Outpost 11 (2013)

It is 1955 in an alternate, steampunk-ish world, and the "Second Hundred Years' War" rages on.  As part of the war effort, Britain has established a chain of tiny, isolated outposts in Antarctica, where they monitor enemy communications and activity.  Quite why a desolate, nigh uninhabitable wasteland would be a hotbed of military activity, I am not sure, but apparently it is. 

Outpost 11 has a staff of only three men: a nervous conscript, an angry and emotionally abusive corporal, and an officer of some kind who doesn't seem to care over much about the war or their ill-defined mission.  So there is a fair bit of tension in the place even before the red warning light of an imminent attack blinks on.  So when it does, it's safe to say that things are going to get very bad indeed.

The 'alternate history' background of Outpost 11 is to my mind a distraction from the claustrophobic sense of tension the film is trying to establish.  It would I think have been better to make this a cold war base in the 'real world' 1970s.  A lot of the eclectic mix of technology could still have been explained in that context, and I wouldn't have spent half the film wondering what on Earth Britain and Prussia could have found to fight over in 1850 that they'd still be locked in a war over a full century later (you can't, after all, have a Second Hundred Years' War until it has lasted a hundred years ...).

That quibble aside, is this any good?  Eh.  The cast is solid, but the script is a bit weak.  The characters are little more than flat archetypes, with little reason for us to care about them other than that they are on screen, and a number of the plot points don't feel 'natural' in the context of the situation, but instead like the writers forcing things to lead toward the outcomes they have in mind.

Vanishing on 7th Street (2010)

A sudden power blackout plunges Detroit into darkness.  When the power returns a few seconds later, anyone who didn't have their own non-mains powered light source to hand is gone, their clothes in a pile wherever they stood.

Three days later, it is clear that the effects are at least nationwide, which makes the title seem rather understated (would not The Vanishing have been shorter and punchier as well as more accurate?).  It is also clear that all power sources - batteries, generators, even the sun itself - are running down.

In these bleak circumstances, a small group of survivors, dragging their diminishing sources of light with them, stumble across each other and bicker about what to do next.

After a promising opening, Vanishing on 7th Street loses momentum as the characters sit in place and squabble for an inordinately long time, pushing the threat of the shadows (whatever they are and whatever they want) into the background and eroding my engagement with the situation and the characters I'm supposed to root for.   The film's sense of progress is lost here, and it never recovers it.

I tend to feel that the root cause of the loss of momentum is a lack of purpose to the shadow vs human conflict.  What's doing this and why?  We will never know.  That sense of mystery can sometimes work: part of Night of the Living Dead's effectiveness as a film comes from the fact that no-one understand why the dead have returned as cannibalistic monsters.  But at least the characters in Romero's movie had a clear purpose in response: to survive until help comes.  The group here have given up on help and can't agree on anything, so they barely move from the spot where they meet.  Even when they do act, it's without any goal beyond "exist for a few seconds more".

Ultimately, this one runs out of juice even faster than the draining batteries the characters have to deal with.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Season 1 (1974)

Chicage in the mid-1970s.  Carl Kolchak is an experienced reporter with the Independent News Service.  He works a lot of crime-related stories, which often puts him into conflict with the Police Department, due (a) to his "creative" ways of getting information and (b) his equally creative - one might say "crazy", given that they usually involve supernatural creatures - theories about who the culprits might be.  Vampires and werewolves and witches, oh my!

Of course, this is a TV show - one that Chris Carter cited as a big influence on The X-Files - so Kolchak is invariably right about who or what is responsible, and almost as invariably manages to find and defeat them.  Though somehow, of course, he always does so without finding any concrete proof of what he saw.  Kolchak's inability to take a decent photograph, for instance, is one of the show's several not-as-funny-as-the-writers-think running gags.

Alas, misfiring humour is far from the only problem with this show.  The writing in general is formulaic and thin, the recurring supporting cast is too divorced from the supernatural shenanigans to ever really connect, and the production values are ... not good.  The last episode in particular has some very ill-advised costume work, though frankly, it may be my favourite of the season since it's one of the few times the show manages to inch toward the "so bad it is good" line, rather than just being dull.

Kolchak might indeed have been a big influence on Chris Carter, because I can't help remembering the confused, "we haven't actually got a plan or a point" mess that The X-Files descended into, and seeing a connection.

Bereavement (2010)

A boy named Martin has a medical condition that means he is unable to feel pain.  At the age of six, he is abducted by a serial killer, who plans to use the youngster as a kind of acolyte.

Five years later, teenager Allison Miller moves to the area - which seems to have become a whole lot more rural in the meantime - to live with her uncle after her parents die.  She's a bit of a fish out of water, though she does strike up a friendship with a young man named William.

Naturally, that serial killer is still at work in the area.  Which is frankly ridiculous given the rate at which he seems to capture and carve up women (and of course it's always women).  The sheer numbers of disappearances - especially in a lightly populated area - would surely have prompted an official response.  or at least some kind of public anxiety.

Equally naturally, Allison is inevitably going to stumble across the killer and his creepy boy sidekick, despite no-one else doing so in the intervening time.

You can probably tell from my griping above that I was not a big fan of this film.  It failed to grip me, leaving me plenty of time to pick holes in the plot-line.  I suspect that even if it had gripped me, the relentlessly mean-spirited nature of the narrative would have eventually turned me off; at least up until the point where it became so gratuitous that it became almost funny.

Mind you, it's probably that very mean-spiritedness that will be a selling point for some people: this is certainly not a typical Hollywood film in that regard.  I can't say I would recommend it, though.

Autumn (2009)

In the space of a day 99% of humanity starts spewing blood from their mouths and then drops dead.  One city's frightened survivors gather in a local recreation centre, but soon fall to squabbling over whether to remain where they are on the hope of rescue, or try to get out into the country and away from the rotting piles of corpses.

That question becomes even more pressing when the corpses get up and start walking around.  I mean sure, they seem to be completely oblivious to outside stimulus and just shamble about aimlessly, but it's still seriously creepy.  And they are still rotting.

So yeah, we're now living in a post-Walking Dead world and I'm pretty sure you're all already  thinking the "Zed word" (or Zee word, if you're American).  And yep, eventually the newly reanimated plague victims begin to become aware of what's around them, and to display signs of aggression ... no surprise there.  Honestly, even in 2009 I doubt it was much of a surprise.

So yep, we're in super low budget zombie movie territory here.  But is it good super low budget zombie movie territory?  Well, I'm not sure such territory actually exists, but if it does, this is not it.  Autumn is ponderous, tedious stuff, with a human cast that show little more initiative than the corpses that "threaten" them.  The sum total of their response to the realisation that the walking corpses might be dangerous is to build a fence.  That done, they just kind of sit in a house for most of the movie.  They don't even try to secure it in any way, or make plans about how to maintain their food source, or ... well, do anything.  Not that they need to do much, since even fifteen minutes from the end of the film, it is still pretty easy for a lone human to safely shove their way through a whole crowd of zombies.

Boring.

The Nightmare Gallery (2019)

A young man calls his professor, gleefully excited about an ancient book he's located.  But when he starts to look through the tome, some bog standard "spooky" stuff happens and he vanishes.

Three years later, the professor is still putting up "have you seen me?" posters at the university.  I admire her tenacity, though not her technique.  I'm not alone in this, since her obsessive behaviour is causing some issues for her professionally and personally.  Though at least she is a lesbian so we don't have to sit through the tired old professor/student romance (or suspicion thereof) storyline.

Of course this status quo wouldn't make for much of a movie, so soon enough a mysterious package turns up for the Professor, seemingly offering the first hint of finding her missing friend.  Sadly, this also won't make for much of a movie.

Because alas, The Nightmare Gallery really hasn't got much of anything new or interesting to offer in its roughly 100 minutes of running time.  Our professor (played by Buffy alumnus Amber Benson) is soon experiencing a muddled collection of the same kind of bog standard "spooky" stuff as her missing protege, though whatever occult force is at work is much less eager to grab her than it did the kid.  I admit there is a decent reason for this reticence, as well as a decent reason for why she would care so much about her former assistant.  Still, for all I can give a nod of appreciation for such details, they do little to offset the fact that the lion's share of the film is just a bunch of tired old horror movie tropes inelegantly stitched together.

Oh, and there's a post credits scene which makes the whole movie even less interesting than it was to begin with, so if you do find yourself watching it, maybe bail out before you get to that.

October 2019 Schedule

Reviews this October will be posted on Tuesdays (except today), Thursdays and Saturdays.  As usual, they will focus on horror films.  So if you're not into that genre, you can probably safely skip visiting here for a month.

The regular Tuesday and Friday schedule will resume on November 5th.