Tag: b

Betrayed Women

  By

★★★
“You’re a nice guy, Mr. Darrell. But here’s the hitch. I ain’t a nice girl.”

First, let me just say: that poster is a true work of art. Seriously, how can anyone look at that and not want to see it? Even knowing there’s no possible way it could deliver on what is promised, it’s among my all-time favourite posters. With that out of the way, we’d better move on, since for a 70-minute film, there’s a great deal going on. Honey Blake (Michaels) becomes the latest inmate at the infamous State Prison, after her gangster boyfriend, “Baby Face”, is gunned down by the law. She’s there barely five minutes, before she’s getting put in solitary for back-talk, etc.

Also in the slammer is Nora Collins (Knudsen), who is due to be released in a couple of months, and is in a surreptitious relationship with prison inspector Jeff Darrell (Drake). He’s trying to improve the lot of the inmates, but is getting push-back from hard-bitten Head Matron Ballard. Finally among the prisoners, is Kate Morrison (Mathews), who holds the secret of where $50,000 in robbery loot is stashed. She’s none too pleased with Honey’s taunts about Kate’s boyfriend having just got married, but after bonding through the traditional cat-fight, the pair plan and execute a daring escape. Taken along as hostages are Nora and Jeff, along with Ballard – who proves to be singularly unsuited for a trek through the swamps, pursued by the authorities and their blood-hounds. Kate’s boyfriend is making a beeline for the same spot, so felons, escapees and the law are all on an inevitable collision course.

The critical and commercial success of Caged in 1950 (including three Oscar nominations), led to a slew of imitators in the years that followed. Most – including this one – were considerably cheaper and more down-market, but this one benefits from the fast pace mentioned above, and also a great central performance from Michaels. It’s obviously a product of its era, and so is considerably tamer than most of its ilk: there’s nothing here which would raise eyebrows even on the Lifetime network. [A WiP film the whole family can enjoy!] However, many of the genre tropes are still there: not just the cat-fight, also the lecherous guard and even a fire-hose, turned on Kate after a failed escape attempt.

Michaels is a joy to watch, and I’ll have to track down some of her other work. How can you resist titles like Wicked Women or Blonde Bait? Her impact here creeps up on you. It was only in the final showdown, as she hunkers down inside a farm-shed with her hostages, surrounded by the police that I realized two things. Firstly, I genuinely didn’t know if she was going to live, or go down in a blaze of glory like her lost love, Baby Face. Secondly, I actually cared about the outcome. And no, I’m not going to spoil it. The star retired from public life the following year, declining all interviews about her career in crime flicks, and eventually died, here in Phoenix, in 2007. Even then, she shunned the limelight, requesting no obituary or funeral service.

Dir: Edward L. Cahn
Star: Beverly Michaels, Carole Mathews, Peggy Knudsen, Tom Drake

Bad Grandmas

  By

★★
“Near-dead.”

There is entertainment value to be found even in bad movies. Bad action, horror and SF are sometimes just as amusing as the good stuff. But bad comedy is almost irredeemable: that’s why Mystery Science Theater 3000 rarely go there. Bad comedy just… sits there, dull and unamusing, almost worthless. And that’s what we have here. It’s a somewhat interesting idea, with some potential. Unfortunately, the execution – mostly in the script and direction – are so woefully inept that even the brave efforts of Florence Henderson, in her final film, aren’t enough to salvage it. And wasting the talents of Pam Grier needs to be some kind of cinematic capital offense.

Mimi (Henderson) is trying to help out her friend Bobbi (Wall), who is being thrown out of her house by an evil son-in-law. She goes to confront the perp, only for him to end up dead. She and her senior citizenette pals dispose of the body, hiding it in a freezer. But this just brings them to the attention of Harry (Reinhold), the local loan-shark to who the son-in-law owed two hundred grand. He kidnaps Bobbi, demanding the house or the money; Mimi is having none of that, and when Harry sends over an associate to collect, the henchmen ends up similarly dismembered and in the deep-freeze. Meanwhile, the local sheriff (Batinkoff) is also sniffing around, initially having been investigating Harry’s financial dealings.

Henderson does her best with material which seems designed to destroy any audience sympathy. For example, her first victim isn’t killed initially, and Mimi immediately stabs him in the heart to finish the job. I remind you: this film is supposedly a comedy. If it wanted to go this “dark passenger” route [and it includes an explicit reference to Dexter], that might have worked better, and I’d have been fine with it. Make Mimi a retired serial killer, former CIA operative or something to explain her apparent psychopathic tendencies. For the ease with which she slides from genteel retirement into cold-blooded dispatch is jarring and at odds with the light-hearted tone for which the film is aiming (and, largely, falling short).

A far more egregious complaint would be putting one of the godmothers of action heroineism, Grier, in a timid, mouse-like role, beneath a poorly-considered blonde wig, and giving her next to nothing to do. I know she’s in her late sixties, but that never stopped the similarly-aged Helen Mirren from letting rip in Red. I just breathed a sigh of relief on checking Pam’s filmography to discover she had appeared in other films since. Bad enough this was Henderson’s swan-song, we didn’t need it also to be that of an unquestioned icon like Grier. I sense where this is trying to go – something similar to the Bad Ass franchise, with its similarly mature cast of Dannys Glover and Trejo. However, that knew what to do with its characters, and made much better use of them than this, a well-intentioned failure.

Dir: Srikant Chellappa
Star: Florence Henderson, Randall Batinkoff, Judge Reinhold, Susie Wall

Blind Woman’s Curse

  By

★★★
“The girls with the dragon tattoo”

Akemi Tachibana (Kaji) is second in command of her yakuza gang. During a battle with another group, she accidentally blinds Aiko Gouda (Tokuda), the sister of an enemy – an incident Akemi believes leaves her cursed, after a black cat laps up the blood spilled as a result. Following three years in jail, she returns to find the clan on the verge of war against their rivals, the Dobashi group. Various members of the Tachibanas are turning up dead, and with their tattoos flayed off. Turns out that Gouda has joined the Dobashi gang, with the aim of extracting vengeance on the woman who took her sight, even though Akemi has borne the guilt of that event ever since. 

When it concentrates on their relationship, the film is really good, with both actresses commanding the screen with an impressive presence. This leads to a final confrontation which certainly feels like it may have been an influence on the one at the end of Kill Bill, Volume One, between the Bride and O-Ren. What’s particularly outstanding is the surprising way in which it is resolved: based on everything you’ve seen to that point, you’d be forgiven for betting, odds-on, that there will be an oce-lot of arterial spray. There isn’t – though I’ll say not much more than that. It’s a strangely effective moment, like a Western where the two gunslingers eventually face off at high noon… and decide to go for a pint instead.

What’s considerably less effective is the stuff around the edges, much of which is silly – or, perhaps, played a great deal better on the page than the screen. For example, Akemi’s female minions each have part of a dragon tattooed on their back, so when they expose their shoulders and line up, it forms the entire thing. Which sounds really cool, but ends up looking more like a samurai version of the Human Centipede. There’s also the member of the enemy clan who goes around wearing a scarlet loin-cloth. It’s difficult to take someone as a threat, when they’ve apparently forgotten to put their pants on. In its defense, this is apparently played for comedy purposes, because he smells. Yeah. About that…

This illustrates the film’s main weakness, an apparent desire to be all things to all viewers. I’m not if the audience in 1970’s Japan was crying out for comedy-horror-yakuza-swordplay films, because that’s what they get here, and the various elements vary too much in quality and fail to mesh together at all. When it concentrates on what it does well – and that’s the relationship between the two female leads – it’s very good. You can easily see why Kaji, making her debut under that name here, would go on to stardom. Given how effectively they play off each other, it’s something of a surprise Tokuda didn’t follow suit, though she did go on to become (briefly) the last of writer Henry Miller’s five wives.

Dir: Teruo Ishii
Star: Meiko Kaji, Hoki Tokuda, Makoto Sako, Hideo Sunazuka

Bubblegum and Broken Fingers

  By

★★½
“Pap fiction.”

Outside of Kill Bill, I’ve never been a fan of Quentin Tarantino. But this film did give me some appreciation for him. Because it’s only when you see Tarantino done badly, that you realize the aspects he does well. It undeniably takes some skills to keep a story-line involving multiple sets of characters in the air, especially when centered on a Macguffin like a suitcase whose contents are never revealed. Jackson tries to do exactly the same thing here, and the result is, frankly, a mess, where you’re left caring little or nothing about any of the participants.

It starts with two low-level henchmen on their way to make a deal outside Las Vegas, swapping a large quantity of cash for the suitcase in question. This ends with the opposite side dead, and the pair on the run. They come across two German pedophile tourists, who have kidnapped Heidi (Daly) along with a mute girl, Tiny (Tyla). However, turns out Tiny isn’t the innocent she appears, and she takes the suitcase, being part of a all-female criminal cabal herself. They’re being pursued by a variety of law enforcement agencies, who have their own agendas. It’s as if the writer (also the director) had only one solution to any story issues: introduce more characters, rather than developing the ones already present.

It’s the script which is the glaring weakness. The performances are fine, Jackson makes good use of locations in and around Las Vegas, and there’s a particularly impressive sequence told without dialogue. Indeed, having a major participant who can’t speak – except through an electronic text-to-voice synthesizer – is navigated well, when it could easily have been a disaster, bringing things to a grinding halt any time she appeared. But the pattern soon becomes obvious. Introduce some characters. Start to develop those characters. Abandon them, leaving them (in some cases, literally) dead at the side of the road. Rinse & repeat for an hour or so, until your audience can no longer be bothered to care about anyone.

You’re presumably intended to keep your eye on the suitcase. Yet we never learn what is in the case, capable of triggering all the carnage and corpses. How annoying. It could be argued that it doesn’t make any difference. Unlike Pulp Fiction though, it feels as if it matters, because this is clearly the focus of everyone’s efforts, rather than a supporting act to the sideshow, as in the Tarantino film. As we seem to have said quite a lot lately, I suspect this is a result of having the director film his own script, leaving him too close to the project to spot its flaws. Jackson has good technical abilities, and it’s certainly possible to imagine a version of the same story, with the pieces re-arranged, some expanded and others excised, where this became a Bitch Slap-esque gem. Instead, it’s a struggle to pay attention, through an ending that has little to offer except more dead bodies.

Dir: Sean Jackson
Star: Camme Tyla, Mandy Williams, Brenna Daly, Jason Nious

Bad Apples

  By

★½
“Rotten to the core,” indeed…

Ineptly constructed on just about every level, this proves that stealing from better movies – most obviously, Halloween and The Strangers – is not a guaranteed recipe for success. Teacher Ella (Grant) is has just moved into a new home with her husband, Robert (Skipper), who works at the local hospital. Left alone in the house on Halloween night – that whirring sounds are my eyes rolling – Ella becomes the target for two young girls (Prichard + Collins) in masks, whose unfortunate pre-natal experience has apparently left them with severely psychotic tendencies. Or so we are left to presume, for the bulk of what follows.

It’s not a terrible set-up. Unfortunately, the execution is almost irredeemable. Let’s begin with the technical aspects. The audio levels are in dire need of balance: I lost track of how many times I had to lunge for the remote control, either to turn the volume up, or then back down. And the cinematographer appears to have been a cat, going by how much of the film takes place in near-impenetrable darkness. This all becomes such a chore to watch, an Oscar-winning script and performances would have struggled to keep your attention. Not that this will exactly be unjustly overlooked by the Academy, shall we say.

For this feels like a 20-minute short extended to feature length. So many scenes end up being little more than empty padding, outlasting their usefulness – if they even had any to begin with. Is this a horror film, or a drama about a married couple moving house? There were times when I wasn’t sure. Indeed, the entire Robert character could be excised from the film with little or no impact. Yet, just when the sisters are stalking Ella through her house, and the tension should be ramping up inexorably, the film breaks away to a particularly superfluous sequence of her husband at work.

Then there’s the ending. If the preceding 75 minutes require the usual horror movie idiocy from the victims… Well, it’s nice to see the film is equal opportunity, and demands the same from its killers. After this, comes a coda. We know this, because we are given a large, superfluous inter-title: “CODA”. I literally LOL’d at that. This ties everything back up to where we started, though tells us little we probably couldn’t have guessed, and thus largely falls in line with the other superfluous scenes.

This would probably be somewhat more tolerable, if you looked at it as a loving homage to 80’s slasher flicks, with their practical effects and simplistic approach. The problem is, this is rather closer to the tidal wave of post-Halloween knock-offs, which a friend at the time memorably disparaged as “shot on video shit-heaps”. While nice to see a film with women on both ends of the stabby implements, the problems here are monumental, and this demonstrates that good intentions are no more a guarantee of success than aping better movies.

Dir: Bryan Coyne
Star: Brea Grant, Graham Skipper, Hannah Prichard, Andrea Collins

Bring It, by Seeley James

  By

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

It took me about six years after reading the series opener to get back to the adventures of one of my favorite action heroines, Seeley James’ Pia Sabel; but I only wish I’d done so a lot sooner! Some of my comments in my review of the preceding book, The Geneva Decision, are relevant here as well, and that review also explains something of the premise and who Pia is. In this second book, we learn significantly more of her backstory (and the revelations are corkers –but no spoilers here!).

However, I liked this book even better. Here, there were no interspersed deus ex machina revelations to jump over plot obstacles, and for the most part I could visualize the action scenes better (with only a couple of exceptions). I attribute this to the author’s increasing skill at writing. A review by a Goodreads friend had stated that Pia isn’t the main character in this novel; I also knew that Seeley had opted here for using Sabel Security agent Jacob Stearne as a first-person narrator (actually, his narrative thread only comprises part of the book), and that Pia is kidnapped early on by the baddies. Since, for me, her character is the main draw of the series, all of this was somewhat off-putting; I feared that she would be largely inactive and off-stage here.

But I needn’t have worried; I would definitely dispute the assessment that she’s not the main character, and I can categorically guarantee that she’s neither inactive nor off-stage! Although the two characters are distinct and not clones of each other, in some ways Jacob reminds me, in his personality and his relationship to Pia, of Peter O’Donnell’s Willie Garvin and his relationship to another kick-butt heroine, Modesty Blaise; both Willie and Jacob are utterly clueless in their certainty that recreational sex is a perfectly harmless pastime and that any woman they meet should be a potential partner, and both are apt to prompt some eye-rolling moments from readers who aren’t similarly clueless. (There’s no explicit sex in the book, however.)

They differ, though, in that while Willie adores Modesty, he thinks it would be an impermissible “liberty” to entertain romantic fantasies about her, but Jacob definitely has romantic fantasies about Pia. (Of course, he also has feelings for another of our old friends from the first book, his colleague Agent Tania –but that doesn’t inspire fidelity to either woman.)

Another aspect of this book that’s superior to the first is the seriousness of the theme, because here the author takes a hard fictional look at the real-life underbelly of America’s Deep State, where an out-of-control, largely unaccountable security apparatus can too often be run by sociopaths who think only in terms of “us against them” rather than right vs. wrong, see morality and law as quaint superstitions, and can and do carry out outrages (up to and including murder) against innocents, including American citizens. (Yes, the horrors of Operation Snare Drum here are fictional –but there have been documented crimes by U.S. government personnel or “contractors” that aren’t fictional.)

To his credit, Seeley doesn’t portray this as a partisan issue with just one establishment party as the bad guys, because it isn’t; it’s not a Republican vs. Democrat issue, but of decent Americans of whatever party label vs. traitors to our ideals regardless of what party label they use. (Though this was written during the Obama administration, it’s set after it, with a fictional new President of unspecified affiliation.) It’s a needed eye-opener for any American who cares about the rule of law and ethics in government –which is why I’ve recommended it as not just for genre fans!

A quick disclaimer: Seeley and I are Goodreads friends (though he’s not very active here), but I bought my copy of this novel myself, and my rating wasn’t at all affected by his “friend” status.

Author: Seeley James
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 2 of 2 in the Sabel Origins series.

Bird Box

  By

★★★
“A not-so quiet place”

Malorie Hayes (Bullock) is nervously heading towards the birth of a child, supported by her sister (Hayes), when a mysterious epidemic of suicidal psychosis breaks out worldwide. In the ensuing carnage, Malorie finds shelter in the home belonging to the acidic Douglas (Malkovich), whose wife dies trying to help Malorie, and a small number of other survivors. They figure out the epidemic is triggered by entities of some kind who are now prowling the planet – if you see them, you are overwhelmed by your worst fears and kill yourself. The obvious defense is not to make eye contact. Yet how do you survive in a world you cannot see? Especially when it turns out that those who were previously psychopathically inclined are immune to the effects, and are free to roam that world, with their sight intact.

The structure here is a bit problematic, bouncing back and forth between the early days of the apocalypse, and five years later when Malorie and two children are making their way down a river towards a supposed sanctuary. This both robs the early scenes of some tension, since we know who will and won’t survive, and eventually leads to a troublesome and unexplained leap: how, exactly, did they get from stuck in the city, to farming in the middle of a forest? However, it manages to get by, largely on the strength of Bullock’s intensity. This is apparent from the very first scene, where she’s instructing the five-year-olds on their imminent journey, in a thoroughly unmotherly manner.

If you’re looking for an explanation, you’ll need to look elsewhere, as the film never provides any. I’m not sure whether the book in which this was based was any more forthcoming [one thing I do know is, in the novel and not the movie, the sanctuary was populated by people who had deliberately blinded themselves] This isn’t necessarily a problem: indeed, it has been a genre staple going back at least to Night of the Living Dead, to present an apocalypse and its consequences without rationale. Yet, the specifics of the event here seem particularly contrived e.g. simultaneous parturition, and if you’re overly concerned with story logic, this may prove troublesome.

Fortunately, the performances help overcome this – not limited to, but certainly highlighted by, Bullock’s. Her gradual evolution from someone who isn’t certain she wants to be pregnant, into a fiercely protective mother (even to someone else’s kid) is nicely handled, and convincing. She gets particularly good support from Malkovich, playing the jackass character who appears almost de rigeur in any apocalyptic scenario. As many have noted (and the review tagline suggests), there is more than a little similarity to A Quiet Place; though I found that rather underwhelming, and the brutally internalized nature of the threat here seemed considerably more effective. The prospect of having to lose your sight is certainly scarier to me, and if far from perfect, I found enough cheap thrills here to make the time worthwhile.

Dir: Susanne Bier
Star: Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, Sarah Paulson

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

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

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]