Tag: wilderness

While She Was Out

  By

★★★
“Christmas shopping can be hell”

Della (Basinger) is stuck in a marriage with her abusive husband (Sheffer). But she deals with it, for the sake of their two children, whom she adores. It’s Christmas Eve, and she escapes to the mall for a little retail therapy. The lot there is packed, and she leaves a passive-aggressive note on the windscreen of a particularly selfish parker. Big mistake. For it belongs to Chuckie (Haas) and his young group of multiracial thugs (one black, one Hispanic and one Asian, so that’s nice…). The subsequent altercation leads to the death of a mall cop, with Della as the only witness. So they pursue her, first to a construction site, then into the nearby woods, intent on making sure she can’t testify against them.

It’s kinda daft, and that’s putting it mildly. Takes a bit of time to get going too, with scenes of Della mall-ratting, and suffering microaggresions like a barista spelling her name wrong. Eventually, it gets to the violence, and things pick up, even if the silliness persists. Most obviously, Della lugging a big, red tool-box with her, shown in the poster, while she runs around the forest. It is, admittedly, a tool-box necessary to the plot, not least for its part in an energetic and impressive, “tyre-iron repeatedly to the face” sequence. This is just one of the ways in which Della dispatches the gang members, although the first is more the victim of an unfortunate accident than enemy action. 

The loopiness reaches its peak at the end, when the face-off between Della and the last gang member goes in a direction you probably would not have expected. Let’s leave it at that. But overall, this is an enjoyable enough slice of nonsense, with a story which is all the better for being extremely simple. Though it is easy enough to think of ways in which it could be improved though. For example, give Della some kind of back story to explain her ability to best young men in hand-to-hand combat. The story makes mention of her classes in Pilates, Spanish and mechanics; would it be so hard to have thrown in a karate class as well?

Probably the major potential area for improvement is on the villains’ side. Haas has a somewhat creepy vibe, however it’s one better suited to a lone psycho than a gang leader. Some of the dialogue between the members is also risible, as if writer/director Montford had no experience she could use to relate to her characters. They come off as largely unthreatening, more like kids playing dress-up than actual psychos, and the relative ease with which Della can counter them doesn’t help. But Basinger is good value in her role, and I will confess to nodding in appreciation at the final scene, even if it’s something we should probably have seen coming. I was entertained adequately by this, and that’s all I wanted.

Dir: Susan Montford
Star: Kim Basinger, Lukas Haas, Leonard Wu, Craig Sheffer

Skull Forest

  By

★½
“Going Dutch can be a very bad thing…”

I think Len Kabasinski probably is the director with more  films reviewed here than anyone else, save perhaps Andy Sidaris. This is the fifth; the previous four have seem palpable improvement, from the near-unwatchable Warriors of the Apocalypse, to the reasonably competent Hellcat’s Revenge II: Deadman’s Hand. This, however, is one of his earlier efforts, and you have to peer pretty hard past the dreadful film-making style to see any worthwhile elements.

In particular, it feels as if it was made as a wager, after someone bet him he couldn’t make an entire film with the camera pointed at a 30-degree angle. The Dutch angle shot, in which the camera is tilted to evoke a sense of unease, is a well-known cinematic technique, used by the likes of Hitchcock. But it’s one that needs moderation. In a famous review of Battlefield Earth, Roger Ebert said of the director, “Roger Christian, has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why.” The same is true here of Kabasinski, who appears to think every shot is better at 30 degrees off vertical. Or perhaps he was just drunk throughout filming. Then there’s the excessive close-ups and violent shaking of the camera. No. Just, no.

The story open with a quote from The Most Dangerous Game, and that’s what we get. Four women, on a weekend getaway, find themselves targeted by a group of rich hunters, and have to fight for their lives. That’s the entire plot, and I’m fine with that. The action is no great shakes, to be honest; a lot of something happening off-screen, then cut to a not-too-convincing make-up effect. The only sequence that succeeded in holding my attention, was when two women among the hunters had a falling out, and ended up fighting each other. Kabasinski plays another one of the villains, and I’m not sure which is more distracting: the single contact lens his character wears, or the bad English accent employed, for no apparent reason.

However, there is a surprising amount of nudity, so the film, clearly aiming at shallow exploitation (and I’m fine with that too!), does at least deliver on this score. Though it is a bit of a mixed bag; Playboy model Neeld looks the best, but Brooks has the most memorable (if not exactly erotic)  shot, clawing her way naked out of the shallow grave in which she was left for dead, and beginning her quest for vengeance. However, the impact of these and any other credible moments, are sucked away by the truly dreadful camerawork employed. It seems likely to induce motion sickness and/or a migraine. If he’d simply nailed the camera to a tree, it would have been an enormous improvement, and likely been worth close to another whole star. I guess this was early enough in his career Kabasinski was still experimenting. We should be glad it’s not a style with which he persisted.

Dir: Len Kabasinski
Star: Sara Brooks, Lisa Neeld, Pamela Sutch, Melissa Scott

Wilderness Survival for Girls

  By

★★★
“Just because we’re girls, why do we have to be afraid all the time?”

Three teenage girls, Ruth (Brox), Deborah (Henning) and Kate (Humiston) head off to the remote mountain cabin owned by Kate’s parents for a weekend away. Initially, it’s an overdose of teenage drama bullshit in various flavours, as they drink, smoke weed, talk about sex and so on. But their soap-opera idyll is interrupted by the unexpected return of Ed (Morrison), who has been squatting in the cabin. The girls capture him, using the gun he left behind, with the intent of taking him down the mountain to the police the next day. But as the night goes on, the tensions between the three young women begin to fracture their friendship. There’s also the question of Ed: is he the innocent drifter he claims to be, or is there a connection to a long-buried trauma in Kate’s history?

If you’re hoping for definitive answers to at least some of the questions asked by the film, you’re going to come away disappointed. Ed is almost a MacGuffin in human form. He exists largely to propel the rest of the film forward, and act as a force which will cause the girls to reveal their true nature over the course of events. They are three very distinct personalities, to the point that I wondered if (and not for the first time) they were intended to represent the three aspects of the psyche: id, ego and super-ego. While my recent knowledge of teenage girls is strictly limited to parental experience – and thus not that recent – if there’s one thing I know, it’s that they tend to congregate with those like them. The disparate trio we get here wouldn’t last 10 minutes in high school before tearing themselves apart. Though I guess that is what happens for a good chunk of proceedings here.

You should probably be forgiven for having strong reactions to them: my instant dislike of Kate, turns out to be not unjustified, considering the ease with which she embraces her inner psychopath. Deborah, meanwhile, is a little too one-dimensional and obvious for my tastes, so it’s left to Ruth to do a lot of the dramatic heavy lifting. Brox does well enough in that task to keep the movie interesting; at least, once it gets past a rocky opening 20 minutes, and the thriller aspects come into play, more than the “teen angst” ones. I will confess to being somewhat disappointed by the ending, which seems contrived in such a way as to achieve closure, without any of the participants having to take personal responsibility for their actions. There are also any number of poor choices made by the trio, in order to reach that point. Though, against speaking from my parental experience, that’s probably about par for the teenage girl course. There was just about enough here to sustain its brisk 78 minute running-time, and going much longer would likely have been a mistake.

Dir: Eli B. Despres, Kim Roberts
Star: Jeanette Brox, Megan Henning, Ali Humiston, James Morrison

Alone

  By

★★
“Getting away from it all.”

Jessica (Willcox) is making a break from her new life, packing up her possessions and driving away from her home and family in the big city. However, it’s not long before her journey through the countryside begins to hit bumps in the road. Specifically, in the shape of another driver (Menchaca), whose actions against Jessica veer between the aggressively hostile and the creepily over-friendly. The two encounter each other on a number of occasions, the incidents escalating until he finally drugs and kidnaps her. She wakes to find herself locked in the basement of a remote cabin, and needs to find a way to avoid a fate which, it appears, others before her have suffered.

A remake of Swedish film Gone, the major failing here is not enough happening to sustain the running time. The story needs to spend significantly less time on the build-up; for example, by cutting out the background stuff about exactly what it is, that Jessica is escaping from. We are given no reason to care, and it has little or no relevance to the movie’s central conflict. Similarly, there are likely too many encounters between her and him, before he finally abducts her. We get the picture after virtually the first one – and I have to say, the sensible thing for anyone to do thereafter, would have been to reject any further attempts, rather than engage in additional contact.

Of course, logic and common sense tend to be anathema to this genre, though there are times here where Jessica does behave credibly. For instance, her method of getting out of the basement is genuinely smart. I also liked the scene where, after her escape, she finds a hunter in the woods – only for the man to show up, and claim she’s his mentally-ill sister (an idea made plausible by her understandably hysterical reaction). But for every one of these positives, there are two negatives, such as her getting hold of his phone and calling… his wife, to let her know she’s married to a predator. While I admire the spirit of sisterhood there, I’d have suggested self-preservation might have been a better use of those cellphone minutes.

Eventually, we get to a finale, which has some more credibility speed-humps. Firstly, the coincidence that, in this gigantic forest, he buries a body right next to where she is hiding. And secondly, that when someone attacks you from the back seat of your car, you will immediately accelerate away which simultaneously fighting them, driving at top speed down a narrow forest track until the inevitable accident. Okay… This does lead to a half-decent brawl between them, on the scorched earth of a patch of cleared forest, with the crash having acted as a nice equalizer (despite the apparent lack of seat-belts!). It is, however, very much the definition of “too little, too late”, and can’t rescue this from the multiple missteps which have preceded it.

Dir: John Hyams
Star: Jules Willcox, Marc Menchaca, Anthony Heald

The Devil to Pay

  By

★★★★

“The hills have eyes. And hands, apparently.”

In the Appalachian Mountains, the residents are fiercely, even ferociously independent. They live by their own rules, known as the Creed. It’s a harsh, Old Testament version of law, which replaces conventional society. The lifestyle is well explained in a quote from a census taker which opens the film: “They want nothing from you, and God help you if you try to interfere.” It’s in this world that Lemon Cassidy (Deadwyler) lives with her young son on their smallholding. Her husband has gone off, but this seems not abnormal. At least, until Lemon gets a summons from Tommy Runion (Dyer), matriarch of her clan. Turns out Mr. Cassidy had owed her, and agreed to carry out a task in payment. His disappearance means the debt falls on Lemon, and if she won’t do Tommy’s bidding… Well, see the film’s title. 

The deeper Lemon gets, the more apparent it becomes she is not intended to get out alive, becoming the patsy in a long-running feud between the Runions and another mountain family. Escaping the fate intended for her will require guts, tenacity, a commitment to violence (when necessary) and the unlikely help of a local religious cult, who are… A bit different, even by the high standards of that term in Appalachian society. We have seen this kind of society before, such as in Winter’s Bone. However, what we have here is so alien, it almost beggars belief that this forms part of the contemporary United States of America. Indeed, some elements, such as the cult, are so out there, it’s positively distracting, taking attention away from the core storyline and characters. I must admit, there were several points where I felt additional explanation – in a format suitable for foreigners like myself – would have been quite welcome. 

The husband and wife duo of the Skyes also wrote Becky, one of 2020’s most effective works, and the script here is similarly impressive. It avoids the typical hillbilly stereotypes; while these people may be different to us city folk, they are clearly not idiots. But the key to the film’s success is Deadwyler, who is extremely good in her role. She’s black, and initially I did have qualms about this; given the setting, I wondered how much her character would be defined by her race. The answer? Not at all, and no-one else even mentions it, the material again choosing to avoid the easy route in its source of conflict. This is simply a non-issue, which you quickly forget about entirely,  and the film is all the better for that. Plaudits must also go to Dyer. She only has a few scenes, yet crafts a scary presence in a woman who can go from discussing the finer points of biscuit making, to threatening to bury you alive in a sentence or two. It’s a casual approach to violence, which makes it all the more frightening. 

Dir: Lane Skye, Ruckus Skye
Star: Danielle Deadwyler, Catherine Dyer, Jayson Warner Smith, Adam Boyer
a.k.a. Reckoning

Army of One

  By

★★
“Basic, and in need of training”

Husband and wife Dillon (Passmore) and Brenna Baker (Hollman) are out on a camping trip in the Alabama wilderness. They have a brush with some crude locals, led by the mountainous Butch (Kasper), but are saved by his diminutive mother (Singer), who takes no crap from anyone, and whom everyone locally calls Mama. Later, while sheltering from the rain in a deserted cabin, the Bakers stumble across a cache of arms. Before they can do anything, they are captured by the owner – Butch, of course, since his family are involved in a whole slew of criminal activities, including white slavery. Any hopes of playing the innocent tourists are wiped out when Butch finds Dillon’s police ID. Oops. He and his gang dispose of the couple, but do a poor job on Brenna. And, it turns out, she’s a former Army Ranger, who now has vengeance on her mind.

It’s a solid enough idea, albeit nothing we haven’t seen before. Hollman looks the part too, plausible enough in her attitude that she could be a soldier who has gone back to civilian life. The action, in general, is well-enough handled to pass muster. The lead actress was in Spartacus and Into the Badlands, while she is apparently going to be in the fourth Matrix movie (though I’m restraining my expectations for that). She does seem to know her way around a hand-to-hand fight sequence, and the film has some well-staged examples, helped by Durham avoiding editing them to death.

Unfortunately, the plotting is flat out terrible. I think it begins with the couple opting to have sex in the highly grubby cabin, and goes downhill from there. It’s never quite clear how Brenna survives Butch’s murder attempt, she just kinda gets up and starts walking about. Then she returns to the campsite and finds an ax. Yeah, she has a weapon… which she uses to sharpen a branch, then drops the ax back on the ground and wanders off with the pointy stick instead. She waits for daylight to infiltrate the family compound, rather than taking advantage of darkness. Brenna spends days just wandering the forest, rather than getting help or trying to leave. A booby-trapped branch appears, seemingly out of nowhere. The random Aussie guy.

The idiocy on view here goes on and on, and the missteps are so frequent and painfully glaring. They rob the film of almost all its energy, and any chance of real success. They’re too much of a distraction to ignore, and certainly stick in my mind more than the positive elements. There are few surprises as events unfold, with Butch, Mama and crew continually underestimating Brenna, even after she has wiped out half of their number. Rather than putting a bullet in her head, the idea of “breaking” Brenna and making her as docile and submissive as their other trafficked women, is just another example of the dumb writing in which this indulges. By the time the (no more plausible) ending eventually comes, it’s almost as a relief.

Dir: Stephen Durham
Star: Ellen Hollman, Gary Kasper, Geraldine Singer, Matt Passmore

Breaking Surface

  By

★★★★
“Highly af-fjord-able.”

This chilly slice of Swedish survival thriller is the perfect film to watch during an Arizona summer. For it does an excellent job of capturing the cold world of a Scandinavian winter, where diving into fjords is, apparently, a credible leisure pursuit. While offering a viable alternative to air-conditioning, it has to be admitted Chris turned to me at one point to say, “So why do people do this, exactly?” It’s a fair question, and one this film doesn’t even attempt to answer. There’s no sense of beauty here. You are voluntarily entering an environment where, if the lack of oxygen doesn’t get you, the cold might. Or perhaps other inhabitants. I mean, they are called “killer whales” for a reason, y’know.

If you ever had such an interest, this film might do for it, what Deliverance did for canoeing holidays. The story is about half-sisters Ida (Gammel) and Tuva (Martin), who separated after their parents divorced, but have now re-united. Both have issues. Ida’s marriage is crumbling, while professional diver Tuva just escaped being turned into chopped liver by a ship’s giant propeller. This get-together is supposed to involve them diving with their mother (Wiggen), but her illness makes it a two-woman trip. There is also history here; things open with a flashback to a childhood incident where Ida’s inattention almost cost Tuva her life. When an underwater rock fall traps Tuva, it’s entirely up to Ida to find some means of rescuing her sister from the freezing, suffocating depths. 

It’s an exercise in contrast between the siblings. Tuva is remarkably calm, considering her circumstances, while Ida falls apart at the slightest problem. Had their roles been reversed, this would have been over in about 15 minutes. But as is, Ida has to deal with an almost unending series of issues. At times it feels like a particularly fiendish adventure game. Find the tool to open the car boot to get the other tool to lift the boulder and rescue the princess. There are some plot holes. For example when she can’t find the boot release, why not ask Tuva where it is? But it’s fair to imagine she may simply not have thought of it, in her harried state.

Similarly, I was a little disappointed the orcas didn’t play a bigger part, especially after Ida becomes a bit… bleedy. I do feel that this goes against the famous rule of Chekhov’s Cetaceans. “If, in the first act, you have carnivorous aquatic mammals hanging about, then in the second or third act, they must attack.” But the pace is so gloriously relentless, you don’t have the chance to dwell on such things. Hedén does an excellent job of ratcheting up the tension, and I found I spent most of the second half holding my breath. Or feeling cold. That too. While you could criticize Ida’s near-hysteria (probably a factor in her failing marriage), I can’t say I’d be any better, and you can only admire her tenacity and loyalty to Tuva. Just don’t expect us to don scuba gear soon.

Dir: Joachim Hedén
Star: Moa Gammel, Madeleine Martin, Trine Wiggen

Wreck

  By

★★
“If you go down to the woods today…”

I cannot, by any standard, call this a good movie. But was I amused? Yeah, guess I was. It really needs to embrace the idiocy of its central premise – a Bigfoot-like creature roaming the woodlands of suburban London (seems like Swindon, to be precise). This is apparently something to do with fracking, though quite how is never made clear. Into the creature’s territory arrives Sandy (Dean), a courier for unpleasant mob boss Mr. West (Loyd-Holmes). She and colleague Jimmy (Gilks) have been ordered to deliver a briefcase, with no doubt left as to the nasty fate which awaits should they fail. But their car crashes, leaving Jimmy dead and Sandy with her leg trapped under the vehicle. She then has to survive in her crippled state, fending off not just the monster, but also those who are keen to separate her from the case.

Let’s start with the creature, which is the finest you could come up with, given five quid and a roll of blue plush fabric. Really, it looks like a pissed-off refugee from Sesame Street. And that’s before it gets set on fire: the beast then looks more like an under-cooked turkey on the rampage. It is, of course, completely impossible to take seriously. So, despite some energetic gore, this doesn’t work at all as a horror film. As a survival thriller, it’s a bit better. I liked Dean’s performance, in little things like leaving her boss’s office and seeing a stripper performing – the look of “There, but for the grace of God, go I,” was palpable. 

The script, however, has too many flaws to succeed. For example, the way Sandy’s leg is immobile until necessary to the plot. At which point she not only frees herself, but is able to gambol about the forest like an armed gazelle. Or the way the monster spends much of the film defending Sandy, by attacking those who pose a threat to her. Chris said sardonically, “I think it’s in love with her”: this is a much better explanation than anything the film was able to provide. Sadly, no Swamp Thing-like romantic subplot ever arose, another example of the movie not going full speed ahead with the potential of its premise.

I was reminded of Hostile, which also had its heroine trapped after a car accident, menaced by monstrous creatures. While that film had plenty of weaknesses, it did at least put some effort into its scenario and monster; here, there’s precious little past “because Bigfoot.” However, at barely an hour long before the closing credit roll, it can’t be accused of particularly outstaying its welcome, and while you may largely remember this for the wrong reasons, you will remember it. As the saying goes, “If you watch only one British sasquatch movie this year… Wreck is probably going to be it.” I don’t exactly see this starting a trend that’ll prove me wrong.

Dir: Ben Patterson
Star: Gemma Harlow Dean, Ryan Gilks, Ben Loyd-Holmes, Tony Manders

Those Who Wish Me Dead

  By

★★½
“Ashes to ashes”

I was expecting so much more. The trailer looked really promising, offering the return of Angelina Jolie to full-on action fare, for the first time since Salt in 2010 [yeah, I know we’ve covered Maleficent and its sequel here; probably too much CGI in those to qualify as “full-on”]. Suffice to say, that really isn’t the case. There is, instead, an awful lot of sitting around a fire tower in the middle of a Montana forest, and too much time spent on supporting characters, when what we really wanted was Lara Croft: Fire Jumper. Indeed, there’s a case that Jolie’s character isn’t even the most action-oriented woman here. We’ll get to that later.

She plays Hannah, a former fire jumper – they get parachuted in to the most perilous of situations to try and stop or divert the path of the inferno. She is suffering PTSD after an ill-defined incident which caused her to blame herself for the deaths of three children, even though everyone says there is nothing she could have done. She has been invalided out to a job on the aforementioned tower, watching for smoke that would indicate a fire under way. Separately, forensic accountant Owen Casserly is on the run, because he Knows Too Much, and is ;ooking to hide out with his relation, local sheriff Ethan Sawyer. On the way, he is ambushed, but gives the evidence to his young son, Connor (Little). He runs off into the forest, and is found by Hannah. However, the assassins (Bernthal + Gillen) are keen to tidy up the loose end represented by the boy.

It takes almost 40 minutes for Connor and Hannah to first meet, and it’s well after that before things really kick off. A fire started by the killer as a diversion has become a raging conflagration, which our heroine and her new-found purpose in life have to handle, as well as those hunting them. They do have help, in the shape of Ethan’s wife, Allison (Medina Senghore), who just so happens to run a survival school, and is remarkably athletic for also being six months pregnant. As mentioned, she arguably does more in the way of direct action than Hannah, getting the better of the killers on at least two occasions.

In addition to my disappointment with the star only really getting her hands dirty at the climax, I was also annoyed by Hannah’s PTSD, which is of the cinematic variety. By this I mean, it exists purely for dramatic purposes, and evaporates entirely at the moments when the plot needs her to act competently. Apparently, all you need to do to cure PTSD is pull yourself together, for the sake of an unaccompanied minor. I will say, some of the fire sequences are very well staged, and if forest flames genuinely move that fast, I have a whole new respect for those whose job it is to try and stop them. These sound technical aspects are not enough to negate a palpable sense of underwhelm.

Dir: Taylor Sheridan
Star: Angelina Jolie, Finn Little, Jon Bernthal, Aidan Gillen

Range Runners

  By

★★
“The loneliness of the long-distance runner”

Mel (Cooper) is engaged on a project of running the Appalachian Trail (or a convincing facsimile thereof), with some help from her sister, who meets her at various points to provide support and fresh supplies. Mel is currently on her own, starting an eight-day section of the hike where she’ll be out of contact. However, she bumps into a couple of suspicious characters, deep in the woods: Wayland (Leonard) and his partner, Jared (Woods). Initially, it seems like a creepy, but one-off random meeting. It turns out to be considerably more and subsequent encounters escalate, until Mel is sent plummeting over the edge of a drop-off, badly injuring her leg, but in possession of something very important to Wayland and Jared. Will she be able to escape her pursuers and make it to safety?

A good chunk of this effectively takes place inside the heroine’s head, as she pushes through the forest. There are flashbacks, in particular, to her youth when she was an athlete in training, being coached by her father. His approach was very much one of tough love, with the emphasis on “tough”, and a fondness for aphorisms, such as “[Your body] doesn’t tell you what to do, it’s the other way around.” It seems to have done the trick, giving Mel the mental toughness necessary to cope with the situation. However, it doesn’t exactly make for thrilling cinema, and considering the film runs 112 minutes, a little of this kind of thing goes a long way.

This is nicely photographed, it must be said, and the wooded location is used effectively, setting up a world in which a threat conceivably lurks behind every trunk and branch. The issues are much more with the plot, which fails on a number of levels. Not least, is the lack of motivation given to the villains, whose presence and actions are never well-defined, beyond being required in order for the plot to reach its (entirely predictable) conclusion. There are few if any surprises along the way. Even when the film tries to make you believe Mel has found sanctuary, anyone who has seen any wilderness survival films, will basically be waiting for that not to be the case.

By the time you filter out what’s unnecessary, and what doesn’t work, there’s probably not much more than 45 minutes of decent content to be found here. Rather than it being Mel vs. Wayland + Jared, it’s more a case of Mel vs. herself, or at least her own doubts and emotional baggage. The finale is decent, pitting our wounded athlete against the pair, and proves rather more satisfactory than most of what has been seen to this point. It’s an example of a film where the destination proves better than the journey to get there. Depending on your view, this may or may not be a suitable parallel to hiking the Appalachian Trail…

Dir: Philip S. Plowden
Star: Celeste M Cooper, Sean Patrick Leonard, Michael B. Woods, Sarah Charipar