Category: Review

Wilderness Survival for Girls

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★★★
“Just because we’re girls, why do we have to be afraid all the time?”

Three teenage girls, Ruth (Brox), Deborah (Henning) and Kate (Humiston) head off to the remote mountain cabin owned by Kate’s parents for a weekend away. Initially, it’s an overdose of teenage drama bullshit in various flavours, as they drink, smoke weed, talk about sex and so on. But their soap-opera idyll is interrupted by the unexpected return of Ed (Morrison), who has been squatting in the cabin. The girls capture him, using the gun he left behind, with the intent of taking him down the mountain to the police the next day. But as the night goes on, the tensions between the three young women begin to fracture their friendship. There’s also the question of Ed: is he the innocent drifter he claims to be, or is there a connection to a long-buried trauma in Kate’s history?

If you’re hoping for definitive answers to at least some of the questions asked by the film, you’re going to come away disappointed. Ed is almost a MacGuffin in human form. He exists largely to propel the rest of the film forward, and act as a force which will cause the girls to reveal their true nature over the course of events. They are three very distinct personalities, to the point that I wondered if (and not for the first time) they were intended to represent the three aspects of the psyche: id, ego and super-ego. While my recent knowledge of teenage girls is strictly limited to parental experience – and thus not that recent – if there’s one thing I know, it’s that they tend to congregate with those like them. The disparate trio we get here wouldn’t last 10 minutes in high school before tearing themselves apart. Though I guess that is what happens for a good chunk of proceedings here.

You should probably be forgiven for having strong reactions to them: my instant dislike of Kate, turns out to be not unjustified, considering the ease with which she embraces her inner psychopath. Deborah, meanwhile, is a little too one-dimensional and obvious for my tastes, so it’s left to Ruth to do a lot of the dramatic heavy lifting. Brox does well enough in that task to keep the movie interesting; at least, once it gets past a rocky opening 20 minutes, and the thriller aspects come into play, more than the “teen angst” ones. I will confess to being somewhat disappointed by the ending, which seems contrived in such a way as to achieve closure, without any of the participants having to take personal responsibility for their actions. There are also any number of poor choices made by the trio, in order to reach that point. Though, against speaking from my parental experience, that’s probably about par for the teenage girl course. There was just about enough here to sustain its brisk 78 minute running-time, and going much longer would likely have been a mistake.

Dir: Eli B. Despres, Kim Roberts
Star: Jeanette Brox, Megan Henning, Ali Humiston, James Morrison

Girl of Nightmares, by Kendare Blake

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

Warning: while this review contains no spoilers for the book I’m reviewing, it inevitably involves some spoilers for the book to which it’s a sequel, Anna Dressed in Blood. (I didn’t review that one here; see below). The situation in this book directly grows out of the events of the first one; and though the author provides some brief references to those in the opening chapters here, if you have not read the series opener, you would get only the very bare basics of what happened there. IMO, she expected that her readers will read the books in order, and I would strongly recommend doing so. Your whole understanding of the premise here, your engagement with the story, and your understanding of who most of the major characters are as people and your emotional connection to them will be seriously impaired if you don’t!

With this novel, Blake concludes the Anna duology. The two books are quite similar in terms of style and literary vision. As in the first book, our protagonist and present-tense narrator is high school junior Cas Lowood, the latest member of his family line to wield a magically-powered athame capable of sending those ghosts which are homicidal (not all ghosts are) out of this world into the afterlife. And again, our title character is Finnish-descended Anna Korlov (ca. 1942-1958), brutally murdered by her own mother, a black-magic witch, who cursed the girl with a spell that forced her to haunt the house in which she died and to savagely slaughter anyone hapless enough to subsequently enter it. Near the end of the first book, Anna deliberately cast herself through a portal into Hell (conceived in terms more owing to North American European-derived folk religion than to anything biblical), dragging along with her an utterly malevolent and murderous spirit of enormous power and menace, the “Obeahman,”and thereby saved the lives of Cas and others –but not before she and Cas had forged a genuine emotional connection.

The previous novel took place in the fall of Cas’ junior year in high school. When the second one opens, we’re now in the late spring of the next year, when the school year is rapidly winding down to its close. All during the interval, a grieving Cas has been searching for some way to communicate with Anna and at least obtain some sort of closure. He’s been aided in this quest by his mom, a white witch; by his London-based British mentor (and the mentor of his late father before him) Gideon Palmer; and by his high-school classmate, psychically-gifted Thomas Sabin and Thomas’ grandfather Morfran, a pair who are endowed with pretty formidable magic talents of their own. So far, they’ve drawn a blank. But now, Cas is beginning to find his dreams turned nightmarish with visions of Anna and, increasingly, experiencing very vivid waking visions of her as well. Are these genuine communications from Beyond, or is he simply beginning to lose his mind and hallucinate? (Well, for an answer, you’ll just have to read the book! :-) )

The first novel in the series isn’t an action heroine read. There, although Anna, as a cursed ghost, is formidably deadly (she can, and does, kill people by literally ripping them to pieces), she’s not inflicting her mayhem in a heroic mode; and where physical combat with dark forces is called for, it falls strictly on Cas. This time, though, he’s going to need help in that department; and Carmel Jones, queen bee of the high school’s “in” crowd (and Thomas’ girlfriend; Blake lets her transcend stereotype, which I appreciated) will find herself “getting in touch with her inner warrior princess.” Then there’s magically-gifted teen Jestine “Jess” Reardon, groomed to be Cas’ replacement (long story!) by the ancient Druidic order whose ancestors created the athame, who’s combat-capable as well as smart. And just because Anna’s no longer cursed doesn’t mean that she’s not still one tough ghost…. Action scenes that involve these young ladies aren’t numerous –but they are pretty intense, and potentially lethal (or worse).

Our initial setting is the main setting of most of the first book, the real-life rather large Canadian city of Thunder Bay, Ontario. We also have a couple of ghost-hunting side trips to Minnesota, and then shift to the British Isles for roughly the last half of the book. Again, Blake gives us three-dimensional people in her important characters (both the returning ones and one newly introduced here), who have realistically complex feelings and motivations and nuanced attitudes and interactions, but whom at the same time we can understand and like. Folklore from the Vodoun tradition isn’t as prominent in this book, but the author continues to make good use of Finnish lore, particularly the role of Sami drums in shamanism. Again, this is a very gripping read, with a high suspense factor, several surprise developments (which never violate the logic of the plot, unlike the “surprises”thrown in by some genre writers!), often a real sense of life-and-death danger in places, a high-stakes central conflict, and scenes of ghostly menace which conjure a genuine, powerful sense of creepiness. The emotional intensity of the story, for me, was quite high.

As with the first book, I’d call this an adult novel which happens to have mostly teen characters. I don’t unreservedly recommend it for teen readers because, like the first book, it has a lot of bad language, including profanity and obscenity, the great majority of it gratuitous. (That cost it a star.) But, also like the first book, it has no sexual content, and the violence, though it’s there, isn’t more graphic than necessary. If you’ve read the first book, I’d characterize this sequel as a must-read.

Author: Kendare Blake
Publisher: Tor Teen; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Kung Fu Mulan

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★★★
“Disney gets some of their own medicine”

Going into this, I was expecting it to be really terrible. After all, this Chinese animated version seemed to be little more than a mockbuster, riding on the trails of Disney’s live-action version of the Mulan story. That is a little unfair, since this film began production back in 2015, five years before its Chinese release in October 2020. But it’s that timing – less than a month after Disney’s version came out – which inevitably invited comparison, and the local reaction was utterly scathing, despite an advertising tagline of “Real China, real Mulan.” It was compared unfavourably to a Western version of Chinese food, and lasted only three days in cinemas before being pulled, not taking in even one-tenth of its relatively small $15 million budget.

This is why I was braced for something at the level of pre-school stick figures. The reality, however, is nowhere near that bad. The animation is, it must be admitted, functional rather than impressive, but matters are helped significantly by decent voice acting and a plot which doesn’t appear tailored towards 12-year-olds. We join Mulan (Guest) already in progress, with her in the army and going on a mission to assassinate the prince of an invading army from the Northern grasslands, who are attacking the Central plains. Except, nobody mentioned there are two princes. She stumbles across the young one, and refuses to kill him.

While escaping, she ends up falling off a cliff with the older one, her actual target, Arke (Lee). As they make their way back to civilization, they fall for each other, partly because he conveniently forgets to mention the whole royalty thing. Needless to say, her superiors are not impressed with the failure to complete the mission. But there is a possibility of her marriage to Arke bringing peace between the two kingdoms, though there are some who are not in favour of that possibility either, and intend to use Mulan a pawn towards their own ends. I will say, there’s simply more plot going on here than in Disney’s version, and if the visual side is considerably plainer, the lack of ill-defined superpowers for its heroine is definitely a plus.

However, it doesn’t take advantage of the freedom which animation provides. While there are occasionally pretty moments, it falls short of capturing the majestic grandeur of China, and animated martial arts is always going to be less impressive than the live-action version. Though the dubbing is solid, with Guest in particular bringing her character to life, any cartoon version of Mulan is always going to end up being compared to Disney’s animated one, and this is just not as good. The main deficit here is the inability to make an emotional connection to the viewer. I never cared about the fate of Mulan or her country in the way I did while watching the classic edition. But considering my expectations going in, this was far better than I feared. Then again, I quite like the Western version of Chinese food. :)

Dir: Wallace Liao
Star (voice): Kim Mai Guest, Allan H. Lee, Vivian Lu, Greg Chun

Sexy Rangers

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★★★
“Something mighty morphing in my pants.”

Because what the world really needs, is an all-girl version of Power Rangers, tasting very strongly of cheesecake. That’s what you have here, in a world where women’s breasts are a source of energy. Okay, later on we discover it’s actually male appreciation of women’s breasts that is the true source of power, but let’s not quibble over details. This “pai” energy has been used by Professer Saionji to create a team of five, color co-ordinated heroines, who use their abilities to fight off monsters from other dimensions, sent here under the control of Queen Amorous (Yamada). These “Pai Rangers” are firmly referred to in the subtitles as “Sexy Rangers”, presumably to avoid a cease-and-deist from Saban. Their leader is the Red Ranger, Momiji (Tejima), apparently because her breasts are the biggest. Um, the biggest source of pai energy, I mean. Occasionally, she and her team need to recharge, which is done by flouncing about the beach in bikinis, exploiting the male gaze.

It is, of course, utterly ridiculous and possesses all the production value you would expect, given a budget estimated on the IMDb at 50,000 Yen. Adjusting for inflation and converting to dollars, that’s $480 in 2021 terms. I double-checked no zeroes had gone missing in the process. It does appear largely to have been filmed in car-parks. But I have to say, it’s bright, colourful and energetic, and all stupidity is absolutely in line with the show which is its inspiration. Witness the two main monsters: Unikong, which is an armoured, lance-wielding unicorn, and Camerang, a humanoid camera. Because, why not? Anyway, Queen Amorous kidnaps the Professor’s daughter, ransoming her for a device which can extract the pai energy from the Rangers, weakening them so that her monsters and their (literally faceless) minions can overpower them and take control of Earth. Meanwhile, she’s working at the order of King Muscle, a giant eyeball – again, because why not?

The fight scenes are more or less complete garbage, barely even reaching “I kick in your general direction, you vaguely swing in my postal code” level. But what would you expect when you have five bikini models going up against a giant camera? They clearly are not the point; the director’s choice of camera angles and focal points makes that abundantly clear. Yet it helps that everyone takes it dead seriously; maybe it’s just me, but the hottest woman here is likely evil Queen Amorous, the one who shows the least amount of skin. Not that there’s every anything more than copious cleavage, I should point out. Though I can’t think of many films which feel more like a porn flick, yet fail to contain any actual nudity. As such, the combination of wholesome values (loyalty to friends and family, perseverance, etc.) and fan service is quite conflicting. I would still watch this on a weekly basis. Hell, considering the cost, I’d be prepared to fund a sequel.

Dir: Shinji Nishikawa
Star: Yû Tejima, Yuzuki Aikawa, Jun Suzuki, Yoko Yamada
a.k.a. Big Boob Squad: Sexy Rangers

Hockey Night

  By

★★★
“Cool as ice.”

At one point, the teenage heroine in this sports flick is asked, “What do you want to play hockey for?” In a modern film, I suspect you might get a long speech about female empowerment, proving that girls can do anything boys can, and so on. But here, her response is three words: “I like it.” It’s a plain and simple response which illustrates the approach taken by this plain and simple TV movie. That plain simplicity is both its biggest strength and its greatest weakness, for there are certainly no boundaries being broken or preconceptions challenged here. It’s exactly what you would expect from the genre and the story.

The Yarrow family have moved from the big city to the small, rural Canadian town of Parry Sound, described by local girl Evelyn as “the armpit of North America.” When daughter Cathy (Follows) asks Evelyn, “What do you do for fun?”, the reply is, “They haven’t invented it yet.” But they do have hockey…  And Cathy had been the goal-tender for the local girls’ team back in Toronto. Since there’s no equivalent in the small town, she tries out for, and wins, a spot on the local boys’ team, under coach Willy Leipert (Moranis). But this co-ed approach meets with opposition, in particular from the team’s sponsor, who threatens to pull his support if Cathy is allowed to play.

Yeah, from the above you can probably pencil out, with about 95 percent accuracy, how things will unfold, leading up to the finale of the big game between Parry Sound and local rivals, North Bay. Will Cathy fall for the team’s star player, Spear Kozak (Bisson)? Will there be moderate, but non-threatening, family strife as her mother fails to understand? Will curmudgeonly and chauvinist commentator, Bum Johnston (Chaykin) be won over to support her? Will there be montages along the way? I offer no prizes for anyone correctly guessing the answers to all of the above questions.

Yet there’s a simple and honest warmth here that works. Parry Sound is the birthplace of Bobby Orr, who is to hockey what Pele is to football, and the affection for the game is clear. There isn’t much conflict, to be sure – nobody ever tells Cathy directly that she poses a problem. Yet this feels in keeping with the polite and non-confrontational nature of the society depicted here (it would be a sweeping generalization to claim it of Canada as a whole. And yet, not necessarily inaccurate). Sure, her team-mates are sometimes jerks: they are, however, teenage boys, so it goes with the territory, especially with regard to teenage girls.

The two young leads are both very likeable, and it’s easy to see why they went on to greater things. Follows, in particular delivers a quiet, understated performance which is likely far more effective than a brazenly defiant one. Moranis and Chaykin provide good support, and deliver the kind of colourful  characters found in any small town. The plot may be hackneyed and obvious, yet as forty-year-old TV movies go, this is likely better than you would expect.

Dir: Paul Shapiro
Star: Megan Follows, Yannick Bisson, Rick Moranis, Maury Chaykin

The Super Femmes

  By

★★
“Hardly super, thanks for asking…”

Running a crisp 58 minutes in its omnibus edition, this is a bit like Kung Fu Femmes. Both were originally web series, but have now made their way on to Amazon Prime, which is where I stumbled across them. This is rather less grounded, taking place in a world where superheroes and supervillains exist, doing battle in the usual manner. While not technically based on a comic-book, it might as well be – the poster makes that abundantly clear. The IMDb description calls it “filled with satire.” I’m not so sure, and think we probably need to have a talk about what “satire” actually is. Creator Garris seems largely to believe that simply repeating the cliches of the genre passes the bar. He’s wrong. There needs to be exaggeration of these tropes, and that’s largely missing here. Its absence leaves this mostly a bad comic-book, rather than being a parody of one. For example, adding visual effects like “POW!” to punches is hardly inventive, and certainly not satire.

The heroine is Cat Nips (Vanelle), who is investigating the mysterious disappearance of another superheroine, Smash Mistress (Caruana). She has been kidnapped by malevolent genius Mad Mort (Gordon), who has a machine which can absorb her powers, and inject them into his short-lived clones of Smash Mistress, which do his evil bidding. Not helping matters, the local superheroes group, led by The Smoking Cape (Paris), have gone on strike, to protest budget cuts proposed by the city’s mayor – who is actually their leader, in his daytime identity. What’s up with that? There’s also a guild of supervillains, though not everyone in it is happy at Mad Mort’s plans to take things over.

Occasionally, it does work, mostly when Garris pushes the boat out beyond the cliches into more imaginative territory. There’s the Golden Goddess, a retired superheroine now reduced to selling “magical” headbands on line. And some of the villains are entertainingly crap, such as Pasta Fingers and White Rapper Kid – not exactly useful powers. Things get thrown for a loop at the end with the unexpected arrival of a superheroine from the future, who states, “I’ve come from season three.” That’s the kind of self-referential nonsense which the series needs more of. It’s on considerably less solid ground when trying to take right-on jabs at, for example, the portrayal of women. Considering the costumes of the ones here, this comes off as empty cant.

The production here is low-end, but solid enough in most regards. That also applies to the performances, few of which are memorable in either direction. And that might be part of the problem: it’s all rather too low-key. If you think of comic-book movies, the characters which stand out e.g. the Joker (whether played by Jack Nicholson or Joaquin Phoenix, tend to be those that are over-the-top. But the delivery here skews more toward the prosaic, and character names like – and I wrote this down – “Sharon MaBooty” don’t go far enough towards making up the difference.

Dir: Dean Garris
Star: Vanelle, Leah Caruana, Roger Paris, Robert Gordon

Alone

  By

★★
“Getting away from it all.”

Jessica (Willcox) is making a break from her new life, packing up her possessions and driving away from her home and family in the big city. However, it’s not long before her journey through the countryside begins to hit bumps in the road. Specifically, in the shape of another driver (Menchaca), whose actions against Jessica veer between the aggressively hostile and the creepily over-friendly. The two encounter each other on a number of occasions, the incidents escalating until he finally drugs and kidnaps her. She wakes to find herself locked in the basement of a remote cabin, and needs to find a way to avoid a fate which, it appears, others before her have suffered.

A remake of Swedish film Gone, the major failing here is not enough happening to sustain the running time. The story needs to spend significantly less time on the build-up; for example, by cutting out the background stuff about exactly what it is, that Jessica is escaping from. We are given no reason to care, and it has little or no relevance to the movie’s central conflict. Similarly, there are likely too many encounters between her and him, before he finally abducts her. We get the picture after virtually the first one – and I have to say, the sensible thing for anyone to do thereafter, would have been to reject any further attempts, rather than engage in additional contact.

Of course, logic and common sense tend to be anathema to this genre, though there are times here where Jessica does behave credibly. For instance, her method of getting out of the basement is genuinely smart. I also liked the scene where, after her escape, she finds a hunter in the woods – only for the man to show up, and claim she’s his mentally-ill sister (an idea made plausible by her understandably hysterical reaction). But for every one of these positives, there are two negatives, such as her getting hold of his phone and calling… his wife, to let her know she’s married to a predator. While I admire the spirit of sisterhood there, I’d have suggested self-preservation might have been a better use of those cellphone minutes.

Eventually, we get to a finale, which has some more credibility speed-humps. Firstly, the coincidence that, in this gigantic forest, he buries a body right next to where she is hiding. And secondly, that when someone attacks you from the back seat of your car, you will immediately accelerate away which simultaneously fighting them, driving at top speed down a narrow forest track until the inevitable accident. Okay… This does lead to a half-decent brawl between them, on the scorched earth of a patch of cleared forest, with the crash having acted as a nice equalizer (despite the apparent lack of seat-belts!). It is, however, very much the definition of “too little, too late”, and can’t rescue this from the multiple missteps which have preceded it.

Dir: John Hyams
Star: Jules Willcox, Marc Menchaca, Anthony Heald

Dead Shot by Ethan Johnson

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

I did get through this, but there were times when it was on thin ice, and it certainly didn’t work for me. At first, it seemed the heroine, Diana, was maybe eight or nine, going by the way she acts, and how her survivalist father treats her. [The first sentence is, “Diana Fellner stood over her suitcase, clutching a worn teddy bear”] Turns out, she’s actually 23. He abandons her at a roadside diner, for reasons that never become clear, and she is suddenly forced into adult life. With the help of a waitress at the diner, she ends up heading for Newark, and despite her lack of paperwork, gets a job in a shop. Then, all hell breaks loose, with a massive, coordinated series of terrorist attacks and subsequent riots, on what becomes known as Arbor Day. Diane turns vigilante, using the skills her father provided, and after the carnage, ends up joining what’s left of the police force. She has to overcome blatant sexism and a dangerous new world on the streets, as she finds herself – and also deal with her past catching up with her.

I think there was one particular moment where Diane jumped the shark for me. It’s on Arbor Day, when she basically executes a police officer, who has taken exception to her style of summary justice. The lack of real justification for the act, and any significant guilt or regret apparently felt by Diana after it, was rather troubling. Indeed, many of the events on that day themselves seem severely implausible. At the end of chapter 2, her father says, “I’ve got to teach you how to shoot,” for she has never fired live rounds, just a BB gun, before her abandonment. Yet she later proves capable of eliminating an entire mob of gang-bangers, virtually single-handed. Given she was brought up in a remote rural lifestyle, and kept almost in isolation, how did Diana become such an apparent expert in urban combat and pacification techniques? 

The world-building is a bit spartan as well. There’s not even any theories offered as to who was behind the events of Arbor Day – maybe that proves relevant in further volumes? – and the sudden collapse of society into anarchy and chaos seemed more convenient than plausible. I remember 9/11 and the country actually came together after those attacks, rather than immediately descending into The Purge. Diana – who inexplicably changes her name to DianE at the end, as if that’s a radical change – doesn’t seem to be a very nice person, with an apparent zero tolerance for anyone else’s flaws. However, it has to be said, the supporting cast are more annoying than endearing, so the reader is left with, basically, no-one likeable in the book. That isn’t necessarily an impossible block to overcome. However, Johnson doesn’t have the ability to do so, and I was left with no interest in going further.

Author: Ethan Johnson
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 3 in the Diane Pembrook novel series.

Till Death

  By

★★½
“Women don’t sweat, they glisten.”

I kinda agonized, for far longer than I should have, over whether this was a 3-star or 2½-star film. It’s probably 2¾. Or perhaps 2 5/8. No, 2 11/16. In the end though, it doesn’t matter. It’s just another in Megan Fox’s attempts to become the next Angelina Jolie, following in the footsteps of the similarly okay but not exactly memorable Rogue. Indeed, I initially thought this was by the same director, but turns out it’s a different director who uses initials in lieu of a first name. Anyway, with this one now available on Netflix, it will likely raise Fox’s action-actress profile. In terms of current rankings, she probably moves ahead of Ruby Rose in the rankings. Though that’s not exactly difficult.

The problems here are mostly pacing, with the movie being too slow to get to the main course. Emma (Fox) is unhappily married to Mark (Macken), an over-controlling lawyer, and is having an affair with one of Mark’s colleagues. After an excess of scenes belabouring these points, e.g. Mark orders her dessert after she has declined it (what a bastard!), on their 10th anniversary, Mark takes her out to a remote lakehouse. She wakes the next morning to find herself handcuffed to him, and Mark then blows his brains out. Turns out, his life was about to fall apart, but he has a plan to wreck Emma’s life from beyond the grave. This involves sending two thugs (Mulvey and Roth) to the house, one of whom has a beef with her, due to Emma having cost him his eye.

Our heroine, therefore, has to elude the home invaders while chained to a 180-lb (literal) dead weight, in a house from which all sharp objects have been carefully removed. This is kinda distracting, as I found myself figuring out alternative methods of separation, such as slamming the corpse’s wrist repeatedly in a car-door. But that’s perhaps for the best, as a distraction from too many shots of Emma dragging Mark’s body around the house, using her wedding-dress as a tarp (I’ll take “Over-obvious symbolism” for $400, please, Alex). Naturally, this unwanted connection lasts only until the plot decides it needs to be discarded, when it becomes a more standard home-invasion thriller.

It does perk up on the arrival of the villains, and there are some reasonably clever twists thereafter. To be honest, Mark’s warped imagination was almost impressive. Though if I was going to such lengths to extract revenge, I’d probably want to be there to see it. Where’s the fun otherwise? Fox does put in the effort, even if as Chris noted, Emma remains remarkably shevelled (as opposed to dishevelled) over the course of proceedings. Her hair and lipstick remain almost pristine despite crawling across grubby floors and snowy landscapes. I’m reminded of the old line quoted at the top; if you can still look hawt when drenched in blood and brains, your make-up artist deserves some kind of award.

Dir: S.K. Dale
Star: Megan Fox, Callan Mulvey, Jack Roth, Eoin Macken

The Devil to Pay

  By

★★★★

“The hills have eyes. And hands, apparently.”

In the Appalachian Mountains, the residents are fiercely, even ferociously independent. They live by their own rules, known as the Creed. It’s a harsh, Old Testament version of law, which replaces conventional society. The lifestyle is well explained in a quote from a census taker which opens the film: “They want nothing from you, and God help you if you try to interfere.” It’s in this world that Lemon Cassidy (Deadwyler) lives with her young son on their smallholding. Her husband has gone off, but this seems not abnormal. At least, until Lemon gets a summons from Tommy Runion (Dyer), matriarch of her clan. Turns out Mr. Cassidy had owed her, and agreed to carry out a task in payment. His disappearance means the debt falls on Lemon, and if she won’t do Tommy’s bidding… Well, see the film’s title. 

The deeper Lemon gets, the more apparent it becomes she is not intended to get out alive, becoming the patsy in a long-running feud between the Runions and another mountain family. Escaping the fate intended for her will require guts, tenacity, a commitment to violence (when necessary) and the unlikely help of a local religious cult, who are… A bit different, even by the high standards of that term in Appalachian society. We have seen this kind of society before, such as in Winter’s Bone. However, what we have here is so alien, it almost beggars belief that this forms part of the contemporary United States of America. Indeed, some elements, such as the cult, are so out there, it’s positively distracting, taking attention away from the core storyline and characters. I must admit, there were several points where I felt additional explanation – in a format suitable for foreigners like myself – would have been quite welcome. 

The husband and wife duo of the Skyes also wrote Becky, one of 2020’s most effective works, and the script here is similarly impressive. It avoids the typical hillbilly stereotypes; while these people may be different to us city folk, they are clearly not idiots. But the key to the film’s success is Deadwyler, who is extremely good in her role. She’s black, and initially I did have qualms about this; given the setting, I wondered how much her character would be defined by her race. The answer? Not at all, and no-one else even mentions it, the material again choosing to avoid the easy route in its source of conflict. This is simply a non-issue, which you quickly forget about entirely,  and the film is all the better for that. Plaudits must also go to Dyer. She only has a few scenes, yet crafts a scary presence in a woman who can go from discussing the finer points of biscuit making, to threatening to bury you alive in a sentence or two. It’s a casual approach to violence, which makes it all the more frightening. 

Dir: Lane Skye, Ruckus Skye
Star: Danielle Deadwyler, Catherine Dyer, Jayson Warner Smith, Adam Boyer
a.k.a. Reckoning