Tag: USA

Gone (2012)

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★★½
“But not ENTIRELY forgotten…”

The life of Jill Conway (Seyfried) is slowly returning to somewhat normal, following her abduction by a serial killer in the Pacific Northwest.  She was held in a forest pit, and barely managed to escape with her life. However, the lack of physical evidence and a history of mental health problems, helped cause the authorities not to believe her story. When Jill’s sister Molly vanishes, she’s certain the same killer is responsible, and when the police again fail to take her seriously, begins investigating herself. But when the cops find out this former mental patient is packing heat, Jill becomes a fugitive herself.

This largely falls into the category of competently forgettable. There’s precious little here that will stick in the mind either way, for positive or negative reasons. Seyfried is admirably feisty, refusing to let anything interfere with her single-minded goal of rescuing sis. This persistence and raw guts displayed make her previous escape from the psycho’s clutches that necessary bit more plausible. Post-abduction, Jill comes over as a little unhinged, and you can see why the police might find it difficult to believe some of her claims. Yet this actually works to the benefit of her investigation, because when she starts waving her gun around, you can understand why whoever the business end is pointed at, would be concerned.

There’s just precious little in the way of surprises here. For instance, we never doubt she was telling the truth about her previous experience, or that the killer is indeed real, despite her willingness to lie to anyone and everyone in pursuit of Molly. More ambivalence about this – heck, make Jill the killer in the end! – would at least have separated this from the slew of other “Is her brain making it all up or not?” thrillers. Might also have saved the director from having to resort to one of the oldest cliches in the book, the Cat Attack Scare. The lack of any meaningful background on the killer is also a problem, leaving him a vague threat of no particular intent: why does he dig a pit in the woods for his victims? Any film like this is always going to be compared, probably unfavourably, to Silence of the Lambs. But Jim a.k.a. “Digger” here, is definitely no Buffalo Bill.

This motivation matters, because some of his actions – which, unfortunately, I can’t detail in a non-spoilerish way – are hard to make sense of. I get he’s annoyed that Jill escaped him. But his plan to lure her back into the woods at the dead of night… It offers little a well-chloroformed rag would not have been able to accomplish, with considerably less fuss. The movie did just about succeed in holding my interest, and the lack of any romantic element for the heroine was pleasant. However, you won’t have to have delved very deep into the genre, to find example of this kind of thing, done considerably better.

Dir: Heitor Dhalia
Star: Amanda Seyfried, Daniel Sunjata, Jennifer Carpenter, Sebastian Stan

Sweet Justice (2009)

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★★
“In need of significant support.”

Four women run a charitable agency in Texas, helping single mothers track down and obtain child support payments from deadbeat dads. However, they don’t limit themselves to the simple serving of legal papers. The women adopt a more… hands-on approach, shall we say, first luring their targets in with the promise of sex, then threatening them at gunpoint, to make sure they pay up. For obvious reasons, the cops soon take interest in this string of unusual armed robberies. Meanwhile, the city’s white mayor, is dealing with a domestic crisis of her own, thanks to her daughter having had a child by (gasp!) a black man.

Y’know, woeful though this is in many ways, I actually somewhat respect the intent and the topic: at least its heart is in the right place. It seems like I have seen a lot of female vigilante films of late, and too many of them seem to descent into undiluted man-hating. This does a better job than most of avoiding that. There are times when the agency’s female clients are actually wrong, identifying the wrong man as their “baby daddy”, and some men are actually trying to do the right thing as well, such as the father of the mayor’s grandchild. It’s all considerably more even-handed than I expected, and does a decent job of highlighting just how screwed-up the current system is, failing almost everyone involved. However, social commentary, no matter how well-intentioned, is generally pretty low on the list of things I’m looking for on this site.

It doesn’t help that the execution is laughable in most regards, with few of those involved in front of the camera giving any indication of being genuine professionals. To be fair, the actresses generally come off slightly better than the “actors,” who appear to be a selection of wannabe rappers. But the story is ridiculously implausible as well, and morally dubious, too: is armed robbery really an appropriate and measured response to failure to pay child support? You’ll definitely have time to consider such things, during the many slacker-paced scenes. The cops are spectacularly incompetent too, though this is stupidity necessary to the plot, otherwise the vigilante squad would be locked up inside fifteen minutes. This perhaps therefore deserves slightly more slack.

There isn’t even any particular escalation or closure to be seen here. The sole thread which gets properly resolved involves the mayor, who eventually comes to terms with her grandchild’s parentage, and quits the re-election race in favour of her family. That’s nice. The vigilantes just continue on their serene way, as if this were some kind of pilot for a banal TV series. It all feels less like a coherent or interesting feature film, than an excuse for the director to hang out with a few of his pals and some local musicians. To anyone outside that clique, there’s little here of interest, and it’s certainly as forgettable as its remarkably generic title.

Dir: Arthur Muhammad
Star: Tammy Thomas, Reagan Gomez-Preston, Shannon Ashe, Z-RO
a.k.a. Black Angels

Gone by Dawn + Gone by Dawn 2: Dead by Dusk

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Gone by Dawn ★★★½
Gone by Dawn 2: Dead by Dusk ★★½
“Stripped to kill.”

I decided I might as well combine these two into a single review. Having watched them back-to-back, even though made and set three years apart, they felt very much like the continuation of a single story about the same characters. The main one is Roxy (Mele), who is a dancer at a Wisconsin strip-club run by the sleazy Stag (Therrien), mostly as a money-laundering front for local organized crime. When he and his pal rape an employee, Alana (Pearce), Roxy along with the victim and another dancer, Crystal (Fierman), decide to take revenge by robbing Stag. That means getting into the safe in his office where the money is, and he’s not exactly going to give up the combination freely. Still, nothing that a piano-wire garrotte round the testicles can’t solve, surely? Except, as usual in this genre, the heist doesn’t go smoothly. Stag’s office quickly begins to resemble a mortuary, as unwelcome guests need to be handled.

This was, to be honest, better than I expected. There is, of course, the usual tension in grindhouse-style films about strippers – wanting them to be seen as more than T&A… while simultaneously being required to depict them as T&A. But the movie manages to strike a good balance here: while certainly not short on nudity, the lead actresses deliver performances which manage to make their characters feel like real people. The script also avoids people having to act like idiots too much, and the issue of the safe’s combination is solved in a way which is actually kinda clever. The low budget is a bit obvious in the limited locations and cast – we don’t get much outside of the club and an apartment – although in some ways, that works as much for the feature as against it. For example, it’s likely a factor in story-telling which certainly doesn’t hang around; maybe 65 minutes between opening and closing credits. And while there may be honour among thieves, there doesn’t appear to be much among strippers.

I didn’t think the sequel worked as well. While Roxy returns, she has been recast, being now played by Matheis – I’m not sure what happened to Mele. Still, I did laugh when one supporting character greets her with, “You look different!” Oddly, while the first film started with Roxy skipping town, the second sees her back, working at the same venue where she was involved in a multiple homicide. I know strippers are renowned for making poor decisions, but still… It turns out, having absconded with nine hundred grand of the mob’s money isn’t a good idea. They want it back, and to this end, have sent a trio of hired killers, named the Three Bears by Roxy. They’re prepared to do anything, up to and including both kidnapping and murder. But Roxy, along with Jesse (Radzion), a friend of Alana’s, and another dancer, Alura (Laventure), plots to turn the tables on the Three Bears, by robbing their boss.

Quite why the mob waited three years to take any action isn’t clear, and it’s just one of the problems with the story. Remember how I said the small-scale worked for the first film? That feels less true here, with the expanded script resulting in a bunch of loose ends and an unnecessarily stretched running-time of 107 minutes. For instance, we are introduced to a pair of cops, but they’re effectively unnecessary, and the same goes for a subplot which has Roxy visiting Stag in prison (one of the few players to return from the first film). Generally, I think I preferred Roxy 1.0 as well; I was just never quite convinced by Matheis in the role of an exotic dancer. The bits that work e.g. the ‘snake in the grass’ are mostly borrowed from its predecessor, though again, the movie does a good job with its characters.

Together, they make for a decent double-bill, though if you’re short on time, you might as well watch only the opener, since the sequel adds little in the way of development.  It’s perhaps telling that I must confess to getting distracted in the middle of GBD 2 by a lengthy article on location Club Pierre, one of the oldest strip-clubs in Edmonton. So, not Wisconsin at all. :) But it probably says something when a movie’s location is more interesting that the film.

Dir: Shaun Donnelly
Star: Gone by Dawn – Saleste Mele, Hannah Fierman, Katelyn Pearce, Jayson Therrien
Gone by Dawn 2: Dead by Dusk – Allana Matheis, Skylar Radzion, Ashley Laventure, Koreen Perry

The Rhythm Section

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★★★
“Not really worth the wait”

The action-heroine genre has seen its share of high-profile flops in the past. But this long-delayed entry, originally due out in February 2019, is among the worst, setting a record for the lowest ever opening at the North American box-office for a wide release. It took in only $2.8 million from 3,049 theaters when it opened in January, and ended with a worldwide gross below $6 million, against a budget of $50 million. While smaller in scale, that’s a Cutthroat Island level of failure. Did it deserve such a fate? Well, it’s not that bad. It ain’t great. But it seems almost defiantly unlikable, going against cinematic norms in a way that’s brave – and, I suspect, ultimately foolish. The result is something whose commercial demise is unsurprising, beginning with a title that makes only tangential sense, even after you’ve seen the film.

It’s the story of Stephanie Patrick (Lively), whose family died in a plane accident, causing her to go into a downward spiral. Three years later, she’s a crack whore, when contacted by journalist Keith Proctor (Jaffrey). He tells her the crash was actually a terrorist attack, basing this claim on information received from a source with intelligence connections known only as “B”. After Proctor is murdered, Stephanie finds B (Law) and convinces him to help her acquire the necessary skills to become an assassin. Stephanie then goes after all those involved in the attack, including the shadowy figure known only as U-17. To do so, she takes on the identity of Petra Reuter, an assassin killed by B, and uses the resources of ex-CIA officer Marc Serra (Brown), now working as an intelligence broker.

I think viewer expectations may have played a part here. Reading the above, and with the film coming from the producers of the 007 franchise, you are likely imagining a slick, Bond-esque slice of escapism. It’s not that. First off, Stephanie is… Well, let’s be honest, a bit shit as an assassin. When she asks B how long it’ll take for her to become good, he replies, “Your menopause will be a distant memory.” They don’t have that much time, and the results are consequently rough around the edges, not least because she almost completely lacks the necessary killer instinct. She has the motive, just not the method.

Frankly, she’s very, very lucky to survive the first couple of missions, and that’s only one of the aspects which strains credibility. The makers get a demerit for using Ireland to fake the North of Scotland, and it appears remarkably easy to track down international terrorists. Perhaps the book on which this was based did a better job? Given the gritty nature of proceedings, I was expecting a greater level of intrigue and deception. For example, despite being officially “unattached”, I was predicting B or Marc to still be working on behalf of their former employers, manipulating Stephanie towards their ends. Maybe I’ve just watched too many episodes of Homeland.

There are some impressive elements. Probably the most outstanding is a car chase, filmed to look like one take, shot entirely from inside Stephanie’s vehicle as she flees the scene. It’s almost as good as the one from Children of Men, the gold standard for such things. I also did like Lively’s performance: she has rather more to do here than she had in The Shallows, and acquits herself well, both dramatically and in the action scenes (she smashed her hand up badly while filming a fight scene with Law). However, on reaching the end, I found myself unmoved, and given the general lack of spectacle present, this isn’t one I’ve much interest in revisiting.

Dir: Reed Morano
Star:  Blake Lively, Jude Law, Sterling K. Brown, Raza Jaffrey 

Darlin’

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★★★½
“Mother of all predators”

This strange little film probably makes more sense if you’ve seen The Woman, in which a feral cannibalistic woman, played by McIntosh, was captured and kept in the basement of a dysfunctional family. While this features McIntosh in the same role, it does work as a standalone film: its predecessor may help explain some of the background. Here, the woman drops off her equally uncivilized teenage daughter (Canny) at a hospital. Unsure of quite how such an unusual child should be handled, Darlin’ – called that, because of a bracelet spelling that out which she is wearing – is handed over to the Catholic church.

In particular, to St. Philomena’s Home, a dubious institution run by an even more dubious Bishop (Batt). He sees in Darlin’ the chance for his parish to make a name for itself by “redeeming” their new ward in the name of the Lord, which would help them stave off an impending financial crunch. But when the Woman returns to the hospital, and finds her daughter is no longer there, it quickly becomes clear that she will go to any lengths to recover Darlin’ and punish those who are trying to exploit her. And even though the teenager is no longer quite the wild child she was, as the saying goes: You can take the child out of the woods, but you won’t necessarily take the woods out of the child…

McIntosh is probably best known for her work on The Walking Dead. But on this site, we adore her for Let Us Prey, and her directorial debut is little if any less savage. However, it is probably fair to say that the script – also written by McIntosh – tries to cram too many things into its pages, and comes up short as a result. Not to say there aren’t moments of supreme effectiveness. Just that they are diluted by the film’s desire to go in so many different directions. For example, despite the Woman’s apparently inexorable quest for Darlin’, she vanishes for much of the second half, instead just hanging round a homeless women’s encampment to no particular purpose. It’s a shame, as I don’t think I’ve seen a more genuinely scary female character in a film for a very long time. [Though Darlin’ doesn’t fall far from that tree, at least initially]

The rest is more hit or miss. Going after the Catholic Church for child abuse is… Well, it feels kinda obvious, though there’s a righteous anger here which does at least seem honest. And the civilized version of Darlin’, despite now being able to communicate through speech rather than growls, seems less interesting, as if she had lost much of what separated her from any other teenage girl. Neither of these really work so well, as the more linear concept of a mother prepared to do absolutely anything to reclaim her daughter, which is when the film is at its best and most memorable.

Dir: Pollyanna McIntosh
Star: Lauryn Canny, Bryan Batt, Nora-Jane Noone, Pollyanna McIntosh

Stripped Naked

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★★★
“Firmly dressed to kill”

Even if the film doesn’t quite live up to the title and poster, it turned out to be better than I expected… from the title and poster, to be honest. It has been my experience that, the more lurid the advertising, the more disappointed I’m likely to be. Films like this often don’t just fail to deliver on what they promise, they also struggle with basic aspects of film-making, like plot and characterization, providing a double-whammy of failure. While the former is true here (no-one, at any point, is ever stripped naked), the underlying construction proved to be solid enough to keep me watching and engaged, to a greater degree than I was anticipating.

Cassie (Allen) gets dumped out of the car after a bitter argument with boyfriend, Jack (Cor). Seeking help from another car, she finds herself in the middle of a drug-deal which goes horribly wrong for everybody else. This leaves her in possession of $90,000 in cash, and about the same value of meth, providing a potential way out of her job as a “professional undresser”, shall we say. However, Jack finds the money in Cassie’s house, which she shares with fellow dancer, Jade (Pirie), and the former owner of the money sends a hitman (Slacke, looking like a low-rent version of Bill Oberst Jr.) to recover it. It’s not long before the bodies start piling up, and Cassie realizes she has bit off more than she can chew.

From the sex-and-violence angle, this is remarkably tame. Despite being strippers, both Cassie and Kyle seems remarkably attached to their clothes. There is some secondary nudity from the background, but on the whole, the story could have had them be waitresses, without the slightest impact. It also takes Cassie a while to tap into the inner bitch she needs to be, for survival, but that does become an increasing part of her character as the film develops. One incident in particular had me remarking, “Good riddance to bad rubbish.” There’s another interesting dynamic present, in the shape of Kyla (Cinthia Burke), one half of the sibling team who run the venue where Cassie works, and who turns out to have a murky past of her own.

It’s characters like these which make it work. Kyla and brother Howie (Linden Ashby), for example, are not your prototypical sleazy strip-club owners, being rather kinder than generally depicted. Cassie and Jade both have unexpected depths, too, though I do have qualms about the latter’s eyebrows, which have been tweezed into near-oblivion. Jack is probably the most underdrawn and, consequentially, least-interesting character. The plot unfolds along the lines you’d expect, though the final reel delivers some unexpected twists, and not everyone you think is going to survive, ends up doing so. Had this actually provided the heady mix of grindhouse elements promised by the title, poster and trailer (below), it could have been a classic, rather than the acceptable way to pass the time it turns out to be.

Dir: Lee Demarbre
Star: Sarah Allen, Jon Cor, Tommie-Amber Pirie, Mark Slacke

The Obsidian Curse

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★★
“Cursed or worse.”

Blair (Brauns) gets out of prison, after a year inside for drug offenses, and is shocked to find her boyfriend (Caraccioli) has married Yvonne (Cameron), who has become the step-mother of her young child. Worse follows, for visitation is contingent on Blair finding and maintaining regular employment – not easy given her rap sheet. Her boyfriend’s new wife, very kindly, points her in the direction of a job as a tour guide at a local cavern. So far, this sounds more like some kind of Lifetime TVM – and not even the good Lifetime TVM – to the point I was wondering why I had this one on my ‘to-do’ list.

Ah, here we go. For, it turns out, the cave system is home to a witch who has been infected with a curse. Blair has become the patsy who is going to take the curse off. And it’s a particularly nasty curse, which basically turns her into a magnet for evil creatures of all kinds, from zombies to vampires. If she’s going to see her daughter again, “maintaining regular employment” has just become a relatively minor problem. I love this idea. It’s like a more feisty and action-oriented version of Night of the Demon [the fifties movie, rather than the eighties one], with the concept of a curse which cannot be dispelled, it has to be passed on to someone else to get rid of it. The concept of Blair having to figure out how to do that, while simultaneously fending off a selection-pack of night creatures, is one with great potential.

Unfortunately, it’s not what we get, at all. To begin with, there’s the ending [spoilers follow]… Well, it doesn’t have one. There’s absolutely no sense of closure. Blair is still cursed, little or no closer to finding a solution, and separated from her kids. I’ve grown used to this kind of thing in books, where you’re given the first volume free, then left dangling to try and get you to buy future volumes. It doesn’t work there, and here, the movie doesn’t even have the grace to inject a cliff-hanger ending into things. It just… finishes, lying there like last night’s empty beer-cans. [spoilers end] Nor is there any escalation: you’d expect things to ramp up, towards a battle against a particularly Big Bad. Nope.

On the positive side, the monsters are surprisingly well-realized for the budget, with some particularly effective mask work. And despite a strange accent, Brauns (from Sweden, reaching Los Angeles via England, New Zealand & Australia – which explains the accent far better than the movie does!) is a decent heroine, driven by her strong maternal love. There is some good camerawork, not least a sequence in which Blair has to battle her way across some heathland, through a small army of zombies. However, neither this, nor even a cameo from horror icon Bannister (star of the Phantasm franchise), can come close to countering the thoroughly underwhelming effort, put into what’s little more than half a story, and missing any final climax entirely.

Dir: Rene Perez
Star: Karin Brauns, Cody Renee Cameron, John Caraccioli, Reggie Bannister

47 Meters Down: Uncaged

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★★★
“One for the shark buffet, please.”

Director Roberts returns for a sequel to 47 Meters Down, once more diving (literally) into similar territory. Here, he doubles down, this time sending four young women underwater to be trapped and become shark bait, rather than two. Munching ensues. But there’s enough variety in this iteration for it to prevail, after a pretty shaky opening act. This plays like some bizarre version of Mean Girls, with heroine Mia (Nélisse) getting pushed into her school’s swimming pool by a bratty fellow pupil. It’s all very short skirts, perfect teeth and family drama, to the point that Chris was beginning to look at me oddly and wonder what the hell I’d put on.

Anyway, Mia and stepsister Sasha (Foxx) bail on the intended sailing excursion to go off with pals Alexa (Tju) and Nicole (Stallone) to a secret swimming hole in the Yucatan where they, and apparently no-one of Hispanic origin, live. The pair’s dad is some kind of marine archaeologist, who found an underwater Mayan city down there, so for a lark, the four decided to do an impromptu bit of cave diving. BIG mistake. A collapse seals off the exit, and the only way out is to go on, down and through the underwater complex. Not helping, to put it mildly, are the giant white cave sharks which are apparently delighted to have a bit of variety in their diet, in the form of American teenager.

It certainly perks up when the angsty teenage drama is abandoned in favour of swimming and screaming. Roberts pushes the camera in really close for the most part. Combined with the (understandably) limited amount of light, this does make for some rather chaotic sequences. Yet on the other hand, it unquestionably emphasizes and enhances the claustrophobia which is the tension’s main contributor. The sharks are genuinely creepy too, not least having lost their sight due to the conditions – if shark eyes are chilling, then sightless shark eyes are worse still. I got the impression this was wanting to be an underwater version of The Descent, and there are much worse targets at which a horror film could aim.

It all ends in a grandstand sequence of increasing peril, as the (less than four) survivors try to make their final escape from the water. Admittedly, it does rely on sharks that apparently don’t want to commit to the munching, preferring a little love-nibble to snapping their victims in half (a similar issue to Crawl, where the non-disposable characters appeared to be made out of kevlar). Despite this cop-out, it’s a rousing enough finale, largely making me forget the early struggles. If there’s nothing much among the performances to suggest the daughters of Jamie Foxx and Sylvester Stallone should be following in their fathers’ footsteps, as adequately entertaining shark movies go, this one is certainly… adequately entertaining. And I speak as something of a connoisseur of adequately entertaining shark movies.

Dir: Johannes Roberts
Star: Sophie Nélisse, Corinne Foxx, Brianne Tju, Sistine Stallone

The Old Guard

  By

★★★
“Who wants to live forever?”

While a serviceable entry in the beloved genre of “Charlize Theron kicks ass”, this does have to be classed as disappointing in comparison to the epic awesomeness which were Atomic Blonde or Mad Max: Fury Road. This is considerably more obviously a comic-book adaptation than Blonde, and more restrained than Fury Road, resulting in a film which plays more like X-Men: The Highlander Years. Andromache of Scythia (Theron), for obvious reasons known to her mates as Andy, is a neo-immortal bad-ass who has been roaming the Earth since pre-Christian times. But she’s beginning to wonder what the point of it all is, endlessly doing jobs somewhere between mercenary and humanitarian.

Two things disrupt the playing field. The first is the “birth” of a new neo-immortal, Nile Freeman (Layne), a US marine who survives having her throat slit, and is brought on board the team, despite her severe initial doubts. The other is less pleasant: the Merrick pharmaceutical company is out to find what makes them tick, and will happily trample Andy and her friends’ rights, in the name of “the greater good.” This involves them kidnapping two members of the group for scientific experimentation, and they are intent on completing the set. Needless to say, Andy isn’t having any of that, along with some help from Nile, as well as a Merrick employee and former CIA agent who is now having second thoughts (an underused Chiwetel Ejiofor). However, it turns out Andy is approaching the “neo-” phase of her neo-immortality…

That is a bit of a cheat: they’re basically immortal, except when necessary for the plot or dramatic reasons. It’s a double-standard which also seems to permeate the film more generally, The film wants to deliver the mayhem audiences want to see, while having characters who loudly express being tired of exactly that, borne down by world-weary ennui. It’s a mindless action movie which doesn’t like being a mindless action movie, and I suspect would rather be something else. That may be the only way to explain the contrived shoehorning in of two characters’ sexuality, in a scene of no relevance that couldn’t be more clunkily woke if it tried.

It is better when letting go of the angst, and instead embracing its inner John Wick. Theron proves why she is still the top action heroine working in Hollywood, getting valuable support from Layne. There’s a lovely hand-to-hand battle between the two of them on a transport plane, for example, and Andy busting out of the church which is under attack by Merrick thugs is also a pleasure to watch. As seems almost required, there’s a scene at the end, setting up The Old Guard 2 with the apparent promise of an insane neo-immortal for the big bad there. It’s perhaps telling that it’s a prospect which may be more exciting than the humdrum stock genre plot rolled out here. Not even the best Netflix original action movie of the year (that’d be Extraction), yet entertaining enough, if your copy of Fury Road isn’t to hand.

Dir: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Star: Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari

Sweetheart

  By

★★½
“Creature from the Blue Lagoon”

After a boat-wreck, Jennifer Remming (Clemons) washes ashore on a deserted tropical island, and has to make do with what she can find and forage. While there are no other people on the island, she’s not alone. It becomes increasingly clear that a “something” is predating for food at night there. She eventually finds out what it is: a large, amphibious and very hungry creature, walking on two legs, and capable of dragging its prey back into its lair beneath the water. Needless to say, she’s delighted when two other survivors wash up in a lifeboat: her boyfriend Lucas (Cohen) and friend Mia (Mangan-Lawrence). But convincing them of the threat, and the need to get off the island immediately, is a little tricky, because it turns out Jennifer has a little history of making things up. However, “being eaten” turns out to be fairly convincing proof, as evidence goes…

Have to say, the first time we get to see the creature is glorious. After some warning signs have set the scene, such as a dead shark with claw marks on the side, it’s a great reveal, which literally gave me chills. The problem is, it’s also about the last time we get to see it. For its nocturnal nature means we have to deal with it only popping up in extremely subdued lighting. While this makes sense – it being a tropical island, there’s not exactly much natural light – it makes for an extraordinarily frustrating experience. Too often, the viewer has to peer into the murk, trying to figure out exactly who is doing what, and to whom. I can only presume this was done to enhance the tension in some “lurking in the darkness” way. If so, it’s remarkably counter-productive, triggering considerably more annoyance than terror.

I did like Jennifer as a heroine: she doesn’t seem to have particular survival skills, yet managed to make a good fist of things. Certainly, much better than I would have; I suspect I’d last on a desert island, only as long as my fat reserves permitted. I also appreciated the fairly linear nature of the film: Girl Meets Monster, Monster tries to kill Girl, Girl tries to kill Monster. If only The Shape of Water had gone this route. It does get rather less effective when it’s no longer a party of one, with the usual (and considerably less interesting) bickering which follows. However, the presence of other people is probably necessary: even Tom Hanks needed a supporting performance from a volleyball to sustain Castaway for its running-time.

After an aborted escape attempt, it all builds to the inevitable final confrontation. Which, conveniently, takes place in a relatively well-lit arena, courtesy of some torches. Once we get to see it, this is quite a cool monster – perhaps slightly influenced by what the Predator wore under its mask. Just a shame it doesn’t truly show up until the party is all but over. Between that and a script with too many loose ends, it one of those cases where the film isn’t as good as the trailer.

Dir: J.D. Dillard
Star: Kiersey Clemons, Emory Cohen, Hanna Mangan-Lawrence, Andrew Crawford