Tag: f

Feral Recruit, by Ginger Booth

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

While this does take a bit of time to get going, it’s worth persisting with. For there’s some particularly impressive world building here, and characters who are not your typical young adult fare. This takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, after an Ebola outbreak has devastated the United States, causing it to disintegrate into a collection of “superstates”, combining various old states into larger, autonomous territories. New York was, to borrow a (profane but accurate here) line from Snatch, “Proper fucked.” After the disease broke out, the city was sealed off and the epidemic left to burn itself out. The population was decimated, both by Ebola, and the lack of food which followed, known as “The Starve”. Only now, years later, has the city been re-opened and the survivors are beginning to rebuild.

The heroine here is Ava Panic – originally pronounced “Pah-nich”, but no-one bothers now. She survived as a gang rat in the White Rule group, rising to become “Queen Bee”, alongside its leader, Frosty. Eventually growing disenchanted, she left for a more official life and work, running one of the crews involved in rebuilding Manhattan. But an opportunity arises with the army looking to recruit new soldiers for the security forces. While they’re prepared to overlook Panic’s questionable past, how can a tiny girl, no matter how fierce and capable, cope with the ferocious physical demands of basic training? Never mind the discipline required by the military, a sharp contrast to her lawless gang rat life.

At times, it does feel like I was thrown in the deep end; there is a whole series of prequels available, which might have addressed this. A Book 1 needs to be able to stand on its own, and this was on slightly shaky ground there early on. But the depth of the world gradually made sense, and I appreciated the gutsy way in which Booth made her heroine imperfect. Indeed, making her a white power supporter – even a former one – is kinda risky, in terms of evoking heroine empathy. Admittedly, she joined White Rule after a particularly shocking incident, and Booth manages to make both Ava and Frosty more than the obvious Aryan stereotypes.

There has clearly been a lot of thought put into the detail of how society might be rebuilt after a world-shattering event like this – and another follows in the second half, when a tsunami triggered by the collapse of the melting ice-caps, sweeps the East coast of America. Perhaps it gets bogged down a little too much in those minutiae on occasion, though it’s never long before Ava’s progress forward continues. Interestingly, it doesn’t end quite the way I expected from the synopsis, but it’s always good when some problems are too much for a heroine to overcome; it makes them more human. This first installment finishes with Ava’s life heading in a different direction, and it’s one I’d be curious to follow her into.

Author: Ginger Booth
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 4 in the Calm Act Feral America series.

The Fox and the Eagle by David Kantrowitz

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

I don’t typically buy fourth books in a series, but didn’t actually realize that was the case here until after I’d finished it. From what I can gather, this is set in the same universe at its predecessors, but introduces a new set of characters. It certainly works well enough as a stand-alone entity, and poses no problems read on its own.

There are really two action heroines here. Evangeline Adeler is a CIA agent, who is investigating a strange series of abductions, when she becomes its latest victim. Turns out these are carried out by the Kira’To, aliens from a nomadic asteroid called the Eagle, hundreds of light years away. Humans are being taken  in order to provide “a fresh genetic source” for the Eagle’s inhabitants – inbreeding generally being a bad thing. However, Eva is having none of that, escaping an arranged marriage and winning her freedom after prevailing in a trial by combat. The other heroine is Reveki Kitsune, a teenage girl and farmer’s daughter, who ends up the sole survivor after an attack on her uncle’s spaceship, the Fox, by members of a neo-criminal group called the Syndicate.

Due to this, she inherits the Fox, and meets Eva, who becomes part of the ship’s new crew while looking to find a way back to Earth. Their subsequent adventures take them on a raid to acquire a stash of neptunium, discovering the truth about Vecky’s parentage, and linking up with Tomoyasu, a long-time exile from the Eagle who is seeking to return there in order to stage a coup. The Eagle has a Japanese-based culture, for reasons apparently related to previous injections of abductees from there, This means Tomoyasu can take over if he can beat the current leader in a samurai duel.

It’s a decent slice of space opera, though does get rather confusing during the final battle on the Eagle, where Kantrowitz struggles to keep his multiple balls in the air. At one point, it looked like a major character had been disposed of with a single sentence, though I should have realized from this, that it was a red-herring.  Still, he has some occasionally nice turns of phrase. For example, I particularly liked this line: “The pistol made a sound like someone dropped a steel refrigerator full of beer one hundred feet from a helicopter onto a concrete surface.” I was also amused by the way Eva likes to drop Earth culture references, e.g. “Thank you, Doctor House”, which no-one else ever gets.

She’s definitely the most bad-ass of the characters, and I did feel the split focus of the narrative was a bit of a problem. Her story ends up having to share chapters with Vecky’s and Tomoyasu’s, when I’d have preferred to hear more about Eva – as a newcomer to this setting, I’d have been learning about the galaxy at large, along with her. Everything ends in a bit of a cliff-hanger, with the roles reversed: Eva is no longer the only “stranger in a strange land,” and it’s clear that further parts will be arriving. I’m somewhat interested in more, but would welcome a sharper direction on the writing.

Author: David Kantrowitz
Publisher:Kyrie Devonai Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
4 of 4 in the Reckless Faith series.

Firecracker

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★★★
“Less a damp squib than expected.”

Admittedly, I did have to pause this five minutes in, because I had a strong sense that I’d seen it before. Turns out that wasn’t the case, I was just confusing it with another Cirio Santiago movie. There are quite a few candidates, but I think it was most likely Angel Fist. For both films feature blonde Americans, going to the Philippines in search of an errant sister, and have a kung-fu scene in which the heroine’s clothing proves optional, if you know what I mean and I think you do. So confusion is understandable.

The heroine here is Susanne Carter (Kesner, who ended up becoming well-known as an Orson Welles historian!), whose sister has vanished after getting too close to a criminal gang run by Erik (Metcalfe). They are nothing if not broad in their empire, which as well as the usual drugs, prostitution and gambling, also include martial arts death matches, put on in what appears to be a supper club. Dinner and a show, as they say. This is convenient, since whaddya know, Susanne has a sixth dan black belt in such things. She uses her skills to impress Erik’s similarly kung-fu able henchman, Chuck Donner (Hinton) and get close to the operation, seeking the truth about her sibling’s fate. However, turns out there is already a police operation investigating the gang, and Susanne’s presence puts that undercover case at risk.

The martial arts here are… not great. Kesner just about reaches decent on occasion, although there seems to be clear doubling going on for the more athletic moments. However, the film certainly has no shortage of action, and some of the supporting cast are good enough that the film passes muster as overall entertainment. Easily the greatest sequence is the one where Susanne is pursued on her way home by two street thugs, and through a series of misadventures, her costume is steadily reduced, going from an evening dress and high heels to, by the end of the fight, just a pair of panties. I can honestly say I have never previously seen anyone’s bra be cut open with a scythe in the middle of a fight.

That sequence, along with the villain’s demise – bamboo stakes get shoved into both his eyes simultaneously! – and the quite glorious poster (click on the image to see it full size), are sufficient to make me willing to overlook most of the film’s obvious flaws. This is very much the kind of thing  meant, when people talk about the eighties being a golden age of action movies on VHS. This is certainly not a good movie, fun though it is to see the likes of Diaz – an almost ever-present sidekick, who was to the Philippino film industry, what Michael Ripper was to Hammer Films. Yet if I’d stumbled across this for one of my all-night video sessions during the decade, it would have left me thoroughly satisfied, having given me everything I was looking for.

Dir: Cirio H. Santiago
Star: Jillian Kesner, Darby Hinton, Ken Metcalfe, Vic Diaz

The Final Level: Escaping Rancala

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★★★
“Game girls.”

Make no mistake, this is a cheap and unashamed knockoff of Jumanji, made by the company who specializes in these mockbusters, The Asylum. It’s not their first such venture into the action heroine genre. If you remember my evisceration of Tomb Invader, you’ll understand why I approached this more out of a sense of obligation than any genuine interest. And, yet… While severely lacking in large-scale style, it was able to stand against its inspiration unexpectedly well in some other areas. Considering my extremely modest expectations when I turned this on, that has to be regarded as a win.

Back in 2012, Jake (Root) vanished out of a shopping-mall video arcade. His sister, Sarah (Chancellor), has felt guilty ever since about leaving him alone there, but is now getting ready to open an arcade/bar, partly in tribute to Jake. The last machine to arrive is Rancala, and when switched on, there is someone already shown as playing it: and his icon looks disturbingly like Jake. When she, the arcade’s tech manager Rae (Tuttle) and its social media guru Chrissy (Sweet) hit start, they are sucked into the game, and have to make their way through various levels, to reach the war camp where Jake is to be found, alongside Rancala’s despotic ruler.

A few things help elevate this above Tomb Invader. Firstly, the three leads – naturally, one blonde, one brunette and a redhead – are likeable and come over as genuine. They’re competent without being arrogant, and soundly motivated by loyalty, both familial and to each other as friends. Next, there’s a low-key sense of wit here, like the very video-game way characters bounce back and forth while waiting for battle to commence, or the backpacks of infinite holding. Fans of The Asylum [and I’ll admit, I am one] will also get a kick out of the familiar adversary which is Level 1’s boss. A shame this wasn’t developed further with other Asylum monsters showing up throughout proceedings. And finally, the action is decent. Not so much for its integral quality, as for being edited by Mark Atkins in a clear and coherent way that’s better than many Hollywood films, which give the appearance a weed-whacker was applied enthusiastically to the footage.

It’s not all good news, unfortunately. On arrival at the war camp, things grind to a halt, despite the appearance of Bai Ling in a role far smaller than her name on the cover implies. The film comes close to stalling out entirely, just managing to rouse itself for the final battle. And given the scope for invention here – this is a video-game world where anything can happen – there’s little evidence of imagination being allowed to flower, beyond a poorly-rendered and largely pointless CGI battle rhino. Spectacle is an area where Jumanji is clearly far superior, and it also could draw comedy from the contrast between the real-life characters and their in-game counterparts. Here, they’re exactly the same – just in skimpier costumes (provoking the line, “Do you think a man designed this game?”). Overall, however, I found myself enjoying this less than its big-budget brother, by an unexpectedly small amount.

Dir: Canyon Prince
Star: Jessica Chancellor, Emily Sweet, Tiana Tuttle, Brandon Root

Les Filles du Soleil

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★★★
“Three into one won’t go”

There’a a good film in here. Actually, there may be as many as three good films in here. But the way in which they are melded together, manages to rob a good chunk of the power and impact from all of them. We begin by following Mathilde H (Bercot), a war journalist clearly modelled on Marie Colvin, down to the eye-patch and traumatic experience in Homs, Syria – Mathilde lost her eye there, Marie was killed. She has just started the process of embedding herself in Kurdistan, covering the locals’ attempt to regain territory taken from them by ISIS. The second story is that of Bahar (Farahani), leader of a Kurdish women’s battalion, who was forced to flee her hometown, losing her son in the process. She has heard rumours he is being radicalized and trained as a child soldier in occupied territory, and will risk anything to liberate him.

But wait! There’s more. For Bahar was also captured by ISIS herself, and held as a sex-slave, until she managed to escape and make her way back across the front-line. Her subsequent recruitment into the military, gives her the chance to take revenge on her captors – both for herself and for the thousands of other women who weren’t so lucky as to regain their freedom. On their own, any of these stories would be fine. The problem is that Husson does a real dog’s dinner of assembling them into a single narrative, and the result weakens all of them. There’s a convoluted structure of flashbacks and side angles, to the point that Mathilde ends up serving little narrative purpose herself. It’s a pity, as in Farahani, the director has found a marvellous actress, worthy of playing the heroine. In particular, she has amazing eyes that are both luminous and expressive. She reminds me a bit of the famous “Afghan Girl” photograph.

Of the three stories, probably unsurprisingly, it’s the most action-oriented one which I liked best. Bahar and her fellow soldiers make their way into enemy territory through a tunnel. It’s mined, yet they have a captured ISIS soldier to guide them past the booby-traps… or will he? It’s almost painfully tense, and a stark reminder that in this kind of war, you can never truly relax, with potential death lurking around every corner. It also helps that Bahar carries herself in a way that seems legitimate and battle-hardened (a bit of a shame the film isn’t apparently interested in the details of how she went from being a wife and mother, to commanding troops on the front-line). But just when this is getting a full head of steam, we suddenly switch to an extended flashback of her time in captivity. This would have worked much better as a chronological narrative. Instead, it’s a fatal blunder from which the film sadly never recovers. Rather than surging towards a climax, it peters out in sadly predictable melodrama.

Dir: Eva Husson
Star: Golshifteh Farahani, Emmanuelle Bercot, Zubeyde Bulut, Maia Shamoevi
a.k.a. Girls of the Sun

First Strike by Justin Sloan, Kyle Noe + George S. Mahaffey Jr.

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

Not sure I’ve ever read a book with three authors before, though Amazon omit Noe from the list given on Goodreads. This “novel by committee” might explain some of the problems with this, and its failure to mesh the two strands in any effective way. It’s a pity, as it starts off in entirely blistering fashion, with the arrival on Earth of the Syndicate, an extra-terrestrial invading army. We knew they were coming, so humanity’s forces take them on, in a massive and spectacular battle at their landing site in Mexico. It doesn’t go well for us, thanks to the attacker’s vastly superior technology. Survivors are few, but include Marines Quinn and Giovanni.

The former is one of the soldiers abducted by the Syndicate and taken up into their orbiting mother-ship. There, she’s given an ultimatum: fight for the Syndicate or be turned into a mindless zombie… and fight for them anyway. With a 12-year-old daughter, Sammy, back on Earth – albeit status unknown – Quinn decides to accept the offer, but keeps her fingers crossed, so to speak. She teams up with another abductee, a scientist who might have found the germ of a way by which the Syndicate can be defeated. Though they’ll have to stop their employers from finding out about it.

This aspect isn’t too bad, with no shortage of solid action sequences, even if I’m still not sure about the method behind their plan. Except there was time travel involved. Definitely time travel. Somehow. Anyway, it’s the kind of thing I can easily imagine becoming a major Hollywood picture. That makes some sense, since Mahaffey’s bio says he’s a screenwriter – despite his IMDb listing including nothing to have ever made it to the screen. The problems are back on Earth where Giovanni has joined up with the resistance and… Well, nothing of importance happens. Possibly his character becomes relevant in future volumes, but here, he serves little or no purpose to proceedings.

Oh, except for being gay, that is. I’ve no problem with that, but it’s handled in such an incredibly clumsy way. It’s announced as he and his lover, Luke, “had largely ignored whatever it was that had happened that night between them.” Except that’s the first we heard of it. I literally went flicking back to try and see if I’d skipped something. But short of there being an entire chapter missing, there was nothing. And then there’s this sentence, which literally made me cringe when I read it. “‘FUCK ME!’ Luke shouted, and Giovanni couldn’t help but think how under different circumstances he would love to hear those words.” Giovanni’s near-absence from much of the second half of the book is likely a blessing, but his presence in the first half almost single-handedly destroyed any interest for me in reading further installments.

Author: Justin Sloan, Kyle Noe + George S. Mahaffey Jr.
Publisher: Elder Tree Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
1 of 5 in the Syndicate Wars series.

The Furnace

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★★★
“Run Mary Run”

Two days after getting married, Mary Harris (Bernadette) is involved in a car accident which kills her new husband and leaves her barely able to walk. But she has one goal: to compete in the Furnace, an ultra-marathon race through the African wilderness, in which she and her late husband had been planning to take part. This aim goes strongly against the desires of her mother, but Mary won’t be deterred. With the help of her mentor (Dlamini, looking like a younger version of Morgan Freeman), nicknamed “Coffin” due to his day-job as a gravedigger, she claws her way back to fitness, and to the start-line. But is she prepared for everything the environment can throw at her, and make it to the finish? To do so, she’ll have to overcome not just the lethal heat, but also predators for whom she’d be a tasty snack, and poisonous scorpions whose venom induces disorienting hallucinations.

It’s certainly a change of pace for Bernadette, who has previously been seen on this site in Killing Joan and All Girls Weekend, as well as the largely woeful I Spit On Your Grave reboot, Deja Vu, not reviewed here. This is a film heavy on the F-word – by which I mean “faith”. Its religious overtones may be enough to write it off for many, but even as someone who possesses no real commitment there, it still worked well enough as a story about fighting through and triumphing over adversity. The race itself is the most effective section, with a constant stream of problems to overcome, and fortunately that does represent the majority of the film’s running-time. I must admit, I guessed the truth about her running companion, Raphaella (Linn) well before the film revealed it, and that angle is perhaps one where the faith-based elements become more than a little overwhelming.

Exhaustive research i.e. five minutes of Googling, couldn’t locate any race comparable with the Furnace, and it does seem a highly perilous endeavour, even with a GPS attached to participants. “If you’re stationary for more than seven hours, you’re disqualified, and we come pick you up,” says the organizer. Shouldn’t that be “If you’re stationary for more than seven hours, you’ve been eaten by hyenas, and we come pick up whatever is left in a bucket”? It’s certainly not my idea of a challenge to which I aspire, but there are people like Mary who seek to push their limits, so it’s not that far-fetched. Throw in decent cinematography and animal work and you’ve got something that  entertained me rather more than I perhaps expected, though Coffin’s voice-over does become a little superfluous in places. It’s not a film which an atheist is likely going to be able to appreciate, yet dammit, even I found myself getting fractionally emotional for the final scene. I’d probably be more inclined to credit Peters’s performance for that, rather than any kind of divine intervention.

Dir: Darrell Roodt
Star: Jamie Bernadette, Luthuli Dlamini, Laura Linn, Thandi Puren

Fatal Destiny, by David DeLee

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

Grace deHaviland is a former cop, fired from the force in Columbus, Ohio under circumstances which remain murky. To continue in the justice field, she turns to bail enforcement, bringing in perps who have gone on the lam in exchange for a percentage of their bond. They don’t necessarily want to come in, as we find out right at the start; her first target causes Grace almost to become a victim herself, save for the grace of her stun-gun. Following this, she gets to take on what should, in theory, be a nice, simple case: locating white-collar criminal Barry Keegan. He was the accountant for a pharmaceutical firm engaged in shady financial practices, and has skipped bail shortly before the trial involving him and the company’s head honchos.

Except, of course, it’s never as easy as that. Almost before deHaviland can begin, one of Keegan’s co-defendants turns up with a bullet in his head, and her target has also very badly beaten up Grace’s best friend, who is still on the local force. It has now become personal as a result, and making matters worse, she isn’t the only one with a deep interest in locating Keegan. He, meanwhile, wants to spirit his wife and child out of town, because there are secrets in his past beyond some dodgy book-keeping for a drug company, potentially a threat to him, his family and even our heroine, if she gets too close to the truth. And her former colleagues in law enforcement are none too happy with what they perceive as her interference in their case.

deHavilland has so much baggage, she would probably need a moving van to go get coffee in the morning. As well as her time with the police, her mother was raped and killed by her boyfriend, and she has massive trust issues as a result. The cop in charge of the case is also a former lover of Grace’s. And yet, she’s so incredibly rich she has multiple tricked-out cars, and operates out of a massive, sprawling factory which would put Wayne Industries to shame. It even has an “Olympic-sized swimming pool”. On the second floor. I was distracted for quite a bit by figuring out how that worked, considering such a pool contains over 2,750 tons of water. It’s all just too much. And that’s not even mentioning her mixed Hispanic-Irish heritage, or her gratuitous pet monkey called Trouble.

The action is fairly sparse, especially in the first half. After you get past the initial introduction, she’s mostly going from place to place talking to people, to the extent this feels more like a novelization of a Lifetime original movie than anything adequately kick-ass. Things do perk up a bit on the second half, with a gun-battle at Keegan’s house, and a well-written climax at an abandoned shopping mall, which was very easy to visualize. It’s still the very definition of “too little, too late,” and this is not a heroine with whom I’m very interested in spending any more time.

Author: David DeLee
Publisher: Dark Road Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 6 in the Grace deHaviland Bounty Hunter series.

Special Female Force

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★★★
“The Inspector Still Wears Skirts”

I’m not sure how much this is an official remake of The Inspector Wears Skirts, the 1988 franchise-launching action comedy which we covered earlier this month. It is certainly very close in both content and tone, but I’ve not seen a formal acknowledgement of this from anyone involved. While I’m obviously happy to see a reboot of one of the pioneers of the Hong Kong girls-with-guns genre, I just wish they hadn’t also rebooted the weaknesses as well as the strengths. In particular, they could have left all of the lame comedy in the eighties, and I’d have had no complaints at all.

It begins in decent style, with a group of female police officers laying a trap for a notorious terrorist known as “The President” at a pool in a hotel complex. Except, it goes badly wrong, with a number of the officers getting killed – quite brutally by action-comedy standards. 25 years later, the survivor, Madam Fong (Leung – yep, Black Cat herself is back on the scene – though she lets the next generation do the work here) is a trainer, who is about to take in the next class of candidates. We focus on Group D, which is where all the least-talented candidates are dumped, including Fa (Sam). Her mother, Macy, was one of the victims in that long-ago shootout, and Fa still bears a grudge against Fong for Mom’s death.

Before we get to anything approaching that, however, we have to trudge through the painfully predictable middle section of the film. Crank up those training montages, folks, as a series of the most obvious character tropes (the fat one, the busty one, the lesbian) learn the ropes and bond with each other. While you’re at it, also crank up the soap-opera complications, and naturally, the discovery that failing together as a team, is better than succeeding as individuals [welcome to post-colonial Hong Kong, folks…] For it’s not enough to stop Group D from getting booted out. But, wait! Turns out, this was just a ruse so that they could go into double secret undercover work, jet-setting off to Malaysia where The President – looking surprisingly youthful – has turned up.

He’s about to launch a scheme to spread a bioweapon across SE Asia, which will spread like lighting because it’s contagious before any symptoms are shown. Watching this while staying at home due to the coronavirus, I certainly went “Hmmm… There is a nice double twist here, which sets up a thoroughly explosive finale. This does a decent job of almost making you forget what you have trudged through over the course of the previous hour, as Fa inevitably gets the chance to redeem her mother. It’s all very slickly assembled, even if it seems aimed as much at providing fan service, with its heroines notably under-dressed for combat. That’s when not getting full-on moist, because the final battle takes place in a river. Which likely tells you all you need to know about the director’s motivations.

Dir: Wilson Chin
Star: Eliza Sam, Anita Chui, Cathryn Lee, Jade Leung

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The Furies

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★★★½
“The Most Dangerous Game (mixed doubles edition)”

There has been a whole slew of films over the year which have been based on the theme of “hunting humans”. Initially, this Australian entry seems to be going straight down the same line. Kayla (Dodds) has an argument in the street with her best friend. After the latter storms off, Kayla hears her shout for help, but while investigating, is herself abducted. She wakes to find herself in a crate in the middle of some very remote woods. She discovers other women in the same situation, and that they are being chased by beweaponed, masked men with very unpleasant intentions. The area is ring-fenced with electronic barriers which block any exit: survival is going to require Kayla to tap into her inner savage.

All of which is largely as standard, save for some eye-poppingly intense gore. This starts early on, with someone losing the front of their face to an ax. Very slowly. [It was at this point I stopped the film until Chris got home, so she and I could watch it together. Yeah: our “date nights” are a little strange!] There were similarly impressive moments throughout, with a preponderance of practical effects, of which I’m always a fan. Anyway, back at the plot, the other twist also becomes apparent, in that the masked attackers are not operating as one. Indeed, the opening sequence makes clear that them attacking each other is also part of the “game”. And, it turns out, the same goes for the supposed victims. Not for nothing are the crates which hold them and the women labelled “Beast #X” and “Beauty #Y” as appropriate… 

This is a very smart move, adding a whole skein of twists to proceedings, and giving a set-up where Kayla doesn’t know who she can trust on either side. The resulting paranoia brings so much potential for conflict, it is actually a shame the angle doesn’t really blossom until the final third. It would have been more fun, and certainly more obviously “different”, if the ground rules had been established from the beginning. Perhaps with an induction video given by a hyper-perky presenter, as in Battle Royale. There’s definitely a sense of a bigger picture here, which is only glimpsed occasionally. Knowing more about it would have made for a different, and arguably better, experience. The same goes for the technological beats, which raise more questions than they answer.

Another interesting aspect is that there is not a single speaking role for a man in the film. That’s not something you see often, especially in the horror genre. Given the first time we see the heroine, she and her friend are graffiting “FUCK PATRIARCHY” on a wall, this is presumably not accidental, though the movie never puts the message ahead of its story. While men are seen and not heard, the movie makes it clear that women are hardly saintly creatures, inevitably relegated to the role of victim. It turns out, they can be just as malevolently vicious as men. And that, I feel, is true equality at work.

Dir: Tony D’Aquino
Star: Airlie Dodds, Linda Ngo, Taylor Ferguson, Ebony Vagulans