Tag: wilderness

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

Gripped: Climbing the Killer Pillar

  By

★★★
“Climb every mountain…”

Newbie climber Rose (Maddox) is on her first trip to do some “real” climbing, rather than on a rock wall at her local gym. There, she meets and falls for the insanely rugged good-looking Bret (Lyman, who appears to have strayed right off the cover of a romance novel entitled “Love in the Surf”). After a couple of successfully, but relatively simple climbs, the pair head to take on something more challenging: the infamous “Killer pillar” of the title. Half-way up, a hand-hold used by Bret breaks, sending him tumbling down the cliff-face. Though the rope stops the fall from being fatal, he suffers a torn shoulder and head injury, leaving him unable to lead, and unable to descend. As the poster tagline says, “The only way down is up.” So, it falls on Rose, despite her lack of experience, to take over and forge a route up the near-sheer escarpment, that Bret will be able to navigate in her wake.

The mountaineering stuff here is excellent, and it seems that everyone involved was doing their own climbing. While for much of the time, I suspect they probably weren’t too far off the ground, there are a few shots that should come with a trigger warning for vertigo sufferers. Particular kudos to cinematographer John Garrett, who captures the stunning landscapes of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California – and, I suspect, did his share of climbing to get some of the angles. It just feels like legitimate climbing, in contrast to the Hollywood stuff seen in movies such as Cliffhanger. I note the presence in the supporting cast of notable real climbers, such as Jacki Florine, who in 2006 became the first woman to climb fourteen 14,000-foot peaks in California in 10 days. Another mountaineer, Natalie Duran, whom we recognized from her appearances on American Ninja Warrior, also has a supporting role as a jealous fellow climber.

The main problem is that the dramatic aspects don’t kick in until after the 50-minute mark, and it borders on the tedious to that point. Lovely scenery can only take you so far, when the romantic relationship at the movie’s heart is thoroughly unconvincing. We don’t need to see the banal process of them getting together, or the development of their interactions. This could, and probably should, have saved time by being an existing couple; Rose could still have been a novice climber, making her debut in the big outdoors. That would even have added a personal motivation to her heroics, rather than it being to save some hunk she met two days ago. Whatevs. They made the movie they wanted too, and it’s not on me to list ways to potential improve it! I’d say you can pay attention here when they clip on their gear, and safely ignore just about everything else.

Dir: Benjamin Galland
Star: Amanda Maddox, Kaiwi Lyman, Megan Hensley, Bryce Wissel

The Sun At Midnight

  By

★★★½
“Nothing here but mosquitoes and bear shit.”

While certainly more relaxed that many of the films we cover here, this makes it in on the strength of its heroine’s character arc. That belongs to Lia (Jacobs), a teenage girl in the Northwest Territories of Canada, who is being raised by her father. When he has to go off for work, she gets sent north of the Arctic Circle to live with her grandmother (Jerome) for the nightless summer. She hates the rural life, and runs away, stealing a boat in the hope of reaching Dawson City, the nearest big town – not realizing it would be four weeks journey. She falls overboard after her boat breaks down, and is lucky to be rescued by Alfred (Howard), a hunter from the local Gwich’in tribe. As they cross the remote wilderness, she begins to appreciate it, bonding with the thoroughly down-to-earth Alfred and learning from him – wolves hate the smell of tobacco, apparently. But when an accident befalls her guide, Lia is going to have to dig into her own resources.

I’m about as much of a city mouse at Lia, whose initial opinion of the countryside is largely summed up by her line at the top. Early on, she just seems like another annoying teenager, whose attitude sits permanently between surly and self-obsessed. Admittedly, it doesn’t help that the locals don’t take to her, and she’s the subject of bullying by them, but until she meets up with Alfred, she’s not very likeable. To her credit, Lia is prepared to learn from someone who has forgotten more about the wilderness than we’ll ever know. As she grows to embrace the untamed landscape (and her hair returns to a more natural shade!), so does the viewer. Alfred clearly doesn’t stand for her city-slicker ways, yet generally disarms them with patience rather than anger, though his dispatch of an injured animal reminds us that nature can sometimes be brutal. They also bond through the shared experience of losing someone close to them – his wife and her mother respectively.

It has to be said, the drama which eventually appears toward the end is rather lacking on the dramatic front. Initially, it appears it will involve Lia in a race against time, to bring help to Alfred. However, that’s never fulfilled and it’s almost as if the director got bored of the idea and decided not to bother, instead looking around for a way to close things out in the least exciting way she could find. Similarly, Lia’s encounter with some less-friendly hunters feels an obligatory incident, unnecessary to proceedings. And, yet… It doesn’t particularly matter, in terms of my enjoyment. This is one of those movies which is considerably more about the journey than the destination, as well as (at the risk of sounding trite) the people you meet along the way. It’s undeniably low-key and understated, yet if you are in the right mood, it hits the spot, particular in its dialogue, which fits those delivering it perfectly.

Dir: Kirsten Carthew
Star: Devery Jacobs, Duane Howard, Sarah Jerome

Wrecker

  By

★★
“Runs out of road.”

This falls victim to the Spielberg Effect. By that, I mean, that any movie directed by Steven Spielberg will inevitably become the yardstick by which future entries of that kind are judged – typically, unfavourably. Killer shark films will be compared to Jaws. Holocaust epics to Schindler’s List. And the genre of movies in which drivers are menaced by unseen truck drivers? Expect comparisons to Duel. And in this case, they are entirely warranted. I guess if you’ve never heard of Duel, this might just pass muster. But you would still be better off watching it, than this lame imitation, which has a nice car (a Mustang) and some lovely scenery (I’m guessing Canadian). That’s all it can offer though.

Gal pals Emily (Hutchinson) and Leslie (Whitburn) are on a road-trip, when they go off-route – never a good idea to take a road labelled “Devil’s Pass”, but that may just be me having seen too many horror movies. On the resulting stretch of road, entirely deserted except when conveniently necessary for the plot, they become increasingly concerned about the repeated presence of a tow-truck, pulling a car, which appears to be stalking them. After a number of alarming incidents, they are driven off the road by the truck, and Emily gets knocked unconscious. She awakens, to find Leslie gone. Driving to find help, she is stopped by a police-car, only for the officer to fall victim to the truck. But at least Emily now has a weapon, in the shape of the cop’s gun.

This kind of thing can work. Spielberg’s not the only one to prove it; The Hitcher (the original version) also occupied similar territory, with an almost supernatural figure menacing a driver, for no real reason. That succeeded, however, based on Rutger Hauer’s villainous charisma. There’s nothing like that here, with the villain entirely unseen; the closest we get to any personality are glimpses of Satanic regalia dangling in the truck. That’s not exactly a lot on which to hang your movie.

The main problem, however, is a script which is ludicrous when it isn’t being entirely contrived. The notion that a Mustang – which we are shown can reach over 120 mph – could not simply zoom away from a diesel tow-truck if necessary, is the most obvious, yet perhaps not the most idiotic element. The ways in which the two women, and indeed, their pursuer, behave, are the kind of actions which would only be carried out by characters in a horror movie. Anyone sensible would seek sanctuary in the nearest busy area, and stay there until help arrives. Our couple do visit such a spot, in the shape of a diner, only to leave it after lunch and resume their journey, because… because the film demands they do. If you’re not able to tolerate such things, you’ll have to hope that the Rockies and an American classic sports car provide enough entertainment. For the plot and characters aren’t going to offer much.

Dir: Micheal Bafaro
Star: Anna Hutchison, Drea Whitburn, Jennifer Koenig, Michael Dickson

Rogue

  By

★★★
“Because females are the true killers.”

Megan Fox may not exactly be the first name which comes to mind when you think “battle-hardened mercenary leader.” But if you can get past your preconceptions, she’s definitely not the worst thing about this. We’ll get to what is, a little later. She plays Samantha O’Hara, leader of a group or mercs who have been hired by the governor of an African province to rescue his daughter from the Muslim group who kidnapped her. The mission initially goes well, but problems arise. First, the daughter isn’t the only woman kidnapped, forcing Sam to take along multiple civilians. Then, their evac chopper is shot down. Finally, the abandoned house in which they hole up while awaiting extraction turns out to be home to some large, toothy predators of the feline variety, leading to the quote above. Between fending off them and the pursuing kidnappers, Sam and her crew have their work cut out to survive the night until rescue arrives.

I was reminded of the series Strike Back in a number of ways, and it’s no coincidence. Director Bassett worked on the show and Winchester was one of the stars. But there’s also a similarly frantic pace and exotic location, as well as a love of giant fireballs. I’m down with all of those, even if the characterizations here are definitely on the shallow side; the film clearly feels this would be time wasted, which could be better spent on those giant fireballs. Fox is fine, though I’d say definitely should have been made to look less glamorous. There’s barely a shot here, where she doesn’t look as if she wandered onto the African veldt, right off a fashion runway: perfect hair and make-up, with not evern a smudge of dirt on those cheek-bones. However, she hurls herself about with some abandon, and I can’t fault her willingness to go outside the comfort zone of her usual roles.

No, a far bigger problem here is the CGI used for the lions, which is flat-out terrible. I don’t know what the hell happened, but any time it’s properly seen, the flaws are glaringly obvious, and severely detract from proceedings. Which is a shame, because they’re used quite well. We get an attack seen through night-vision goggles that is genuinely chilling, and there’s also the best “out of nowhere” moment since Samuel L. Jackson got sharked in Deep Blue Sea. I suggest looking at the big cats out of the corner of the eye, and they might pass muster. The film ends with an explicit pro-conservation message from the director, which seems a bit odd, given they’ve spent the previous hour and three-quarters showing us what terrifying beasts lions are. But it’s apparently okay, because they had reasons. I don’t see many people sticking around for the morality show: you’re here for Fox in khaki and the maulings. Providing you can get past the ropey CGI, this delivers adequately enough on both counts.

Dir: M.J. Bassett
Star: Megan Fox, Philip Winchester, Greg Kriek, Brandon Auret

Ravage

  By

★★½
“Harper’s bizarre.”

Wildlife photographer Harper Sykes (Dexter-Jones) is out in the wilderness of the “Watchatoomy Valley” [fictitious, but apparently located somewhere in the Virginias], when she stumbles across a group of men brutally attacking a victim. She snaps a few pics before fleeing the scene, but her attempts to report the incident to the authorities backfire immediately, and she quickly finds herself at the mercy of their leader, the appropriately-named Ravener (Longstreet). He explains the victim was a scout for big business, whose predations would destroy the natural environment, and so had to be stopped. Now, Harper is next in line. However, she is not the innocent and helpless victim they think. Even when she has the chance to escape, Harper decides to stay in the valley, and take vengeance on Ravener and the rest of his clan.

It is an interesting idea. Frequently in the horror genre, the character arc is of the “final girl”, who only resorts to violence when finally pushed too far. That certainly isn’t the case here: indeed, Harper actually fires first, gunning down one of Ravener’s henchmen as soon as she steps from her truck. Yet there’s a reason the trope of the final girl exists, because it pulls the audience along with her. Here, Harper’s actions are unexpected enough they could well disengage much of the audience, coming as they do before we’ve established much sympathy for her. Another problem is her decision to stay and actively look for her revenge isn’t well-enough defined: I was left wondering for quite some time, why she didn’t leave. Some explanation of why she’s so skilled might have been nice: not much, just a quick reference to time in the military, or a survivalist Dad, would have been fine.

The structure is also a tad problematic, with the film being told in flashback, a heavily-bandaged Harper recounting her story to a disbelieving state trooper from her hospital bed. So, we know she will survive, and the early explanations also remove much other tension from subsequent proceedings. If you’ve seen more than, roughly, two of this kind of movie, you’ll also fail to be surprised that the kindly individual to whom the heroine turns for help, ends up being anything but. I could perhaps have done without the lengthy digression into medieval torture techniques and bovine anatomy. Though both do prove at least tangentially necessary to the plot, and the latter in particular, leads to a grisly payoff.

Dexter-Jones does a good job of selling her role, and Harper generally has no compunction about acting, e.g. blowing one of her target’s brains out at point-blank range. Yet, this is at odds with some of her other actions. She literally throws up after watching the initial savagery, and the sight of a dead body later makes her shriek like a little girl. It’s all maddeningly inconsistent, and left me rather annoyed, with too much the potential here wasted through sloppy execution.

Dir: Teddy Grennan
Star: Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Robert Longstreet, Michael Weaver, Bruce Dern
a.k.a. Swing Low

Beyond Fear

  By

★★
“Carry on camping.”

Former WWF star Lesseos, where she was known as the Fabulous Mimi, carved out a small career for herself in low-budget action films, mostly in the mid-nineties. Though the ones we’ve covered before, such as Double Duty and Pushed to the Limit, aren’t exactly classics. This, unfortunately, continues that trend, with far too much sitting around campfires, and not enough action. Put another way, it’s a movie which is in tents, instead of intense. [Thank you, I’ll be here all week…] Lesseos plays wilderness guide and former mixed martial-arts fighter Tipper Taylor, who has been contracted to take a bunch of noobs out for a few days of camping. Unfortunately, one of them, Vince (Axelrod), happens to witness and videotape a murder at a campsite. The two perpetrators need to recover the incriminating footage, and set about stalking the party through the wilderness, abducting Vince in an effort to get him to hand over the cassette.

This eventually leads to what is largely the film’s sole redeeming feature: a fairly lengthy and not badly-staged rural brawl between Tipper and Boar (Bower), the most brutal of the villains. The key word, unfortunately, is “eventually”. Because, to reach that point, you have to sit through well over an hour of the most mind-numbing chit-chat you could possibly come up with. It feels as if the original script was some kind of ensemble relationship piece, onto which the makers decided at the last moment to bolt on some fisticuffs. This feels most obvious during our first exposure to the heroine’s talents, in a thoroughly clunky scene where she literally pulls over to try and break up a fight between two vagrants. Instead, everyone is given a deeply uninteresting back-story. For example, Vince and his wife are lottery winners, now working through problems with their marriage, and Tipper is feeling guilty over her final MMA fight, which left her best friend paralyzed.

None of which has anything to do with the main plot, and so can entirely be ignored. Though I can’t over-stress just how much of this nonsense there is. If you’re looking for an open-air soap-opera, this should be your jam. Which is a bit of a shame, as Lesseos brings an easy, likable charm to Tipper, making her someone for whom you want to root. Her fighting style is stiff –  though I should clarify, this is intended in the pro wrestling sense, meaning hard-hitting, It’s clear that’s where her background lies, with moves like drop-kicks not typically being part of the martial arts armoury! The problems here lie elsewhere, with a plot which just doesn’t foreground its action elements, never manages to set up Boar and his ally as any kind of credible threat, and all but entirely fails to explain why Vince never bothers telling anyone – least of all the authorities – about the snuff movie he recorded. Though I must confess to having laughed at the line in the trailer, “Mimi believes in women’s rights… lefts and uppercuts,” it’s all remarkably poorly thought-out, and I couldn’t help feeling that Mimi deserves better.

Dir: Robert F. Lyons
Star: Mimi Lesseos, Verrel Reed, Robert Axelrod, Wayne Bower

The Nightingale

  By

★★★
“Pack your bags, we’re going on a guilt trip!”

History is largely filled with people being unpleasant to each other, usually for belonging to a different race, religion, nationality or even species [if you want to go back to the Cro-Magnons pushing out the Neanderthals about 40,000 years ago]. It’s sad and unfortunate, but it’s not something for which I feel personal responsibility – not least because it tends to work in both directions. My ancestors may have been part of the British Empire who, for example, invented the concentration camp in the Boer War. But my ancestors were also subject to the ethnic cleansing of the Highland Clearances, forced out to make way for sheep. Attempts to make me feel guilty for the sins of my forefathers are thus largely doomed to fail.

And what we have here, is a well-crafted exercise in manipulation. It’s set in what is now Tasmania, then a penal colony where the British garrison were trying to maintain control, both of the prisoners and the indigenous population, using savage brutality against both. One of the former is Clare Carroll (Franciosi), an Irish woman convicted of theft who is now married to another prisoner and working in an army garrison. She is at the mercy of Lieutenant Hawkins (Claflin), who wields a letter of recommendation, which would give Clare and her family freedom, as power over her. Circumstances escalate to a night where she is raped and left for dead, while her husband and infant child are murdered. Hawkins leaves for the capital of Launceston, in pursuit of a promotion. Clare follows, intent on revenge, helped on the trail by Billy (Ganambarr), an Aboriginal tracker, who has also borne the brunt of colonial savagery in his past.

It’s effective, in the same way that a 2×4 across the head will get your attention. It’s not exactly subtle in the parallels being drawn between Clare and Billy, who have both suffered at the hands of the evil Brits, and who subsequently bond over their victimhood. Hawkins is such an evil swine, he might as well spend the entire film twirling his mustache. But despite being such an obvious attempt at generating outrage, it’s not without its merits. Franciosi delivers a fierce and intense performance, as someone who has lost everything, and so is prepared to go to any lengths to take revenge on those who destroyed her life.

Perhaps the most chilling sequence has her hunting down a soldier, already wounded in an encounter with the local population (which seems to have strayed in from an 80’s Italian cannibal film!). The savage way in which she takes him down and then beats his head to a pulp with her rifle-butt… Yeah, she is clearly highly motivated. However, the simplistic way in which white men are, almost without exception, portrayed as stereotypical villains undoes much of the good work put in by the actors, and dampens its overall effectiveness.

Dir: Jennifer Kent
Star: Aisling Franciosi, Baykali Ganambarr, Sam Claflin, Damon Herriman

47 Meters Down: Uncaged

  By

★★★
“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 Furnace

  By

★★★
“Run Mary Run”

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

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

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

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