Tag: horror

Hostile

  By

★★★
“We are the monsters.”

After an un-specified global apocalypse, humanity is reduced to small bands of scattered survivors, who have to try and scratch out survival, while avoiding the attacks of “reapers”, mutated creatures which stalk the landscape, especially after dark. One of those survivors is Juliette (Ashworth), who is on a foraging mission in the desert when an accident throws her off the road, and leaves her with a badly-broken leg. She has to wait for help to arrive, fending off the reaper (Botet) which is prowling the area, with whatever she can find to hand. As she does so, she thinks about life before the apocalypse, where she escaped drug addiction with the help of her boyfriend, gallery owner Jack (Fitoussi) – only for happiness to be fleeting, and taken away from her when multiple tragedies strike.

Initially, the structure bugged the hell out of me. Just when tension was being ramped up, with Juliette in peril and having to cope with a host of issues, simply to survive, we’d suddenly flash back to mundane reality, and thoroughly unconvincing chat between her and Jack. This happened on multiple occasions, and I was left wondering what the relevance of it all was. Beyond her apparent issues with reading, there seemed to be little or no connection. Finally, at the end, you suddenly get the point. While it’s quite a touching revelation, and the ending in undeniably poignant, I’m not sure it was enough to counter all the irritation the approach generated earlier.

The other problem, is that Turi is considerably better at the action/horror aspects, than at relationship drama. It’s a while before we see the first reaper. Juliette’s first encounter with one takes place inside a caravan where she foraging; the camera remains outside and, brilliantly, we only see the impact of her battle with the creature on the caravan, as well as hearing it, of course. When we finally see one, it lives up to what our imagination has crafted, and is creepy as hell. That’s thanks mostly to Botet’s fine work as a “body actor,” along the lines of Doug Jones. In contrast, there’s little or no wallop packed by the scenes involving Juliette and Jack, which are closer to bad soap-opera.

As noted, you eventually understand why, yet I can’t help thinking there were better ways to handle it. While necessary exposition, front-loading all the set-up, rather than spreading it out through the film, and doing so more efficiently, would perhaps have helped. I’d rather have seen how we got there from here (“there” being the post-apoc world, in case it’s not clear), than rehash every detail of what’s clearly a doomed relationship. If we’d had the reaper stalking her over an extended period, that might also have helped credibility in terms of the final revelation, and a bit more likeability for the heroine would have been welcome. As is, the good here is really good; it’s unfortunately countered by a number of significant issues.

Dir: Mathieu Turi
Star: Brittany Ashworth, Gregory Fitoussi, Javier Botet

Crawl

  By

★★★★
“The shark was otherwise engaged, torturing Blake Lively…”

I have to say, I’m neither an expert on that strange sub-genre of “animal horror,” nor am I a particular fan of it. I’m mainly looking for a movie that can give me a suspenseful time in the cinemas. This is becoming more and more difficult. Partly because in by my time of live, I have has seen quite a lot of movies, of all sorts; but also because I feel modern film makers have forgotten how to create real suspense and a feeling of slowly rising and constant terror in movies.

Mostly we are left with nonsensical pictures of man-killing animals that seem to have supernatural abilities. Usually it’s played for laughs because of all the silliness that comes with these kind of movies. That’s a pity. Sure, as a cinema-goer you can’t expect the greatness of classics like Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) or Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) an ymore. But is it really that difficult? Create a modicum of interest for the main characters; introduce the predator; put the future victims in an isolated spot with the animals; and play with the ambiguity of the question as to whether said territory is safe at the moment – or not! That’s not rocket science, folks!

But for that you have to take the movie and the characters of your story seriously and the timing of every scene is essential: You’ve got to know where you set up your “beats”. How long can you ratchet up suspense before you’ve got to deliver? Where do you put the shocks, without which you can’t do a good horror movie? Do you put in a little bit of humor and to what degree? When is it time to give some relief to the audience, e. g. with character or relationship moments which seem obligatory background for these kind of stories? Whom do you kill? Whom do you have survive? And should you kill off the family dog or not? 😉

Alexandre Aja is a French film-maker who has got to show his talents across very different horror movies. His great High Tension, a psycho-thriller produced by Luc Besson, was followed by a The Hills Have Eyes remake, the good but not great Kiefer Sutherland vehicle Mirrors and later the (consciously) ridiculous Piranha 3-D. After a good start, in recent years it seemed as if he had lost “it” a bit. So, the offer from producer Sam Raimi to film an original story by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen came at the right time.

While the script has a few humorous moments (if you’re looking for them), it plays its story straight and Aja also focuses on creating genuine suspense and danger. Yet he also delivers in the important categories of shock and gore – something not really that evident from the trailers. That makes sense: you won’t show your climaxes in a trailer of an action movie. I’ve to say my expectations were pretty low when going into the movie. As a fan you know the score, so can a film still get you? To my surprise and delight, this was not only able to do that but also surpassed my expectations by far. But let’s start with some background info on what I want in such a movie.

Though you never expect a character study, I’m always happy if the characters get enough backstory or character traits, that they don’t appear as totally bland, two-dimensional audience stand-ins. That’s definitively true for Crawl‘s main actors Kaya Scodelario and Barry Pepper. Neither had that much luck with past roles: Scodelario, I remember from the Maze Runner movies but hardly seemed to register anywhere else much. I think I saw Pepper last with a supporting villain role in the True Grit remake (2010). I also need predators I like and respect. Some animals won’t really work for me, e. g. bears are simply too sympathetic. But for my money reptiles of all sizes always deliver the goods. And I’ve got an enormous respect for crocodiles or alligators.

Next, the simple but effective story in a nutshell. Florida, hurricane time. Swimmer Haley Keller (Scodelario), who just failed in a swimming competition, receives a phone call from her sister She’s worried because she couldn’t reach their dad. Neither sister has had much contact with him, since their mother and father divorced; he was Haley’s former trainer, leaving their relationship no on the best of terms. The streets are beiing closed due to the dangers of the approaching hurricane and the rising water levels.

After finding her father’s house abandoned, save for his dog, Haley drives on to their former family house which he was renovating. Following the sound of a radio, she descends into the derelict cellar where she finds Dave, her wounded father (Pepper), who tells her that two alligators have entered the cellar through the drain. While they have some sanctuary in the cellar, they have to make an escape, due to the rising water that is coming up through openings in the cellar floor…

This may sound maybe a bit dry (pun not intended). But, believe me, the screenwriters and Aja have used every trick in the book to push and pull us, the audience, emotionally through our seats, in the same way the alligators push and pull the two likable yet imperfect protagonists through their surroundings. I was very pleasantly surprised about the high level of suspense and tension here. But also how the important ingredients mentioned above were perfectly blended together. The movie really creates suspense and grisly anticipation – yet also doesn’t forget that audiences need moments of relaxation so they can breathe a little, before the next furious attack or moment of extreme danger arrive. It’s a very well-written and executed entertainment, showcasing a kind of story-telling we don’t see much any more.

That said, the movie doesn’t reinvent the wheel. I personally wouldn’t be surprised if the Rasmussens saw two other recent animal horror movies with female leads: Burning Bright (2010) told the story of a young woman, locked together with her autistic brother in a house with a wild tiger by her evil uncle during a hurricane. And, of course The Shallows (2016, is it really already that long ago? It feels as if I saw the film just a couple of weeks ago…), which showed us Blake Lively on a rock in the rising water off an unknown beach while a blood-thirsty shark circles. As a matter of fact, both of these movies would make for a good triple-bill with this. And once Crawl comes out on DVD, it will find its place directly next to them on my shelves!

What is it about all those young women fighting predators with large pointy teeth? I’m no psycho-analyst but I guess it has something to do with the re-integration of certain character traits into the female psyche. Whatever these may be. I do remember an early trailer when The Shallows came out that had a voice-over of what sounded like a life coach trainer, encouraging the Blake Lively character. I wonder if the idea of the father who trained his daughter to extraordinary achievements was inspired by that trailer?

Actually, this movie goes a different way from some recent action-heroine movies, that looked to discredit father figures or put them in a negative light. Haley may have felt betrayed by her parents divorce and her father “abandoning” her. Yet during the course of the story, she finds out that her parents were not as happy as she thought and that her dad, who always loved her and believed in her, is just a normal guy. [Though I must credit him for absolutely convincing me how every household needs a utility belt for hand tools!] Having to survive and fight for what is left of her family, with the support of her father makes Haley overcome her own anxieties, through facing more than one deadly situation. Certainly, crawling through the drain by which the reptiles came into the house evokes quite distressing birth trauma… That’s a very positive message. After so many negative portrayals of father figures and “family values”, I found this a highly sympathetic and, for 2019, unusually traditional depiction.

But it only has to work – and it does that very well. We are not immediately tossed into shock-infested seas, there’s a nice build-up, so when the gators appear they evoke the desired audience reaction.Haley and her father have enough back story that you are on their side and want them to survive, while at the same time worrying if they will make it. Despite being just that just 90 minutes, the movie is full of ideas of how the imprisoned father-daughter couple could get help from outside (which leads to an unpleasant looter-reptile encounter) or escape the cellar and the house. It really plays with giving you hope, just to take it away again. One of my favourite moments is when Haley and Dave make it to an escape boat outside, when the levees break and a wave of water throws them back into their house – only one floor higher. Well-timed elements of humor, such as Haley’s reaction when normal house spiders fall on her face, help make for very satisfying entertainment.

A fascinating side-fact is that the movie was shot in Belgrade, Serbia, which doubles for Florida perfectly. And a little “tidbit”: Scodelario’s and Pepper’s family name in the movie is “Keller”. For German cinema-goers that’s extremely funny as “Keller” is the German word for “cellar”. But one last question: will the dog survive? Watch the movie to find out! It gets four well-earned stars from me. Your mileage may vary, but honestly I think it’s on the same level as The Shallows, which also scored highly with me. So, if you enjoyed that, this should be right up your (flooded) street.

Dir: Alexandre Aja
Star:  Kaya Scodelario, Barry Pepper

Girls With Balls

  By

★★★★
“Guess a new domain name is needed…”

Lurking behind one of the most cringeworthy titles I’ve ever seen, and a trailer that’s not much better, is a very pleasant surprise. Well, at least if you’re a fan of the “splatstick” genre, mixing over-the-top gore and comedy: Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead is the pinnacle of that genre. I certainly am, and consequently found this a real hoot. Girls volleyball team, the Falcons, are on their way home after their latest victory, when they end up diverted into a small town, populated entirely by inbred rednecks (or the Gallic version thereof). After an encounter in the hotel, they find themselves getting a night-time visit, and are soon being hunted down by the village’s residents. However, the biggest psycho may not be among the locals…

Afonso does a great job in depicting the heroines with broad strokes. You quickly establish the egotistical star player Morgane (Azem), up and coming star Jeanne (Daviot), nerdy M.A. (Balchere), etc. They’re all overseen by their distinctly non-athletic coach (Solaro), who treats them as if they were one big, dysfunctional family. Yet these internal tensions often threaten their literal survival. It was clear to me (if not many reviewers!) that Afonso is parodying the slasher genre: he takes it to such extremes, with the girls bickering over boyfriends even as their pursuers are mere feet away. That’s where this differs from the other “women’s sports team in wilderness peril” movie – yes, it’s a genre… well, there are two – Blood Games, which took itself seriously. He does an equally nice job with the villains. For example, rather than having hunting dogs, there’s one local who pretends to be a dog, playing the sound of hounds baying over a bullhorn.

It’s just one of the many times where this film subverts the audience’s expectations, not least in having heroines with their own set of flaws. Also included there is the country-and-western singer who hitches a ride on the team’s camper van, interrupting proceedings to offer sardonic commentary on proceedings. “The players on this team were all kind of hot”, he sings at the start, going on, “Another thing they have in common, is that they die before the end.” [Is he telling the truth? I won’t say…] Inevitably, of course, there’s a rather dumb scene where the girls use volleyballs to attack their enemies, and the climax doesn’t actually stick in the mind as well as many of the scenes which preceded it. The attack chihuahua, or the headless corpse that Just. Won’t. Die.

If you took this seriously, it would potentially be thoroughly offensive – though it’s entirely equal-opportunity in its approach there. Men, women, gay or straight: no-one here gets out alive. Just, for the love of all that is holy, skip the dubbed version on Netflix, and watch it subtitled. I caught a few seconds before lunging for the remote control, and my ears may still be bleeding.

Dir: Olivier Afonso
Star: Tiphaine Daviot, Manon Azem, Louise Blachère, Victor Artus Solaro

Lady Death: The Movie

  By

★★
“Death warmed up.”

My first viewing of this was on a day off from work, when I was down with some sinusy thing, and dosed up on DayQuil. So I chalked my losing interest and drifting off to the meds, and once I felt better, decided this deserved the chance of a re-view. However, the result was still the same: even as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed viewer, I found attention lapsing. For this animated version of a mature comic, might as well be a He-Man and the Masters of the Universe episode. Which is a shame. I wanted to like it, since the creator of Lady Death, Brian Pulido, is something of a local comics legend here in my adopted home state of Arizona. This should have been better.

In 15th-century Sweden, Hope (Auten) is the daughter of Matthias (Kleinhenz), a mercenary who is actually an incarnation of Satan. When this is exposed, the innocent Hope is burned at the stake by religious zealots: there, she makes a literal deal with the devil, and agrees to re-join her father in Hell, where he has also taken her fiance, medical student Niccolo. However, once she is in the underworld, she rebels against his authority. With the aid of Satan’s former swordsmith, Cremator (Mungle), she obtains ‘Darkness’, a weapon Cremator had forged after slaying Asmodeus. Hope – or Lady Death, as she is now known – begins to amass an army and plot her demonic father’s overthrow.

All of which sounds considerably more interesting than the execution here, which is blandly uninteresting in just about every level, beginning with its depiction of hell. Even by the standards of 2004, this is low-quality animation. One of the strengths of the medium is it’s limited only by imagination: you don’t need to worry about the costs of building sets or whatever, it’s just what you draw. Yet there’s no indication here of any thought having gone into the setting. Hell is, apparently, a poorly-lit and generic cave system, populated by entities that look like Jabba the Hutt or Tim Curry in Legend. Much the same vanilla complaint can be leveled at voice-acting that’s desperately in need of more energy, save perhaps McAvin as Lucifer’s “jester,” Pagan.

But it’s perhaps the script which is the weakest element here – and considering the screenplay was written by Pulido, that’s especially disappointing. I’m only somewhat familiar with the comics, yet they seem to have a rich and fully-developed mythology. Could have fooled me based on this, where the Devil is basically an idiot, who has to make every mistake in the Evil Overlord handbook, to allow his adversary to triumph. Though this version of Lady Death appears considerably more heroic than in the source material, the question of why a “good girl” would want to reign over hell is never addressed. All that’s left is in an impressive bit of central character design, because there’s no doubt she is a striking creation. She’s someone who deserves a significantly better fate than this entirely forgettable prod with a blunt stick.

Dir: Andy Orjuela
Star (voice): Christine Auten, Mike Kleinhenz, Andy McAvin, Rob Mungle

The Rizen

  By

★★½
“Tunnel of love-craft.”

This is about the third Lovecraftian film I’ve seen with a heroine in the past year or so, after Black Site and The Creature Below. While I’m not sure it’s still quite a trend, it’s notable, considering I’ve only seen three Lovecraftian films over that time. It certainly stands in sharp contrast to the original author, for whom women were very rarely the protagonists. However, this equally provides clear evidence that this isn’t enough, on its own, as a guarantee of quality.

It’s 1955, and Frances (Swift) regains consciousness to find herself being dragged through an underground tunnel by a half-human monster. She bashes its head in with a convenient rock, and starts trying to figure out what’s going on, since her memory is all but gone. She encounters a scientist (Tajah) and then a handcuffed soldier (Knowles) – neither of whom can remember much either – and more of the monstrous humanoids. As the trio make their way through the complex, fragments of flashbacks reveal this was a NATO project, using captured Nazi occult research with the aim of getting a Cold War edge. However, this has backfired, and control over things has been lost. With emphasis heavily on the “things”…

It’s one of the most blatant and annoying cases of amnesia as a plot device I’ve seen of late, with characters conveniently remembering things at the precise moments needed by the story-line. However, even to get to that point, you have to endure painfully repetitive meandering through dark corridors for what seems like forever. It feels like a bad RPG, in which the heroine picks up largely useless sidekicks to follow her around, in the expectation that they might eventually serve some purpose. Indeed, the whole thing resembles an unofficial adaptation of Resident Evil, made by people too concerned about loyalty to the game, rather than an entertaining movie.

To that Jovovich-shaped end, Swift is one of the film’s better elements – a stuntwoman, with a good physical presence which is (to some extent, deliberately) far better than those of her male co-stars. However, only to some extent: it doesn’t excuse the painful nature of Tajah’s performance, for example. This stands in awkward contrast to the “name” British actors whom we see in the flashbacks, including Bruce Payne, Ade Edmondson and Sally Phillips. Clearly the budget could only stretch to bringing them in for cameos, though it just emphasizes the gap in ability. The main problem, though, is a structure where the viewer spends the first hour with no clue what’s going on – and with little reason to care, either. There’s only so much slinking around dark corridors I can take. This movie delivers all of that quota, plus an extra 30 minutes for good measure.

It’s a shame, since if they’d started with the explanation, we could perhaps then have gone along with the characters on the journey. As is, we alternate for most of the running time between bored and confused. When everything eventually makes sense, it was good enough to leave me somewhat intrigued, on reading there is a sequel in production. Pity that intrigue comes an hour too late.

Dir: Matt Mitchell
Star:Laura Swift, Christopher Tajah, Patrick Knowles, Bruce Payne

Blind Alley

  By

★★★
“Doing laundry can be murder.”

Wannabe actress Rosa (de Armas) is on the way home from her job as a hotel maid when she gets a message telling her she has a call-back the next day for a final audition. With her washing machine broken, she pops into the local 24-hour laundromat to get her costume all spick and span. It and the surrounding streets are completely deserted, and it’s not long before she’s being menaced by the kind of hulking, silent figure only found in horror movies like this. She’s delighted when hunky co-launderer Gabriel (Cadavid) shows up to rescue her, despite his strange tastes in music. But is he really as nice as he seems?

C’mon, folks. As mentioned, it’s a horror movie. Of course he isn’t. Where would the fun be in that? So it’s no surprise when she spots that his washing appears as much an attempt to get rid of blood-stained evidence as anything. With a dodgy mobile phone, a sister (Diakhate) in peril and a psycho banging on the door, how is Roda going to get through the night? And will she ever get her laundry finished? It’s all entirely contrived, naturally: not just the launderette, but the entire block of this residential neighborhood completely and conveniently deserted, with no-one at all passing by, or even glancing out their window to the unfolding carnage. Maybe triple-pane windows are a thing in Colombia, I don’t know.

Still, it’s an effective portrayal of the loneliness of the big city, and with that as a given, it’s a briskly energetic piece that pits Rosa against Gabriel for most of its duration. She knows she can’t possibly out-muscle him, so has to try and use her wits to survive – and also try to keep her sister, who is back in the nearby apartment, out of harm’s way. Just when that seems to have run its course, the film unleashes a triple-whammy of twists. One character returns; a new one is introduced; and we get to discover the truth about Gabriel (which explains things like his odd taste in music). These are of varying effectiveness – I liked the new character the best, and wished they had shown up earlier. Though your overall reaction may well depend on how you feel about movies which suddenly shift genres.

In this case, it does render what had gone before a bit problematic: given what we eventually discover about Gabriel, I have to wonder why he didn’t kick things off in that direction, a great deal sooner. [You can probably tell, I’m tiptoeing around spoilers] It would certainly have helped avoid a sense that the ending feels rushed: you’ve barely got your brain around what’s started to happen, when the credits roll – just as things were getting interesting. It’s perhaps this which leaves it feeling more like an unoptioned pilot of a TV show, setting the table for a series to come. Though at least it’s one I would be interested in watching.

Dir: Antonio Trashorras
Star: Ana de Armas, Diego Cadavid, Judith Diakhate, Leonor Varela
a.k.a. El Callejón

Avia Vampire Hunter

  By

★
How to finish 2018: one of the all-time worst action heroine flicks.

I usually try to be tolerant when it comes to low-budget cinema and the resulting flaws. There are some things which you just cannot expect when a film is financed on the maker’s credit-card, and I’m willing to overlook rough edges if a movie can hold my interest in other ways. However, there are times when the end product is almost irredeemably bad, with few, if any, merits. This would be one such case. Your script is the main area which should be an area of equal opportunity, regardless of budget. Here, if anything, the flaws at the technical level are magnified by the failings on the page.

Vast chunks simply don’t reach basic coherence, with scenes that come out of nowhere, go nowhere or are entirely unconnected to anything. And what little does makes sense is completely uninteresting. Let me give you an example of the former:

  • Insert shot of the kind of clock you’d find at your grandmother’s
  • 30 seconds of hand-held camera moving towards the heroine as she kneels in a forest
  • 90 seconds of her twirling a sword to no purpose, where my main reaction was “Why are there table napkins stuck to the trees?”
  • 25 second of hand-held camera backing slowly away from the heroine.

The basic story sounds as if it might have some potential. Avia (Valentino) saw her family attacked by vampires, and made it her life’s mission to seek out and destroy them, with the help of police officer Detective Raymond Guy (Jackson). Except it’s executed in such a low-energy and incompetent fashion, from the performances through the woeful audio mix, to the action – the only person who has a slight clue how to fight is Tomahawk, who plays the master vampire. Otherwise, the sole entertainment value to be found is in mocking its inadequacies. I will say, there’s plenty of scope there, from the moment Guy and his partner don’t notice Avia bringing a large samurai sword when she tags along with them on a routine interrogation.

The whole thing about her family? Forgotten entirely after it has been mentioned. The relationship between Avia and Raymond? Thoroughly unconvincing, sinking to “howlingly bad” during their fully-clothed sex scene. The use of music is particularly execrable, being completely inappropriate to what’s happening on screen to the point it appears to have been added at random. This is despite the presence of eighteen names in the opening credits as “music by”, not counting the London Philharmonic Orchestra, whose presence here is… well, let’s say it came as a surprise to me, and probably to them as well.

The only moment where I had interest briefly roused, was the suggestion made by Raymond’s partner (who vanishes for the middle two-thirds) that Avia might actually be completely insane, and killing innocent people in the belief they are vampires. Her slaughter of a family supports that theory, and it could have been an interesting direction. Except that the film has already established she has official sanction for her acts, Raymond clearly doesn’t give a damn about the possibility, and the final coda has Avia saying it doesn’t matter either. So why bother? Indeed, “why bother” is an entirely appropriate summary of the whole enterprise. Take my advice, and don’t.

Dir: Leon Hunter
Star: Allison Valentino, Rodney Jackson, Cliff Lee, Antonio Tomahawk

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

Shira: the Vampire Samurai

  By

★★
“Blade-ette”

I could have sworn I’d seen this before, to the point where I almost skipped over it on Amazon Prime. But on checking, appears not. Did I watch it, and just not review it? Or does it only seem very familiar? It’s clearly trying to be a low-budget, female version of Blade, with its half-vampire heroine taking on her cousins, with their plans against humanity. In this case, Shira (Jason) is bitten by a vampire in medieval Japan, but somehow ends up not going full-bloodsucker herself – apparently because she tried to commit suicide first. The film bounces back and forth between then and the present day, where she has become a vampire hunter, along with her Scooby gang. Yet she has also come to the attentions of Kristof (Zmed), who owns a strip-club for reasons that, I’m sure, are entirely necessary to the plot. He and his former Nazi death-camp vampire scientist assistant want to use her in a breeding program to create a new race of super-vampires, who can go out during the day. Shira, naturally, is having none of this.

This probably would have worked better if it had decided whether it wanted to be Shira’s origin story or not. Either stick to the feudal Japan setting or the modern one: instead, the constant bipping between the two is thoroughly confusing rather than enlightening. A better-written script would have handled her creation in a brisk five minutes, then have allowed more opportunity to develop the contemporary portion, which comes off as rather under-cooked. Not helping matters here are the slew of supporting characters, most of whose purpose and motivations are never adequately explained. The whole thing feels almost as if this was a trilogy, edited down to feature length, with little regard for a coherent narrative. As a result, subplots are left sticking out at a variety of awkward angles.

For example, Shira is being pursued through the centuries by Kenji (Klein), a samurai with a grudge. What is the serum Shira apparently has to take on a regular basis? And a descendant of Professor Van Helsing also shows up, to no particular purpose. On the plus side, the fight scenes are copious and surprisingly well-choreographed. Admittedly, with regard to the latter, it probably helps that I watched this immediately after the dire Hollywood Warrioress, which would make anything look good in comparison. So, amend that to be “seem surprisingly well-choreographed,” perhaps. And if you don’t like this one, there’ll be another along in a couple of minutes. It builds to a “homage” to Enter the Dragon, with Shira chasing Kristof through a hall of mirrors. Because…  Hell if I know. Why not?

It makes about as much sense as the rest of the film, e.g. why does Shira’s boyfriend (Dwonzh) spend so much time with his shirt off? Pondering these enigmas may well provide as much amusement as the movie itself.

Dir: “Simon” (Jeff Centauri)
Star: Chona Jason, Adrian Zmed, Louis Klein, Lawrence Dwonzh
a.k.a. Vampire Shadows

Tarnation

  By

★★½
“The Dead Evil.”

Following on after From Parts Unknown and Sheborg Apocalypse, this is my third encounter with what Armstrong calls “Neo pulp.” All three have strong heroines at their core, which is something I can get behind. But I suspect his approach works best when he builds out his own universe, as in Sheborg. Here, the inspiration is the classic horror of The Evil Dead trilogy (particularly Evil Dead 2), which is a bit of a double-edged sword. You need to have seen those films to get the references – and, in Armstrong’s defense, I suspect most viewers of his work likely will have. The problem, and there’s no escaping this, is Sam Raimi did it better, leaving this feeling almost like an Asylum-style mockbuster. Turning Ash into Ashette and hanging an Evil Dead poster on the wall of your cabin isn’t enough.

Most obviously, Masterman isn’t Bruce Campbell. While fine in Sheborg as the sidekick, she doesn’t have the presence necessary to drag the viewer along on her journey to a blood-drenched hell and back. Oscar (Masterman) is a wannabe singer, fired by her band, who heads off to a remote cabin with her best friend and friend’s boyfriend. Of course, anyone who has ever seen any horror movie will be unsurprised when things go wrong, in particular her BFF being possessed by some kind of entity. Though there’s a lot of… stuff going on besides. Said stuff includes a flying demon with a unicorn’s head, a boxing kangaroo, a rap battle, and insects crawling out of places insects were never meant to go. And blood. Lots of blood.

There’s no arguing the energy here: when the film gets going, it pretty much doesn’t stop thereafter. However, I’d have traded a sizeable chunk of that energy for coherence. Or a sense of escalation. Or anything to help negate the feeling this consists of Armstrong and his team throwing whatever ideas they could come up with, on the screen, in the order they came up with them. Some of those ideas are fun, and you marvel at the low budget inventiveness. which makes a hole in the floor with a rug on it, a portal to the netherworld. Others don’t work, outstay their welcome, or have execution so flawed they should have been strangled at birth.

As a result, the energy becomes increasingly wearing on the soul, to the point that Oscar discovering the magic words to restore normality are, “Klaatu Barada Necktie,” provoked a tired eye-roll rather than the intended mirth. As loving recreations go, it’s certainly not bad; however, if I wanted to watch a blood-spattered story about a weekend spent at a cabin in the woods gone horribly wrong, I’d watch The Evil Dead and its sequels. Hopefully, Armstrong can develop something that shows off his unquestionable talent, imagination and ability to squeeze every penny out of the budget, on its own canvas, rather than painting on top of someone else’s masterpiece.

Dir: Daniel Armstrong
Star: Daisy Masterman, Emma Louise Wilson, Danae Swinburne