Tag: h

Hanna (TV series)

  By

★★½
“More is less.”

I was quite surprised to hear about Amazon taking up Joe Wright’s 2011 movie of the same name, and turning it into a TV series. There didn’t seem to be an enormous amount of point: the film was perfectly self-contained as it was, and didn’t appear to need expansion. Having now watched the eight 50-minute episodes from the first season… I’m still not sure of the point.

The first three are more or less a stretched-out version of the original movie, beginning with Hanna (Creed-Miles) and her adoptive father Erik Heller (Kinnaman) living completely off the grid in the middle of a European forest. They are re-located by the CIA black operation which had attempted to turn Hanna into a super-soldier, under the control of Marissa Wiegler (Enos – amusing to see her and Kinnaman on opposite sides, since they were partners on the American remake of The Killing), and from which Erick had freed her. Hanna is kidnapped, and taken to a secure facility, though escapes and has to make her way across Europe, solo, in order to be re-united with her father.

So far, so adequate, though the knock-off Chemical Brothers electro-noodly score served mostly to remind me of how good the original was, and we could certainly have used more of Hanna in action. It’s in the middle section that this completely loses its way. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll know on her trans-continental journey, the heroine is befriended by a British family and their daughter, Sophie (Barretto). Here after they part ways, Hanna takes a detour to Britain, hangs out with Sophie, and spends the middle episodes being a teenager, with all the annoying brattiness that entails. Was there anyone who wanted to see this? Certainly not me, and this very nearly went into the “Did not finish” pile as a result, because it’s extremely annoying.

The series does somewhat redeem itself over the final couple of episodes. We discover that the project from which Hanna was spawned, is still operating – and this comes as much of a shock to Marissa as anyone. Hanna and Erik head towards the complex which houses it, with the aim of liberating all the other proto-Hannas, pursued both by Wiegler and the combined forces of the military-industrial complex. However, not everyone necessarily wants to be rescued… The series ends on an open note, and Amazon recently announced there will be a second season. To be honest, you couls get caught up by skipping the first six episodes entirely, and just watching the movie, then parts 7-8.

The series does fill in much more of Hanna’s back-story, in particular how she became part of the project, and I also did like the way Wiegler’s position shifts over the course of the show. It will be interesting to see where she goes in the next season, since her position is now little less precarious than Hanna’s [and as we see at one point, Marissa has some skills of her own!]. On that basis, I’m not prepared to write this off yet, since it will now have to find fresh earth to till. Hopefully Farr does a better job there with original ideas, than of transforming his own work for the small screen.

Creator: David Farr
Star: Esme Creed-Miles, Joel Kinnaman, Mireille Enos, Rhianne Barreto

Hollywood Warrioress

  By

★
“Just because you can make a film…”

The IMDb says this is a 2016 movie. The copyright in the end credits says 2014. But shooting was apparently going on for this at least as far back as 2011, according to Internet reports. I suspect a lengthy production, shot on weekends, when the participants have some spare time, which may well explain the presence of five credited directors and eight cinematographers. Which in turns helps explains the wretched awfulness of this. Clearly a passion project for Dutch, who is its star, (one-fifth) director, (one-third) writer and executive producer, this proves that passion by itself is not sufficient.

She pulls double duty, playing both the goddess Athena, and Deborah, her chosen vessel on earth. Deb is tasked with stopping the evil machinations of multimedia mogul Girard Devereau (Young), who is kidnapping teens around Los Angeles for some malevolent purpose [a news broadcast early on puts the number of victims at 500; at the end, the number Debbie actually releases, can be counted on the fingers of one hand]. To this end, the Deborator is given ill-defined special powers, which she largely fails to use, while traipsing around Hollywood, looking for her niece, wannabe singer Anna (Andrews). She has been kidnapped by Morgana (D), one of Devereau’s minions who moonlights as a therapist. Or maybe it’s just to stop Anna from singing – in which case, we’re firmly on Team Morgana.

The best thing which can be said, is that Dutch looks good in her battle bikini. About the only genuine laugh I got from this, was when she was hit on by a pimp, who thought she might “appeal to the ‘warrior princess’ crowd”. Otherwise… Well, I initially thought it was an interesting stylistic choice to have all the fights in slow-motion. Then I realized that was actually the speed at which the “combatants” were moving. Welp. Right from the start, the digital effects are similarly inadequate. It would be charitable to say that they might have passed muster 25 years ago. At this point, you’d probably be able to match them on a mid-level iPhone.

Maybe we should nickname her Deborah “One Take” Dutch, given the occasion on which an actor obviously flubbed their line, yet the take was still used? More damning than all the technical flaws, are a storyline which has no sense of escalation or urgency to it at all. I’m not even certain I could state with confidence what Devereau’s end-game is supposed to be here. Rule #1 of movie villains: Have a clear purpose. Actually, it goes for heroes, too, and the Deb-meister is no better. Sure, she’s trying to recover her niece. Yet for someone supposedly blessed by Athena with special powers… her methods are largely indistinguishable from those of any normal person, worried about a missing relative: contact known associates and the cops. By all accounts, Dutch seems really nice, so it pains me to be so harsh, but there’s unfortunately very little of merit – or even acceptable quality – to be found here by a neutral observer.

Dir: Christine Dupree, Deborah Dutch, Chad Hawks, James Panetta and Rusty Pietrzak
Star: Deborah Dutch, Edward X. Young, Angelica Drum Andrews, Debbie D

Hellcat’s Revenge

  By

★★½
“Mums of Anarchy”

The leader of all-girl biker gang the Hellcats is brutally beaten and murdered, by Repo (Kosobucki). Her replacement, Kat (Neeld), tries to get to the bottom of the killing, and take vengeance on the perpetrators. Complicating matters is Repo’s position in the Vipers, another motorcycle club with whom the Hellcats have previously had generally friendly relations. Part of that is due to Kat’s on-again, off-again relationship with their leader, Snake (Kabasinski); he also has the advantage of being cosy with some of the local cops, who divert confiscated drugs back to the Vipers for resale. But was he aware of – or did Snake perhaps even order? – Repo’s actions?

This is a mix of elements that work well, and those that don’t. The characters and performances aren’t bad. Neeld nails the right “do not mess with me” attitude – even if it seemed as if some of her tattoos were rubbing off on occasion! – looking and acting the part required, as well handling the action required better than I anticipate. And normally, a director putting himself in his own film is a red flag which screams “vanity project”, yet Kabasinski is equally solid in his role. Though disturbingly, he reminded me of Axl Rose some of the time. To varying degrees, this compatibility extends throughout the cast, e.g. the cops look like cops. You’d be surprised how often that is not the case in low-budget films.

Yet other aspects come up short. Most obviously: for a biker movie, it has a remarkable lack of… well, bikes. In fact, while I may have blinked and missed it, I don’t think there is a single shot of a Hellcat on, or indeed anywhere near, a motorcycle, at any point in the film. There’s also an ambivalent approach to female nudity. While there are plenty of that low-budget staple, the strip-club scene, the men involved are strikingly bored by it. Which may be the point: yet if they’re not interested, why should viewers be? And Neeld remains resolutely clothed. If you’re going to tout having a Playboy cover-girl in your B-movie… Well, it’s not unreasonable to expect a bit more than (admittedly, impressive!) cleavage.

There are other problems: the scenes don’t flow into one another, and some seem to have needless padding in them. Here’s an example: in one sequence, Kat is being briefed by her lieutenant Stone at a railway station. Six words of meaningful dialogue are preceded by twenty seconds of Stone walking along the platform to reach her boss. In terms of content, there’s simply isn’t enough here for the length, not least because we know from the start who the perpetrator was, significantly reducing the mystery. Sure, there’s a twist, though since even I could see it coming, it won’t be sitting beside The Sixth Sense in cinematic history. Given the obviously limited resources, this still isn’t bad, and I’d not mind seeing more of Neeld. However, my attention was held only intermittently throughout, rather than consistently.

Dir: Len Kabasinski
Star: Lisa Neeld, Len Kabasinski, Deborah Dutch, Mark Kosobucki

The Heat

  By

★★★
“Warm, rather than hot.”

McCarthy appears to be Feig’s muse, having starred in his last four movies, from Bridesmaids through this, and then on to Spy and the Ghostbusters reboot. The results here, also fall somewhere in the middle: while decently amusing, this mis-matched cop comedy falls short of the unexpected glory which was Spy. Straight-laced FBI agent Sarah Ashburn (Bullock) is great at her job, but disliked by her peers for her officious attitude. In order to try and win a promotion, she accepts a case in Boston to locate an elusive and unknown drug lord, Simon Larkin. There, she immediately encounters and antagonizes a local cop, Shannon Mullins (McCarthy); Mullins is also a good law-enforcement agent, but the polar opposite of Ashburn, being loud- and foul-mouthed, and no respecter of authority. Inevitably, the two have to work together, and eventually develop respect and affection for each other, etc. as they solve the case. You know the drill.

The story here is incredibly hackneyed, and making the protagonists a pair of women is about the laziest twist imaginable by writer Katie Dippold. Mind you, she co-wrote the Ghostbusters reboot as well, so part of me wonders if her elevator pitches all consist of “(insert film name), but with women!” [Though for the record, she was not involved with the upcoming Ocean’s Eight] What salvages the film are the lead actresses, with both Bullock and McCarthy in equally fine form. The latter has that hyper-acidic persona down to a T, from the moment we first see Mullins, and she tells her boss, “I’ll be there sharply at go-fuck-yourself o’clock, if there’s no traffic.” Ashburn is at the other extreme, prissily tightly-wound, yet so inept personally, she has to kidnap a neighbour’s cat for affection since hers ran off. They’re a perfect match: Mullins doesn’t give a damn, because Ashburn gives them all.

It is at these two extremes when the movie is at its most entertaining, and that’s in the early going. As the film progresses, both of the characters drift towards the middle from the edges. They generally become less interesting as a result, though there’s still amusement to be had from Ashburn’s spectacularly incompetent attempts to be a bit sweary. There’s also a gloriously gory sequence, as she attempts to carry out a tracheotomy, having seen one on television. However, not all of the comedy works, and there’s absolutely no reason why this needs a running time of more than two hours. For example, the scene where they fight each other to go through a door first, goes on about three times as long as is either necessary or funny, and the scenes involving Mullins’s dysfunctional family left me entirely cold. They’d have been better off abandoning all efforts at the drug lord plot, and just given us 90 minutes of the central pair, at the Odd Couple counterpoints of their characters, and the resulting, delightful bickering.

Dir: Paul Feig
Star: Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, Demián Bichir, Marlon Wayans

Hunting Emma

  By

★★★½
“The Revenge knock-offs start here…”

Actually, that’s unfair. For this was released in its home country of South Africa in March 2017, six months before Revenge had its world premiere. But the timing of its US release, less than two weeks after Revenge, is… let’s say, “interesting”, given the strong similarities between the two films. While there are significant differences, which we’ll get to shortly, both depict the pursuit of a lone woman across a desert landscape, by a pack of men intent on making sure she doesn’t get out alive. She has to turn the tables on them, pushing past societal norms in the name of self-preservation.

Indeed, if I was the makers of Jagveld, I might be a bit miffed that they’re now faced to play catch-up in the US market. Revenge has swept in and grabbed all the plaudits, leaving their film feeling (even if it isn’t) like a mockbuster. It inevitably suffers from being second. If I hadn’t seen Revenge, this might well have got our seal of approval. Instead, it no longer feels as fresh, even if it’s by no means bad. It doesn’t have quite the same feminist subtext, bypassing the sexual assault angle. Instead, the trigger for the hunt is a car breaking down in the veldt, and while Emma (du Randt) is looking for help, she stumbles across Bosman (van Jaarsveld) and his gang, just as they’re shooting a policeman. This not being something to which they want a witness, the chase is on.

This is rather more restrained than Revenge: something of a double-edged sword, as its sibling’s excess was part of the gonzo charm. Most obviously, it’s far less gory, and also has a more prosaic explanation for the heroine’s savagery. Rather than peyote triggering a pharmacological resurrection, Emma’s dad (Meintjes) was a special forces soldier. His cynical view about the savagery of the world led him to train her in survival skills, an upbringing she rejects in favour of a career as a teacher and fervent pacifism – there’s a rather clunky subplot about her breaking up with a boyfriend because he defended himself in a fight. The lessons still stuck, and just as there are no atheists in fox-holes, there are no pacifists in desert warfare.

There’s something of the young Uma Thurman about du Randt, and the gang members offer an interesting range of characters, from the hardcore Bosman through to some of his minions, who would clearly rather be somewhere else. While they’re all meat for Emma’s grinder, some of the wounds are rather self-inflicted [even I know better than to drink untreated wilderness water, and I do not camp well…] The main flaw is its lack of a sense of escalation, something Revenge had by the crimson-coloured bucket. When I saw Bosman picking up his F-sized rifle, I was eagerly anticipating the moment it would be turned against him. At close range. By a thoroughly pissed Emma. No such luck, but I did appreciate what might be a nod to Ms. 45 in the use of an iron as a deadly weapon. Instead, it plateaus some time before the end, finishing on an “All right, I suppose” note rather than the necessary crescendo. Worth a look though. Especially if you haven’t seen Revenge yet.

Dir: Byron Davis
Star: Leandie du Randt, Neels van Jaarsveld, Tim Theron, Tertius Meintjes
a.k.a. Jagveld

Hostile Intentions

  By

★★
“Not brought to you by the Mexican Tourist Board…”

Nora (Carrere) and her two American friends cross the border to Tijuana for a weekend of partying. It doesn’t quite go as expected: the trio instead end up locked up in a Mexican police-station. When two cops on guard at the jail attempt to rape one of her pals, Nora grabs a gun and shoots them both dead. While this perhaps does solve the immediate problem, it obviously creates some rather heftier issues. The three women go on the run, assisted by another inmate, Juan Delgado (Gómez), who has the local knowledge they need to survive south of the border. It turns out Juan was just about to sneak across the American border, and he agrees that if they will fund the payment to the coyotes for him and his family, they can come too.

To say this doesn’t present a positive portrayal of Mexico as a holiday destination would be putting it mildly. Even though the incident which kicks everything off is actually the result of uncouth actions by another group of tourists, it doesn’t exactly depict the locals – the police, especially – in anything except a horrible light. Of course, this is also the poster-child for Bad Decisions Made Overseas, so it’s not as if Nora and her pals deserve to escape the consequences of their own actions. #1 would be “Going to Tijuana,” which in the mid-nineties was a major drug-hub, the local cartel being among the most feared gangs in Mexico. [In 1997, the DEA called the Tijuana Cartel “undeniably the most violent” organization.] So, my sympathy for Nora’s predicament is muted at best.

Even Juan and his family aren’t exactly sympathetic. Between cheerfully confessing that “everybody” wants to sneak across to America, and the gun-battle that breaks out between the illegal immigrants and the federal agents on the U.S. side, they’re basically walking advertisements for Trump’s wall. While this may be partly the result of societal changes over the two decades since this was released in 1995, I think it probably seemed dubious at the time, based off the poorly-considered scenes spent both at the American consulate and behind the scenes with the Border Patrol. I kept expecting these to play some role in subsequent events: never happens. 

The main positive from this is Carrere, whose portrayal of Nora provides – despite the snark above – an energetic enough heroine, pro-active rather than reactive. She especially seems so, when set beside her two travel-mates, who largely sit around bemoaning their fates. There’s no particular reason why there need to be three women here at all; the others serve little purpose, except for an embarrassing subplot where one of them slept with the other’s boyfriend. Not that this has any significant impact, thanks to the “sisters before misters” philosophy on view. If this had been a solo adventure for Nora, Carrere has the charisma to have pulled it off. Instead, we get an ill-conceived exercise, which can’t figure out whether it wants to be liberal or conservative hogwash.

Dir: Catherine Cyran
Star: Tia Carrere, Lisa Dean Ryan, Tricia Leigh Fisher, Carlos Gómez

The Housewife Assassin’s Handbook, by Josie Brown

  By

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

My preferred format for reading is paper; and that’s the only format I support financially, since the only language Big Publishing understands is dollars and cents. Even for a reader like myself, though, e-books have their uses. Writers can offer particular books for free in that format, and that makes it possible to read them first in order to check the quality before you buy the paper edition. And sometimes that opportunity saves you money that would have been wasted if you’d taken a chance on the paper book to begin with! For me, this series opener (which Brown makes available free in e-book format on a permanent basis) was one of those books I was thankful I didn’t have to spend money on, which I’d have regretted.

The novel’s premise is intriguing enough, and the harrowing first chapter grabbed my attention effectively. We’re plunged into the action right away, with present-day events narrated by protagonist Donna in present tense. At the first opportunity, she drops back into a flashback (in past tense) that gives us an introduction to her childhood and family background –and yes, that’s relevant!– how she met her husband, their few years together, and her discovery, after he was identified as the dead victim of a car wreck on the night she gave birth to their third child, that he had a BIG secret: the corporation he worked for was a front that contracted to do wet work for the CIA, and he was an assassin, most recently assigned to help bring down the Quorum, a shadowy organization of ex-government assassins who’ve gone rogue and are out for profit. (They planted the bomb in his car.) We also learn how, needing to support her kids and wanting to better protect them (long story!), and wanting vengeance on the kinds of scumbags who made her a widow, she subsequently agreed to go to work for Carl’s employer, in his old job. (That’s not as big a stretch as it would be for some women –she learned to shoot as a kid, is naturally talented for and very good at it, and met Carl at a firing range.)

While I was reading the first few chapters, I expected this to be a four-star read. The body of the novel itself (we’ll talk about the italicized chapter beginnings below!) actually is more serious in tone than comedic, although it does have some deadpan humor that arises from the incongruities of Donna’s job responsibilities vs. her domestic ones. Her reflections about the ethics of what she does aren’t approached flippantly, and she’s a well-drawn character who earned my sympathy and respect –a very tough woman, morally and physically, but essentially a good and decent person and a caring mom (who intends to survive and be there for her kids). Brown creates a situation that’s fraught with moral and emotional complexity and shades of gray to start with, and then ups the emotional ante exponentially with a new development –followed by some more really compelling twists and turns, the first one of which I didn’t see coming. (I did suspect the second one.) None of the other characters are developed as fully as Donna, but they’re believable, and the author does conjure a sense of place with the southern California setting (in Orange County). And I liked the depiction of family life, and Donna’s relationship with her kids.

In fairness, I also need to defend Donna against the complaint of one reviewer, who regards her as a moral pariah because she lies to her kids, at a very serious level. Well, yes, she does (although she doesn’t like that situation). But as a reality check, these kids are 12, 10 and 5 years old, with big mouths, limited impulse control, and a child’s immaturity and deficient understanding of danger and the complexities of real-world situations. Even if the lies involved are extreme, telling them the truth in a life-and-death situation, where things they do and say could have disastrous consequences, is not a course I’d advocate.

The principal problem I had here was that the plotting is simply not well thought out, and not convincing. One could argue that the essential premise is far-fetched; but I was okay with suspending disbelief that far. (Whether or not black ops organizations would hire a single mom with kids is a matter of speculation, since real life organizations like this don’t publicize their personnel policies. :-) ) But even within the premise Brown creates, much of her plotting simply doesn’t stand examination. Some of the major actions by the villain(s) are at cross-purposes with some of their other major actions; several events that take place here would involve the police in the story, at a level that couldn’t be ignored, but there’s no indication of that here; Donna’s reasoning for one major decision is weak and unconvincing; and Acme (the company she works for) would be much more actively involved in the decision-making at the end, not passive as it is here. Also, characters could not realistically suddenly just shrug off previously incapacitating wounds (which happens here twice), and there are other significant logical slips that took me out of the story. The author writes prolifically, but she apparently wrote this novel too quickly to take her craftsmanship in plotting seriously, or to put any real thought behind it. (That’s a real shame.)

Finally, a word is in order about the titular “Handbook” aspect. As a gimmick here (and as nearly as I can tell, in the other 15 books of the series as well, though I haven’t read them) Brown prefaces each chapter with short, italicized snippets giving supposed household hints that blend home economics with mayhem. These are unrelated to the story-line (though some may have a passing thematic connection to something in the chapter), don’t advance it in any way, and don’t reflect any things that Donna might actually do. Instead, they’re intended to be humorous (often depending for their humor on exaggerations that are completely over the top). Some readers like these (one reviewer found them to be her favorite aspect of the book!); so as the saying goes, “Your mileage may vary.” Personally, though, their humor generally fell flat for me; it typically strains too hard, and comes across as weak (or nonexistent) and forced. I found them an irritating nuisance that the book would have been better off without. Good fiction doesn’t need gimmicks to appeal; and if the author had given us a tight, plausible, well-constructed plot, this novel wouldn’t have needed any gimmick either.

Ultimately, I gave this two stars rather than one, in consideration of its positive elements; and I did finish it (I had to see how it ended!). But I don’t plan to continue reading the series.

Note: The book includes several episodes of explicit sex –including one that’s very abusive and disgusting, although there’s a defensible literary reason for describing it– and other sexual situations (in the opening scene, Donna’s posing as a prostitute). There’s also some bad language, including the f-word (though in Donna’s vocabulary, the latter is only a verb used in unloving contexts, not an all-purpose adjective/adverb) and in the sexual scenes, vulgar terms for some body parts. Most of the other bad language here is strictly of the d- or h-word sort.

Author: Josie Brown
Publisher: Signal Press, available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.

A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

The Hundredth Queen, by Emily R. King

  By

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

An interesting premise gets wasted, buried under a muddied writing style which sets up in one direction, then abandons it for another. Orphan Kalinda has been brought up by The Sisterhood in their remote temple in the mountains (kinda Indian, kinda Sumerian, annoyingly non-specific), training in the ways of a warrior – though others have far more talent in the era. Her life is upended when the local monarch, Tarek, visits the temple and selects Kalinda to be his next wife. Next, as in he already has 99, not to mention his additional courtesans. The problem for Kalinda is, this sets up a tournament in which she can be challenged by the other women, who seek to supplant her.

The journey to Tarek’s palace is barely under way before two issues rear their head, that drive the plot the rest of the way. One is Kalinda falling into a forbidden love for Deven, the guard who’s escorting her. The other is her encounter with a “bhuta”. These are half-human, half-demons, who exist in four kinds, each possessing power over the elements of fire, earth, air and water. Might this, perhaps, be connected to the mysterious fevers from which Kalinda has been suffering from a child, only kept in check by her daily consumption of a potion?

Of course it is. For the book rarely strays from the obvious, virtually from the start when Kalinda immediately falls head-over-heels in love, with literally the first man she has ever seen. There’s no sense of chemistry here at all, or of a romance growing naturally out of the characters. It seems shoehorned in there because, dammit, it was on a checklist of things fantasy books need to be successful, which King found online somewhere. The interactions between Kalinda and the other women weren’t much more convincing, sitting somewhere between Mean Girls and The Hunger Games.

I’m not even clear on the details of the tournament, which is supposed to be the main plot device of the book. Who challenges who? What are the mechanics here? What does Tarek get out of it? It’s the ultimate plot-device, since his motivation for setting up the event is entirely obscure. It’s not as if he can exactly stream the event on pay-per-view. There are a couple of plot twists later on, that did manage to engage my interest briefly – these did help explain why Tarek picked Kalinda, when we had repeatedly been assured earlier of her plainness and lack of talent.

However, the actual competition is largely glossed over with a disapproving frown, culminating in a big, damp squib of pacifistic grrl power. This is less drama than melodrama, with every character being exactly what they appear to be, and possessing few hidden depths. The last third of this proved to be a particular slog, and it’s not a universe to which I’ll be returning in future.

Author: Emily R. King
Publisher: Skyscape, available through Amazon, both as an e-book and in a printed edition.

Here Alone

  By

★★★
“Forest of the Dead”

A viral plague has decimated mankind, turning its victims in mindless, flesh-craving ghouls. One of the few to have survived is Ann (Walters), who has taken up residence in the woods, where she has camped out. Ann uses the survival skills she received from her now-absent husband, Jason (West), only occasionally having to emerge and risk the threat of the infected, in order to gather supplies. Her secluded, yet relatively safe existence is disturbed, when she finds an injured man, Chris (Thompson) and his teenage daughter, Liv (Piersanti) on a road. They are supposed to be on their way north, to where the epidemic is reported to be in check. Yet Chris, in particular, seems curiously unwilling to be on his way.

If there’s nothing particularly new or inventive about this version of the zombie apocalypse, it’s not without its small-scale merits. Ann is far from some kind of survivalist Mary Sue: she’s barely getting by, perhaps having paid less attention to her wilderness lessons than she should have. Probably wisely, for a small budget film, the infected – the term “zombies” is never used – are kept largely out of sight, heard more than they are seen. While their shrieks are unnerving enough, the tension comes more from internal forces: the opaque nature of Chris’s motives, for example, or Ann’s dwindling supply of bullets. The former are particularly troubling: the dynamic between Chris and Liv just seems “off” in a variety of ways, and I was not surprised when this played a part in the film’s climax. However, things do not unfold in the way I expected, so credit for that.

The film does cheat a bit with regard to previous events. At the beginning of the film, Ann is already alone, and information about what happened to Jason and their child, is only doled out in teaspoon-sized flashbacks over the course of subsequent events. It matters, because these flashbacks reveal quite a lot about her character, and the way she interacts with other people: information we otherwise don’t have. By not getting it until later, we end up retro-fitting it into what we’ve already seen, and I’m not certain the additional complexity of structure imposed, serves any real purpose.

In the earlier stages, it reminded me of The Wall, with its tale of a woman thrown back entirely onto her own resources. While that solo adventure would have been difficult to sustain, it is the most interesting and original part of proceedings. I was rather disappointed when Chris + Liv showed up, because the entire dynamic changes at that point, and the film becomes something with which I’m somewhat too familiar. While there are twists down the stretch, this rejects the chance to truly separate itself from the large pack of zombie apocalypse movies in terms of plot. Fortunately, a solid performance from Walters helps the film sustain viewer interest through the weaker second half.

Dir: Rod Blackhurst
Star: Lucy Walters, Adam David Thompson, Gina Piersanti, Shane West

Huff

  By

★★★
“Brings home the bacon.”

A modern-day update of The Three Little Pigs, this works better than you might think. The wolf is “Huff” (O’Connell), a really warped individual whose interests appear to be religion, drugs and molesting his three step-daughters. Bit of an odd combination. Their mother, Lorelei (Elina Madison), is a largely absent stripper, who seems not to care too much that her boyfriend’s attention have now turned from her oldest daughter, Brixi (Bollinger), to the youngest one, Shay (Stefanko). But when Huff prepares his big score, using cash “borrowed” from his mistress’s ex-husband (or something like that – the relationships here are so complicated, you need a chart to keep track), Lorelei sees her opportunity, sending the three girls away with the money. That leaves Huff in serious trouble, and he’s soon after them, intent on retrieving the cash. Huff is indeed going to puff… on his asthma inhaler.

Yeah, that’s a bit of an over-reach, and you feel it might have worked better, had the makers not apparently felt obligated to stick so close to their source. Contrast, say, Freeway, which was a similarly modern version of a fairly tale, specifically Little Red Riding Hood – but had no qualms about discarding elements that didn’t fit, and was all the better for it. Here, even the daughters’ names are clunkily shoehorned in to the narrative; as well as Brixi and Shay, there’s Styx. Okay, I think we get the concept: even for a stripper mom, those are a bit much. Fortunately, when it’s not being incredibly contrived, this is a decent enough slab of trashy fun, located right at the bottom of the social pecking order – although everyone has far better teeth, and are generally much more attractive than you’d expect. This is a compromise I’m happy to live with, since it is clearly not intended to be Winter’s Bone.

O’Connell was The Batchelor in the show’s seventh series, in 2005, so guess it’s a bit of a change in pace and content here. He certainly makes for an ultra-evil villain, right from the get-go when he’s telling his (at that point, extremely young) daughters a particularly sordid tale from the Bible. Indeed, it’s kinda remarkable that the sisters have managed to survive with any fragment of their morality intact. Yet, on more than one occasion, Brixi is prepared to imperil herself to protect her siblings – a cooler head might have considered saner options. If you know the fairy-tale, you’ll already know how things progress, and the story follows its inspiration closely, up to the point where Huff and Brixi face off. It’s a finale that really doesn’t deserve the coda it receives, which seems to render much of what has gone before pointless, or close to. But as a tacky grab-bag of low-life scumminess, where an unpleasant death is never far away, it appears more than happy to wallow in the mud along with its “little pigs”. It does so adequately enough to be a guilty pleasure as a result.

Dir: Paul Morrell
Star: Marie Bollinger, Charlie O’Connell, Jenna Stone, Elly Stefanko
a.k.a. Big Bad Wolf