Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)

 

In the 1980s, Claire Redfield and her older brother Chris are children living at the Raccoon City Orphanage. Claire befriends Lisa Trevor, a disfigured girl who has been experimented on by Dr. William Birkin, an employee for the Umbrella Corporation.  Birkin oversees the orphanage and takes children for his own experimental research. Claire escapes from Birkin when she is selected to participate in one such experiment. 

In 1998, Claire returns to Raccoon City in search of Chris, whom she wants to warn about Umbrella's experiments.  But Chris, now a member of the Raccoon City Police's "STARS" team (basically, think SWAT) isn't home.  He's at a diner with his colleagues; one of whom, rookie Leon S Kennedy, notices that the diner's owner has blood coming out of her eyes.

Yep, Claire's made her return to Raccoon City at exactly the wrong time, with her warnings about Umbrella Corporation experiments coming too late to prevent the apocalyptic mayhem of zombies, monsters and evil conspiracies that is about to lay ruin to the whole place.  Claire and Chris and Chris's STARS team buddies all soon find themselves in a desperate battle for survival.

Welcome to Raccoon City represents a reboot of the Resident Evil franchise at the cinema, jettisoning the increasingly muddled chronology of the six Milla Jovovich films in favour of ... well, an entirely new muddle, to be honest.

I've never played a Resident Evil game but a little reading online informs me that this movie essentially structures a composite plot from the first two games. This was a mistake that leads directly to the film's core problem: there is too much going on and not enough happening, both at the same. 

A significant contributor to this issue is that the cast is too big.  The script tries to wedge in too many "iconic characters" from the game series, resulting in none of them getting to actually do anything very interesting because the movie simply doesn't have time for that.  It's too busy introducing them all, and giving them each their own plot-lines (and their own "big action scenes") to give them time to just be people we get to know and want to see succeed.  Which is a shame because there are several actors here whose other work I have enjoyed in other projects.  With more focused material, they could have made this a far more engaging watch.

The film makes other odd scripting choices, as well.  For instance, Leon S Kennedy, a recurring protagonist of the video game franchise, is presented here as an incompetent putz.  He's frequently incapable of performing even simple tasks, and on several occasions acts in the kind of ways that would normally mark a character as "destined to die".

I'm also not a fan of the score.  It is rather over the top at times.  There's also a recurring effort to "ironically" juxtapose popular songs with scenes that feel thematically opposite.  This can work really well when done sparingly, but the frequency of going to that well here came across to me as a case of "trying too hard".

Welcome to Raccoon City falls short of the first Milla Jovovich Resident Evil film in pretty much every regard. Technically I guess some of the CGI is better, but it's been 20 years, so it should be! Even then, the basic designs are not especially interesting. The final monster in particular is completely generic.

Ultimately, very forgettable stuff.

Ice Cage (2017)

 

A group of people wake up naked in a snowy wilderness, with no clear idea of how they got there.  They stumble their way to an isolated log cabin.  Inside, they find underwear, a dead woman, and a note.

According to this note, one of them killed the woman.  They have until 5pm to work out which of them it was, and punish that person with death.

Is one of them really a killer? Can they find a way out of this predicament? Who brought them here?  These are all questions that seem  impossible to answer, but they are going to have to try.

Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that each of the people in the cabin attended an erotic party the previous night.  Their reasons for being at the party vary wildly, as do their responses to their current situation.

Naturally, as time elapses and stress mounts, their differences of opinion on what to do grow starker and more embittered.  They've already been told that one of them must die ... but will it end up being more?

This film can also be found under the title Snowbound, which is how it is listed on IMDB.  It's a low budget, high concept thriller-style 'horror' film.  

Like a lot of such films, I think it struggles to deliver on the promise of the premise.  As I have noted before, writing good endings is a lot harder than coming up with an intriguing initial hook.  The basic scenario is an interesting one, but I was less convinced by the resolution. I can see that they were going for psychological horror, "what would you do if your life were on the line?" but the actual scenario presented seems implausible, and the ending lacked clarity.

An area for which I have seen the film criticised is the acting.  I think this is a little unfair.  It is evident that English is not the native language of many of the cast members, which is a significant impediment.  Given that significant disadvantage I think they do a solid job.  They emote reasonably effectively, if sometimes in ways that feel a bit "stagey".  Probably a bigger issue for me is that the majority of the characters they are playing are not very likeable people.  It's difficult to care much about the fate of most of these folk.

Production-wise, it's clear that the film-makers have worked hard to minimise costs where they can.  Some of the methods used are obvious techniques, such as limiting the cast and sets. The film has only a quite small number of speaking roles and almost all the action happens either in the cabin, in the woods directly outside, or in the mansion where the sex party took place - basically just three locations.  There are some more sophisticated and clever cost-cutting strategies, though,  I particularly liked the use of a model of the cabin, owned by the 'mastermind', to stand in for the cabin itself at times.  This allowed them to tell us what was happening in the cabin without avoid the need for expensive effects.

The cinematography - by Halayna Hutchins, who would be tragically killed in 2021 in an on-set accident on the film Rust -  is a strong point.  It's well thought out and executed.

As an example, as noted in the synopsis, the entire cast starts nude.  But if you came for the titillation, you will be likely disappointed by the opening sequence.  The cinematography here eschews ogling the actors' bodies, while also nimbly and cleverly averting overly blatant contrivance to avoid incidental skin.  There's little sense of artificiality, which shows care, attention and judgement.

There is more overt nudity later, in the flashbacks to the sex party.  This may be a positive or a negative, depending on your perspective. Also, while I have no first hand experience of sex parties, I doubt that anyone would be allowed to wander about with a mobile phone so obviously!

Ultimately, this is probably one to watch more for the potential of the ideas than the actual execution of them.

Death Ship (1980)

 

There will be some spoilers in this review.  I doubt it will hurt your enjoyment of the film at all, but still wanted to warn you in advance.

Captain Ashland is a sailor of the old school. Prickly and a tad officious, he deeply resents the schmoozing of passengers required by his job as master of a cruise liner.  So it's perhaps for the best that this is his last cruise before retirement, after which he will be replaced by his more personable first officer, Trevor Marshall.

Marshall, for his part, has invited his family along to see his elevation to the top job; perhaps not the most diplomatic of gestures to the older man.

But such questions will soon be relegated to very low priority: late one night they detect another ship on a collision course with their own vessel.  Not only does this other craft not respond to attempts to communicates, but every time they adjust course to avoid a collision, it adjusts its own to ensure they will crash. And indeed, despite everyone's best efforts, the two vessels collide, sinking the cruise ship and taking with it most of her crew and passengers.

The next day, a handful of survivors - Ashland, Marshall and his family, and a few others - are adrift on a large piece of wreckage when they come upon a black freighter.  They celebrate their apparent good luck and, eager to meet the crew of the vessel and secure assistance, climb aboard via a ladder that has been conveniently slung from the stern.

Their celebrations, of course, are premature.  There seems to be no-one aboard this mysterious craft, and it soon becomes apparent that not only did terrible things once happen here, but that their band of castaways may soon become merely another set of victims of this Death Ship ...

This film is part of the 'possessed machine' genre of horror, in which apparently normal machines become imbued with an malevolent intelligence that allows them to operate themselves and wage war against humanity.  Other examples of the form include Killdozer and Christine. Also at least three other films based on Stephen King short stories, come to think of it.  The man loved his killer machines in the early days of his career.

The big challenge of the concept is frequently "how do these machines actually operate?"  This often leads to absurd answers, such as the scenes in Trucks where vehicles adjust their wing mirrors to "watch" people, or ... well, trust me when I say that Trucks has some spectacularly silly ideas.

Death Ship also feels pretty silly at times, generally whenever it goes for its more contrived elements, such as the scene where the ship "makes a snare" for someone.  The film is much more effective when it keeps things simple: there's a scene of metal doors just slamming shut behind a character, for instance, works well.  I admit that this is technically no more realistic, but it doesn't as obviously jar as "impossible" because of course, in the real world, doors do sometimes suddenly slam shut, such as from a gust of wind.

The film's biggest problems, however, are the pacing and the characters.  The former, in particular is a real weakness.  Even at a mere 90 minute run time, the movie feels very drawn out.  It has extended and closing opening sequences that don't really add much to the main story, and that main story is itself very lethargically told.  The film is full of slow motion scenes, lots of footage of machinery in operation, and a number of events with no consequence other than to fill time, such as when one character is grabbed and locked up ... and then she just immediately gets free without any real effort.  What was the point of that?

And then there are the characters.  To be fair to then movie, it allows them to start to twig "this is a bad place to be" pretty fast, but it is transparently obvious which of them are going to survive, and it seems to actively sabotage any possible interest it may have built in the others.  For instance, early on, I was very pleased with how proactive and sensible the character Lori was.  It was a particularly nice surprise given her introduction suggested she was in the movie mainly to do the sexy stuff.  But having subverted expectations in a good way, the film simply backflips and says "nope, we did just hire her for her bosoms, and now you've seen them, she can be unceremoniously killed off"

And then we have the main "hero"; who at one point in the film jumps a guy twice his age from surprise, and still gets his butt kicked. An action hero, he most definitely is not!  He's so ineffectual, in fact, that his blatant plot immunity becomes particularly irksome.

Ultimately, the primary entertainment here is from unintended comedy. Which to be fair, is sometimes quite a lot of entertainment. Still, not recommended unless you've a real passion for such nonsense.

Prison of the Dead (2000)

 

Four former high school friends - Kristof, Michele, Allie, and Rory - travel to a funeral at the remote Hawthorne Funeral Home, built atop the old Blood Prison: a brutal jail built by Puritan extremists specifically for the torture and execution of "witches and heretics".

The funeral is for their friend Calvin, who was part of their high school circle.  All five members of the group were once amateur Paranormal Investigators, but have since found other interests.

Soon after their arrival, Calvin reveals himself to actually be alive. He faked his death on Kristof’s behalf, as the only surefire way to get the others to come.  Why was this gathering so important?  Well, Kristof‘s father - a confirmed sceptic of the supernatural - recently bought the Funeral Home and set up a contest: $1 million to anyone who can prove the existence of a reputed supernatural artefact known as the Talon Key.

Kristof intends to win the contest before it begins. Not for the money, which he instead offers as inducement to the others, but because he has daddy issues that he needs to resolve. 

Although annoyed at being duped, the others now have one million reasons to stick around and go along with Kristof's plan.  Of course, the problem with trying to prove that the supernatural is real, is that you might find the demonstration of that proof quite unpleasant ...

Let's start with the headline item: this is not a very hood movie, and I can't honestly recommend you spend your time on it.

The biggest problem?  It's a 70 minute film and pretty much nothing happens until around minute 40.  That's criminally slow pacing in such a lean run time.  Mind you, even when things do happen, it's mostly just possessed people sitting there calmly and quietly while zombies kill them.  Which is not as exciting as the film makers presumably thought.

"Not exciting" is unfortunately a theme of the film.  The end's a complete cop-out: one character basically pulls out a "stop all this supernatural nonsense" magic doodad, and the film stops.

Speaking of cop-outs: the movie uses the old "mucking about with a ouija board turns real" schtick, which is a bit like claiming that playing Monopoly will turn you into a real property baron.  And having the script acknowledge that ouija boards are just party games - as is done here - does not excuse using one in your séance scene.

So are there any pluses to the film?  Well, I'll give it credit for being unusually LGBTQ positive.  Bisexual male representation is a rare thing in movies in general, even today.  To see all three of the "main" male characters in this - a 20+ year old horror film - be presented as less than 100% straight is quite notable.  Even more so when you consider that two of them are pretty openly acknowledged as (former?) lovers.

I also quite liked the motivation the film eventually ascribes to the murderous zombies.   It's more complex than the usual "killing things is just what zombies do" paradigm.  There's even the potential for a good quandary in it.  This is not the movie to deliver on that potential, though.

The Blob (1958)

 

Teenagers Steve and Jane are kissing at a lovers' lane when they see a meteorite crash beyond the next hill. Steve goes looking for it, but Barney, an old man living nearby, finds it first. When Barney pokes the meteorite with a stick, it breaks open and a small jelly-like globule blob inside attaches itself to his hand.  This is intensely painful, and it won't come off, so Steve and Jane rush the old man to the local doctor's.

The Doctor has never seen anything like it, and sends Steve and Jane back to the impact site for more information.  Which keeps them out of the building just long enough for the blob on Barney's hand to grow exponentially, absorbing first the old man, then both his nurse and the doctor himself.

Steve and Jane get back just in time to catch a glimpse of what happens to the Doctor, but the local police are understandably skeptical of the teens' wild story, particularly when a visit to the Doctor's house shows no sign of the Blob or its victims.

Fortunately for the town - and for that matter, the whole human race - Steve and Jane are the kind of young go-getters who refuse to have their tales of alien monstrosities ignored.  They continue their efforts to raise the alarm.  Of course, that makes them unpopular with their parents and the police.  More importantly, it also puts them right in the path of the Blob itself.  Will their heroic efforts end up leading to their own demise?

The Blob is perhaps best remembered today for the fact that it stars a pre-fame Steve McQueen in the leading role.  I have to say, he is not a particularly convincing teenager ... probably because he was nearly 30 at the time of shooting!

The acting in general is a bit dodgy, to be honest: a lot of the line delivery feels a little bit "local drama society" in quality.  This is of course not surprising for a cheaply-made science fiction film of the era.  And it was cheaply made, with a budget that, if converted to today's dollars, would only just break the $1 million mark.  For comparison, the current day value of the budget of the 1988 remake would be about 25 times that amount.

Mind you, if you're only going to see one version of this story, I'd definitely give the nod to the more expensive film.  It's a fun ride with some great, gross and goopy effects.  This movie is a lot more restrained, due to both its budget and cultural expectations of the era.  I do have to acknowledge though that this film's effects team did a solid job.  The depiction of the Blob itself is actually pretty good, even if the amount it is shown is necessarily limited. The team have made clever use of scaled sets, reversed footage and varying camera speed to create the visual effects.

On the script front, I liked that one of the local police officers is very level-headed and willing to give "the kids" some latitude.  This makes a nice change from the usual uncooperative or even outright counter-productive authorities seen in many films. The script of this movie is notably more trusting in the government than the remake is, though it does also squarely put the 'hero' role on the 'kids': they are the ones who realise what is going on and alert the town, keeping the death rate lower than it might otherwise have been.

Lower body count than the remake and less overt humour, but still fits in a few sly gags amidst its kills

Overall, this movie was goofy fun, and it was interesting to see how scenes from this are echoed in the remake.  It's got less overt horror and comedy than the later film, but still fits some gags and a few (for the time) thrills into its runtime.  I enjoyed myself, and think this is worth a viewing as an example of 50s 'teen horror' films.  But it's a one and done thing. I would happily watch the 80s version again, but I don't think I could say the same about this one.

Valentine (2001)

 

At a junior high school St. Valentine's Day dance in 1988, social outcast Jeremy Melton asks five girls to dance. The first three reject him spitefully and cruelly. The fourth, Kate, politely responds "Maybe later". Jeremy eventually gets a positive answer from the fifth girl, the overweight Dorothy, and the two end up making out beneath the bleachers.

However, when the school bully and his pals discover them, Dorothy falsely claims Jeremy sexually assaulted her. The bully and his pals publicly strip and severely beat Jeremy. The only one punished for these events is Jeremy himself. Those first three "mean girls" testify against him for "unwanted sexual advances", and he ends up in reform school and juvenile hall, and ultimately a mental institution.

Thirteen years later, in 2001, the bully and his pals have all died in unknown circumstances. When one of the five girls - the first Jeremy asked to dance - ends up murdered, the other four are contacted by police. At first, they are sad about the death but see no connection to themselves: their former friend had moved away for college and they didn't have much contact.

But when all of them except Kate receive threatening Valentine's cards, each signed "JM", they understandably become alarmed. Jeremy Melton appears to have vanished; all traces of him scrubbed from records. Is he now hunting them all, one by one? Is he perhaps already involved in their lives in some way, under an assumed identity? Or does the killer have other motivations and is merely using those long ago events as cover?

To be honest, you probably won't care about the answers to those questions, because this is not a very good film.

The simplest example of the film's failings is that on several occasions the detective investigating the case mentions facts that he could not know unless one of the other cast members told him, which we've not seen anyone do.  Now yes, this can just be explained as "well, someone told him off-screen", but it could also be a subtle hint that he's secretly the killer.  Or it could be a cheap trick to mislead the audience into thinking he's secretly the killer.  Or it could just be a bad editing job.  Without giving spoilers, I can say that I don't consider any of those to be good film-making choices.

Speaking of the detective, he's also rather creepy in his sexual fixation on the women in the case; but then, every single male in this movie is in one way or another a creepy scumbag of some kind. Probably this is to create as many suspects as possible, but it's a very lazy way to do it.

This also tries into another aspect of the film where it's not clear what the script is trying to do.  Is trying to be a "post-modern" slasher by deliberately making the killer's motivation be about women who weren't sexually available?  Or is it just an accident that the film represents a different kind of toxic masculinity?  The latter seems more likely to me, as little suggests that this script is smart enough to be a deliberate commentary. And if it is the former, it's not very well done.

Left unstated in the above is my fear that the truth may actually be that the writers were oblivious to the awfulness of their male characters.

That's all very well, you might say, but what about the kills?  If a slasher movie has good kills, much can be forgiven!  Well, on that front, Valentine does at least offer variety.  The killer lacks any specific murder method, employing different techniques for different people.  In a smarter film, these methods would all have an obvious correlation to previous events, but here I saw only once case where the means of death was something of a callback, and that was pretty thin. The lack of a motif or connection is a bit disappointing.

Then there's the final showdown of the film, which is preposterous in conception and works only because the script says it does. It's like the scene in City of Lost Children where a thousand things have to go exactly right to save the day, except without any of the self-aware glee of that scene.

Valentine is memorable mostly for a brief appearance from a pre-Grey's Anatomy Katherine Heigl. She plays the first on-screen murder victim, who chooses the world's worst hiding place when pursued by a killer. 

The Belko Experiment (2016)

 

Mike Milch and the other US employees of Belko Industries in Bogota, Columbia, arrive at the building one day to find unfamiliar security guards turning away the local Colombian staff at the gate.

Mike and his colleagues are bewildered but not excessively alarmed by this phenomenon, even though the usual head of security has no idea who the new guys are, or why they're turning the Colombian staff away.  These colleagues include new employee Dany Wilkins, who reports for her first day on the job and is told that a tracking device is implanted in the base of every Belko employee's skull "in case something happens to them".

As you have no doubt surmised, Mike, Dany & Co. really should be alarmed. Once all the employees show up, a voice on the intercom instructs them to kill two of their co-workers, or else there will be consequences. Several staff attempt to flee the building, but steel shutters seal off the walls and doors, locking them all in. They ignore the announcement at first, believing it to be just a sick prank, but after the set time ends and two people have not been killed, four employees die when explosives hidden in their trackers detonate and blow their heads apart.

And this brings us to the meat of the movie, as the mysterious voice orders increasingly brutal actions on the part of the employees.  It is not long battle lines are drawn between those who - with varying degrees of reluctance - decide to save themselves by doing as ordered, and those (led by Mike) who insist on trying to find some other way out of their predicament.

The Belko Experiment was written and produced (but not directed) by James Gunn, and features a talented cast that includes Michael Rooker and Gunn's brother Sean, both of whom are frequent collaborators of his and who are instantly recognisable these days for their work on the Guardians of the Galaxy films.

Of course, The Belko Experiment is a very different kind of movie to those MCU offerings.  And in my opinion, not overall as successful a film.

It starts strongly, introducing several characters and - with one exception that I will discuss later - giving us some insight into who they are before things get nasty.  The start of the experiment itself is also very punchy and effective.  Fifteen or twenty minutes into this film, I was looking forward to a tense, claustrophobic pressure cooker like Cube.

The problem is though is that the movie doesn't seem to know what to do next.  It basically just repeats the same scenario - kill your colleagues in the hope it will save yourselves, or pay the consequences - without much to vary it up.  Yes, there are some wacky hijinks with Sean Gunn's character, and we have Mike's efforts to find a way out of the experiment, but these don't take up that much time - most of the movie is just about separating out 'people willing to commit murder to save themselves' (all middle aged white guys in management positions, which seems about right) and 'those not willing to do so'.  Also, given horror film tropes, I felt the ending was pretty much the most formulaic and predictable kind of way they could have wrapped things up.

The final problem with the film is Dany's role within it; or perhaps her lack of one.  Her introduction suggested to me that there was something going on with her beyond the apparent, an impression reinforced by the amount of time and attention the script gave her ... but there's not an actual pay-off to this. I guess the 'weirdness' of her introduction was just to show she felt uncomfortable with Belko's tracker, or something like that?

This movie is generally effective in the moment to moment, but ultimately didn't hold together that well, for me.

The Cave (2005)

 

During the Cold War, a group of Soviet and British plunderers begin to excavate an abandoned 13th-century abbey in the Carpathian Mountains. As they set up a dynamite charge, the floor splits beneath them and they fall through to the bottom of a vast cave system. They descend further into the cave in the hope of finding a way out, and hear strange rattling sounds in the darkness.

In the present, a team led by Doctors Nicolai and Jennings, are excavating the same site. They discover mysterious mosaics and a river that stretches for miles inside the cave system. Local biologists believe the cave could contain an undiscovered ecosystem, so Nicolai and Jennings hire a group of professional American divers to assist with the exploration.

Hiring specialists is sensible: cave-diving is extremely hazardous. There's no light except what you bring, the water is often murky with sediment, it is easy to get lost, and equipment can malfunction. In fact, when the team shortly after the team begin their exploration, the last of these risks seems to eventuate when they lose contact with their forward scout.

But of course, this is not wilderness survival film, it's a monster movie, as the team very quickly discover. It seems there is far more to worry about, down in the dark, than just the usual hazards of of cave diving.

Despite a surprisingly recognisable cast including Piper Perabo, Lena Headey, Daniel Dae Kim and Cole Hauser, this film suffered from bad reviews and audience disinterest: its worldwide gross only barely exceeded its $30 million production budget, indicating a significant loss for the studio.

The Cave's chances were probably not helped on either the critical or commercial front by the timing of its release.  It came out around six weeks after The Descent, a movie with a very similar premise.  Those chances certainly weren't helped by the fact that The Descent is a far better film.

The Cave's biggest issue is that the majority of characters are ultimately interchangeable 'shreddies': paper-thin archetypes lacking any depth, who are clearly all present only to get killed and this prove that the situation is dangerous.  In comparison, The Descent gives more depth to its smaller cast, providing us with insights into their history and their relationships with each other.  The Cave's characters are basically just a bunch of people who work (and die) together.

The film is also staged, shot and scored more like an action film that a horror movie.  Action-horror can work, of course.  Just look at Predator, whose "monster vision" technique this movie copies, or Aliens.  It doesn't work here, however, because the film ultimately never looks to generate any tension between its monster attack set-pieces.  It's too occupied with expounding on its rather fanciful creature ecology; presumably because the writers thought their final stinger was much more thrilling  than it actually is, and wanted it as fully foreshadowed as possible.

 

Alas, while some of the action sequences are quite good in and of themselves, the film also doesn't really work as a pure action film, because the emotional stakes of those scenes are generally so low.  It's too obvious how many of these cast members are disposable, and (with one admitted exception), I didn't really care whether they would survive their current predicament.  Another one just like it, with a barely differentiated victim/survivor, would doubtless be along shortly.

I will admit that parts of the movie certainly look good.  It has some second unit footage of real cave divers interspliced into the narrative.  These sequences show off the visual wonders of real world underwater/waterlogged cave systems, which are often as beautiful as they are dangerous.  All of the "story" sequences of the movie are actually filmed on sets though, which is more practical, much safer, and also ecologically more sensible.  These sets are solid work, but to my mind, not anywhere near as arresting as the real thing.

I can't recommend visiting The Cave.

Deadsight (2018)

 

Ben Nielsen wakes up after eye surgery to find himself handcuffed to a gurney in the back of an ambulance. He has to find all this by touch, mind you, as the surgery has left him temporarily without sight.

Lost and alone and blind would be bad at the best of times, but this is definitely not 'the best of times'.  Quite the opposite, in fact: while Ben was lying there, still sedated from the surgery, the whole world collapsed in an zombie pandemic.

Although he manages to extricate himself from the ambulance, and even fend off the first zombie to find him - all without any real idea what is happening - Ben's chances of survival are pretty remote.  A blind man can't even see a zombie coming, let alone capably fight it off.

So when Ben stumbles across police officer Mara Madigan, it seems his luck has finally changed for the better: after all, Mara can see, and she's armed!

The thing is, Mara is also heavily - heavily - pregnant. Which carries all sorts of physical drawbacks of its own.  Even if they can work together, can two such physically restricted people really hope to survive?

This film's opening gambit probably sounds familiar.  After all, "Someone wakes up in medical care to discover the world has ended while they were asleep" has turned up in a number of books and films, and is a particularly common trope in zombie media, it seems: 28 Days Later, The Walking Dead, even the first Resident Evil movie all make use of it.  The scenario predates all of them, of course, dating back to least John Wyndham's 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids.  It's a handy narrative device since it allows the point of view character to need lots of explanations, which the audience will then get, as well.

The real question of course, is having started from a tried and tested origin point, does Deadsight justify the time spent watching it?  And I think the answer to that question is "Maybe.  But it definitely has some issues."

Starting with the positives, I appreciate that the film focuses on creating a sense of tension, with only occasional bursts of action to break up the creeping unease.  Of course, the physical limitations of the leads - late pregnancy and visual impairment - definitely helps create a sense of continuous vulnerability, but the film is also smart enough not to squander the tension it creates: there's none of those hackneyed, tension-breaking false alarm scenarios like the old "cat in a cupboard" schtick.

The film also profits from generally solid makeup work on the zombies, though I did notice that this seemed a lot more rudimentary in the final (dimly lit) sections of the film, which is also where we see some rather over the top CGI gore thrown in, as well.

Heck, I am even quite pleased with the cast; the film only has two major roles, and both actors do solid work.

So why is my reaction to the film so lukewarm?  Simply put: it's the script.  It's by no means terrible, and it doesn't have any major clangers, but it does have a number of minor flaws that ultimately combine to undermine the film.

First off, it is inconsistent with how zombies behave.  While they generally seem to be aware of living people only if the human makes noise or is very close, this is not 100% consistent.

Second, it's hard to understand how society has managed to collapse so quickly and entirely.  The film's zombies are slow and not especially strong or resilient: there's no 'you have to go for the head', for instance. Hitting one in the stomach with an axe seems to take it down OK, tasers work on them, etc.  How they would overcome any halfway organised military force is a question best not considered too deeply. On the plus side, I guess it does make it more plausible that our protagonists keep surviving them!

Finally, the very, very ending rang false to me.  This is a shame because the moments leading up to it work well.  It's unfortunate that they are then undermined by what feels like an implausibly glib and convenient last scene.

Ultimately, Deadsight has both good and bad, and while I'm overall enough of a zombie aficionado to have enjoyed it, it may or may not work for you. 

Byzantium (2012)

 

Clara Webb is a vampire. Along with her daughter, Eleanor, Clara is on the run from the "Brethren", the autocratic and frankly rather misogynistic organisation that dictates the codes by which vampires must live. Never happy to have a woman among their number, the Brethren made Clara a fugitive outlaw after she turned Eleanor.  The fact that she did so to save her daughter's life makes no matter to them.

 

Clara makes her money as a sex-worker.  So, when she and Eleanor drift into a dilapidated coastal town and find lodgings at the "Byzantium Hotel", she soon seduces the lonely male owner and converts the place into a makeshift brothel. It's not a bad arrangement in many ways, providing income, security and a source of food.  But as always, it's imperative that they not be too successful, too noticeable, or too involved in the community.  After all, any of those things might reveal their location to the Brethren, whose ideas of how to deal with renegade vampires are very much of the "kill them all" persuasion.

Of course, avoiding all these things is easier said than done, especially when, like Eleanor, you've got the additional complication of having been stuck as a teenager for nearly 200 years.

 

Byzantium is directed by Neil Jordan, who - given he previously helmed 1994's Interview with a Vampire - is presumably no stranger to the blood-drinking genre.  However, the vampires here stray rather further from the classical model than those of the earlier film.  Byzantium's vampires are not troubled by sunlight, and appear in mirrors just like everybody else.  It's safe to say, in fact, that the whole drinking blood thing appears to be the only 'baked in' drawback of their undead state.  It's otherwise a pretty sweet deal: eternal youth, immunity to sickness, heightened physical abilities.

In fact, it's not hard to see why the Brethren want to keep vampire society so small and secretive; if the secret got out, everyone would want to be a vampire.  Which is presumably not sustainable, if human blood is actually a required part of their diet.  Of course, "keep our numbers small" is a very different thing "than be massively chauvinistic, class-obsessed jerks".  But then, these are men from the Napoleonic Wars, so alas massive chauvinism and inflated awareness of social class are probably to be expected.  Plus let's face it, it makes them very easy to dislike, which can be a useful trait in your villains.  And it's not like we as a species are yet past such regressive notions about people's worth.

But how is the movie as a work of entertainment?  Pretty good, overall.  It's certainly helped by strong casting: Saoirse Ronan and Gemma Arterton are reliable as always in the central roles, and they are ably supported by a cast of capable, mostly British and Irish actors in the other roles.

The movie it not without its flaws, of course.  The rather long flashback to tell the tale of how Clara and Eleanor became vampires felt a bit unnecessarily indulgent to me, what with its host of CGI bats and literal waterfalls of blood. It is important in the film's narrative that Eleanor shares her history, as well as for her personal character arc; and some of these details do matter ... but it was just a bit too self-consciously gothic for my tastes.

That said, it does have lots of little touches that I really enjoyed.  For instance, the college lecturer who says: "Humans need to tell stories; it is how we understand the world".  I'm fully on-board with this; stories and how and why we tell them are a key part of the human experience.

It's also a nice touch that in the film, Eleanor's hand-written account of her life is all in the kind of beautiful copperplate that belongs to the era of her human life.

Green Room (2015)

 

East Coast punk band the "Ain't Rights" - Pat, Sam, Reece, and Tiger - are touring the Pacific Northwest. They are low on funds, so when a planned gig is cancelled, they accept an impromptu offer to do a show in a rural venue.

Arriving at the location, they are discomforted to discover it is a neo-Nazi skinhead bar, but they go ahead with the show anyway. Their energetic performance actually goes over pretty well, though the band remain uncomfortable and plan to leave as soon as they can.

Of course, plans often go awry, and that's the case here: Pat accidentally walks in on the aftermath of a homicide. He successfully calls the police, but bar employees then intervene and and confine whole band in the bar's green room, along with a young woman named Amber, who is a friend of the victim.

The bar staff insist that they're just keeping the band and Amber safe and secure until the cops can arrive, but the Ain't Rights are sure that something ... well, ain't right.  Trusting the staff and just sitting tight doesn't seem like a very safe option, but even if they can get out of the room, how will they leave the building?  Reece is pretty handy in a fight, but there is an entire bar full of racist thugs out there.

One way or another, things are going to get messy ...

Green Room is an action-horror film.  And a good one.

The on-screen talent certainly helps.  Though made on a (for Hollywood) very lean budget of only $5 million, the film certainly punches above its weight when it comes to casting.  We've got Joe Cole from Peaky Blinders, and Alia Shawkat from Arrested Development, plus Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots, who had previously worked together on the  2011 remake of Fright Night.  Yelchin, who died in a freak accident only a year after his movie came out, was probably best known for playing Chekhov in the modern Star Trek films.  And he was not the only Trek alumni in the cast, as none other than Patrick Stewart - Captain Picard himself - plays the role of Darcy, the owner of the bar where the film takes place.

Of course, merely having a talented cast doesn't make a film automatically entertaining.  Just look at Southland Tales.  Or, for that matter, any of the Star Wars prequels.  You need cogent direction and an engaging script, as well.  I am pleased to say that writer-director Jeremy Saulnier delivers both.

On the directorial front, I was particularly impressed with his handling of the film's violence.  It all feels very real and visceral, but the camera never dwells gratuitously on it, either in the actual moment it occurs, or in its aftermath.  This may disappoint hardcore gore-hounds, but I appreciated the effort expended to make the violence feel shocking and confronting without indulging in sadism.  There's also no violence just for violence's sake.  Apart from the original murder that triggers the whole situation, every act of violence is purposeful: it has a clear motivation and goal.

The script itself is also pretty solid. It's fairly grounded stuff: there's no supernatural elements, no massive villainous conspiracy. The Ain't Rights simply happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Their antagonists are certainly awful human beings - they are neo-Nazis, after all - and ruthless in protecting themselves, but their evil is banal and prosaic. The initial murder is a the result of a blunder, and every other crime they commit is simply to cover up what's come before. Almost every action and reaction feels plausible in the context - and I only say 'almost' because there is one very late plot point I felt was a little under-developed: a character has a change of heart that seemed a bit abrupt.

Overall though, that's a minor blemish at most.  If you're at all a fan of horror films or violent thrillers, Green Room is worth your time.

From Beyond (1986)

 

Scientist Dr. Edward Pretorius has developed the Resonator, a machine that allows whoever is within range to see beyond normal perceptible reality. Side effects of this phenomenon include feelings of euphoria, stimulation of the pineal gland that may cause it to become enlarged, and allowing the things that live beyond our normal perception to see and interact with us, as well.

When Pretorius's reckless experimentation with the machine leads to his death, his assistant Crawford is blamed, and committed to a mental institution. There, he comes under the care of Dr. Katherine McMichaels. When scans show that Crawford's pineal gland is enlarged and growing, McMichaels becomes convinced of his innocence, and decides to rebuild the machine in order to prove it.

Somehow, she is able to convince the authorities to go along with this plan. Crawford agrees to accompany her - presumably since his freedom relies on the outcome - though he is certainly nervous about the possible implications of further experimentation with the machine.  It has, after all, already claimed one life.

From Beyond is loosely based on the short story by H P Lovecraft.  The film was directed by Stuart Gordon, the man behind the schlocky fun of the previous year's Re-Animator, which was also adapted from a Lovecraft story.

So how does this movie live up to the standards of its predecessor?

Pretty well, on the whole.  Gordon made the deliberate choice to re-use the same leading cast members: Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton.  Gordon's motivations for this were not directly related to the quality of their performances in Re-Animator, but instead were because he had ambitions to make a whole series of Lovecraft adaptations using the same cast, as a deliberate artistic choice.  However, I'm pleased to say that both are solid performers who commit to their roles, and are good fun to watch here. I wish Gordon had been able to follow through on his plans to make more of these movies with these leads, but alas, it was not to be.

On the technical side, while the film's effects are limited by its budget, they are overall pretty good within those limitations.  The gruesome body horror practical effects are a particular strength, as are the practical monsters - I particularly liked "The Thing In The Basement".  Some of the other effects, such as the post-production overlays of re-coloured eels as "otherworldly things from beyond" are not quite to the same standard, but I suspect they were a lot more affordable than the alternatives.

It won't be to all tastes, so it is worth nothing that there's a strong sexual element to the film; the 'resonator' specifically affects the part of the brain controlling sexual desire, there's a little bit of nudity and lots of revealing clothing. Some Lovecraft purists may dislike this, as his stories were generally sexless, but I actually think it is not a bad way to echo the author's obsession with genetic 'purity' without indulging his hideous racism. Also it was the 1980s, and "sex = death: was pretty much embedded in the horror DNA back then.  Which is is problematic for other reasons, of course!

While the sexual elements may be positive, negative or neutral, depending on your tastes, the film is not without some definite flaws.  The storytelling is occasionally a little muddled.  For instance, the monsters' relationship with natural light seems a little inconsistently depicted, at first: shining a torch on one character pulls the critters away from him, but then shining light onto another guys draws the critters to him. I think the intended message in both scenes is that the creatures are "drawn to the light", but depicting this in two essentially opposite ways confuses the point a bit.

Overall though, the flaws don't detract from the carnival fun ride feel of the film: this is fun schlockly horror.

Argento's Dracula (2013)

 

In the woods near her village, a young woman named Tania meets her lover for a secret tryst. But when you live in Transylvania, it's a bad idea to go out at night. Tania is chased and killed by a supernatural beast.

Sometime later, Jonathan Harker arrives in the village.  Harker is a librarian hired by Count Dracula, a nobleman from the area.  He happens to have friends in the village, and pays them a brief visit before heading up to Dracula's castle.

As a stranger to the area, Harker is unaware of Tania's death.  Thus he has no reason to be alarmed when it is she who greets him at the castle door.  We in the audience, of course, know that he should be very worried indeed.  Of course, we've known that since before the movie even began: it is a Dracula film, after all.

Directed by famed Italian director Dario Argento, this film is also known as Dracula 3D and filmed for that format. It is refreshingly light on things flying straight out of the screen, but it is quite the sunniest Dracula film I have ever seen. Possibly because of the needs of the 3D cameras, it is very brightly lit, sometimes overly so, which ironically makes many of the visuals look a bit flat. 

Also a bit flat are the performances.  They are curiously subdued, stilted and even listless, with all emotions muted.  This seems to be a deliberate stylistic choice, but to my mind it's very odd decision.  At their core, Horror films are all about emotions: fear and dread!  To have the entire cast seem so disengaged from the purportedly terrifying things happening to them makes it hard for those things to seem scary to me as a viewer.

The infamous Count himself also seems to totally lack a sense of menace. Possibly Argento and his team are going for an urbane and seductive variation on the vampire of legend, but if so they don't really hit the mark.  For one thing, late in the film he just abruptly turns into a giant CGI praying mantis, for some reason, and I don't think "giant cannibalistic insect" is many people's idea of "sexy".  It's also not scary, to be honest, given the mediocre execution.  And it feels like something out of a different film, given the way it just suddenly happens and then is never referenced again.

The giant mantis is not the only dodgy CGI effect, alas.  There's a scene where a vampire bursts into "flame", and it looks terrible.

Now I could forgive the dodgy effects work - though probably not the baffling direction of the performances - if the script was sufficiently fun and distinctive. But while they do seem to have tried to mix things up and include some surprises - this movie deviates from the Stoker's novel in many ways, both small and large - the result is not particularly coherent, and it definitely falls short of "fun".

Argento's career peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, and his work since then has generally been poorly received.  If his version of Dracula is anything to judge by, that reception is entirely justified.

October 2023 Schedule and the future of this blog

As usual, my October reviews will all be horror-themed. Reviews will be posted on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays throughout this month.

Regular reviews will resume on Friday, November 3rd, but are likely to continue only until the end of the year.  I intend to 'shutter' this blog at that point.  It's achieved its original goal of reducing my unwatched pile of DVDs, after all!