katarzyna Warnke, Agnieszka Dygant
a.k.a. Kobiety Mafii

Breaking In

  By

★★
“Dumb and dumber: the home invasion”

After her father is killed, Shaun (Union – yes, I know “Shaun” is an odd name for a woman) heads to the remote home Dad owned in the country, with her two young children, to clear it out. Unfortunately, she crosses paths there with Eddie (Burke) and his gang of three thugs. They are at the house, in the belief there’s a safe which contains a large quantity of money. Shaun and family represent an unwelcome interruption, because they’re on a strict schedule, before the security company makes it out to investigate their disabling of the phone lines. The thugs take the kids hostage, with Shaun stuck outside the very secure home. Fortunately, she has taken a hostage of her own – the safe-cracker Eddie brought along.

This initially makes for a somewhat interesting twist on the usual scenario: rather than being trapped inside and trying to get out, the heroine needs, as the title suggests, to break into the building. And the “mother bear seeking to defend her cubs” motif is always a good foundation. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been nearly enough effort put into the scenario past that point. In particular, both sides need to behave with the enhanced level of contrived idiocy necessary to the plot. If either Shaun or Eddie had acted in accordance with simple principles of common sense, this would likely have lasted no longer than 15-20 minutes. Though in Eddie’s defense, he is a razor-sharp intellect compared to his minions. I’d have a quiet word with his HR department about quality control, which is clearly not among their recruitment tools.

Everything from the basic premise on, is questionable at best. What kind of cheap-ass security company takes several hours to respond to an alert? Quite how Shaun is capable of going toe-to-toe with career criminals like Eddie and his crew is never explained, and nor is her decision not to get help, beyond vaguely hand-waving lines such as, “Moms don’t run, not when their babies are trapped in the nest.” Other dialogue includes, “I wish I could have had a Mom like you,” entirely expositional statements, e.g. “You’re a woman, alone at the mercy of strangers, and your greatest weakness is locked inside this house,” and the climactic, “You broke into the wrong house!” which for anyone, like me, who’s a fan of Tremors, will provoke sniggers more than the intended triumphant cheers.

These quotes are also a fairly accurate representation of the level of effort that we see put into the characterizations here. Thus, among Eddie’s henchmen, we get the inevitable Heavily Tattooed Latino Psychopath, as well as the Nice Guy Who Didn’t Sign Up For This. It’s all very by the numbers, and while Union does her best, the script ensures that’s not much more than coming off as a low-rent version of Halle Berry in Kidnap. Mind you, given the tagline there was “They messed with the wrong mother,” this project largely feels like it was cribbed from the same playbook. And there are certainly better movies available to steal from.

Dir: James McTeigue
Star: Gabrielle Union, Billy Burke, Richard Cabral, Levi Meaden

PULSE: The Trial by R.A. Crawford

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

The synopsis starts, “It’s been 100 years since the inter-galactic organization known as PULSE intervened to liberate the women of Earth. Now purged of its male population, the women have embarked on a journey to take their place in the all-female cosmic society.” Wait, what? That seems quite the “previously…” to skip over completely. It is a lightly-sketched universe, and one which perhaps raises more questions than it answers, not least the implication that every solar system has the same concepts of “male” and “female” as we do.

Anyway, taking that as read, the spearhead of this trans-galactic Amazonian army are PULSE, which is short for the Planetary Union of Life-form Salvation and Emancipation. Becoming a PULSE officer is not for the faint of heart, requiring years of training, which culminate in the infamously brutal final test of the title. In this case, the graduating class are dropped on an undeveloped planet, and have to make their way across its surface, to where a ship is programmed to depart at a preset time. But quite intentionally, it’s a thoroughly unforgiving landscape, to the point of lethality. Every step seems to bring a new threat, from native fauna through deliberate traps to the worst of them all – the Huntress, a PULSE dropout whose apparent mission is to ensure the final graduation ceremony can take place in a phone-booth.

After the initial couple of chapters set the scene, it’s almost non-stop action once we reach the planet’s surface, as we follow the paths of a (dwindling) number of candidates. The main focus is on two aspiring PULSE officers, Stella and Faye, who have become a team over their training, using their respective strengths to buttress each other’s weaknesses. But how will they cope after being separated? And what about the other candidates, such as top of the class Miriyada, or Kandis, who was curiously absent for most classes?

It’s a bit odd how some of the women seem keen on sabotaging other candidates. If it were “first 10 to finish graduate”, this might make sense, but everyone who reaches the ship passes, and I’d have said you’d want to encourage co-operation among potential officers. The level of bitchy backstabbing seen here, seems more like high-school than a military institution. There are also a few occasions when Crawford doesn’t have a very good handle on describing the action. For instance, a fight on the side of a mountain takes place; beyond that, I’ve still no real idea what was going on. And it might have been nice to take advantage of having a galaxy to work with, and add more diversity to the candidates; they all seem a bit… humanoid.

On the other hand, I can’t argue with the pace at all: this is one of the most page-turning stories I’ve read in the last year. I wanted to know what happens next, and the clear sense of “anyone can die at any time” created a genuine sense of threat for the remaining characters. The strictly gynocentric approach here leaves no room at all for romance – the bane of the literary genre as far as I’m concerned – so I appreciated that. These positive aspects did a good job of countering the flaws noted above, and although the ending is less cliff-hanger than brick wall, I’d not be averse to seeing where things go from here.

Author: R.A. Crawford
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, available through Amazon as an e-book or paperback.
Book 1 of 2 in the PULSE series.

Black Site (2018)

  By

★★★
“Border control”

This Lovecraftian-inspired action/horror mix is full of good – or, at least, interesting – ideas. It plays almost like a Call of Cthulhu scenario, with the players having to defend the top-secret government facility of the title from a group of cultists who are attacking the base. They are aiming to liberate one of the Elder Gods, Erebus, who in the form of the human he has possessed (Johnson), is about to be deported back into the infinite darkness. This is the latest incident in an ongoing covert battle by humanity, which has been going on since the twenties, though with decreasing intensity. At least until now.

The central character is Ren Reid (Schnitzler), an operative of Artemis, the group running the site. She has dreams of becoming a field agent, but psychological instability – which just possibly, might be connected to Erebus and his role in the death of her parents – has always prevented her. She has to get the deportation specialist, Sam Levi (Buckingham) into the heart of the base, so he can sent Erebus on his way. However, the cultists, under their leader, Ker (Robinson-Galvin), are intent on stopping this from happening, by any means necessary. Meaning Ren, and to a (much!) lesser extent, Sam, have to fight every inch of the way.

There’s a lot of potential here, and when it’s realized, this is an enjoyable flick, spearheaded by Reid in a no-nonsense role. The fight choreography is well done, though almost inevitably, the facility appears largely lit by 40-watt bulbs – whether to “add atmosphere” or cover up the stunt doubling is probably a matter of opinion. The problems are more the bits between the fights, and in particular the lengthy sequences of Erebus sitting in the middle of his occult holding cell, jawing away to the two agents keeping an eye on him. Johnson simply doesn’t have one-tenth of the screen presence necessary to pull off portraying what is supposedly the fifth-oldest creature in the universe. He’s woefully unconvincing, unless you can see how said creature’s aeons of life experience would result in a somewhat douchey gym bro with bad hair.

Similarly, the flashback sequences involving Ren are both too frequent and not well enough carried out to add anything of value to the narrative, coming over as empty padding. While this is a universe I’d like to hear more about, if the film really wanted to be a Lovecraftian take on The Raid, as it seems, it should have stripped away all the back-story, since we’re given inadequate reason to care. Stick to the basics of Ren trying to get Sam to the spot where he can carry out extraordinary rendition on his target, and we’d be better off. Though I’m still trying to figure out the apparent political commentary built into the concept here. It seems to be suggesting, given a sufficient level of threat, it’s fine to abolish normal standards of justice, bypassing a trial and proceeding straight to the punishment. That’s an almost refreshingly anti-liberal point of view.

Dir: Tom Paton
Star: Samantha Schnitzler, Mike Buckingham, Kris Johnson, Jennifer Wilkinson
[This review originally appeared on Film Blitz, as part of a “31 Days of Horror” feature]