Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Arrow Video fans certainly have much to get excited about at present. The imminent release of a brand-new 4K restoration of John Carpenter’s classic remake of The Thing is one reason. Another is the new July 2017 Arrow Blu-Ray re-issue of Richard Franklin’s 1983 sequel Psycho II.

 

At first glance, it was always a tall order and major challenge to see whether anyone could match Hitchcock’s 1960 chiller; whether it could be consistent with the original’s level of shock and surprise after such a long hiatus, whilst bringing it in line with the Halloween / Friday The 13th crowd. Happily, even thirty-four years after its theatrical debut, Psycho II transcends expectations and is one of the classic exceptions to the rule of diminishing returns in sequels.

 

Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is deemed fit for society twenty-two years after the dark and tragic events of the original film by a local court, despite the objections of Lila Loomis (Vera Miles) – the sister of Janet Leigh’s character in the original – who has mounted a petition to stop him from being released. He goes back to his motel and house and takes a job at a local diner, where he meets waitress Mary (Meg Tilly). His doctor. Bill Raymond (Robert Loggia) helps him adjust as best he can, whilst advising the local sheriff to keep an eye on him.

 

However, it isn’t long before the past starts to play with his mind-set, with notes being left under phones in the house and on the order wheel at the diner. His motel has other issues, with the present manager, Warren Toomey (Dennis Franz) making a more open policy on guests to increasing resentment and objections…..

 

Tom Holland’s script keeps a compact and playful leash on both the characters and the audience – and all the key motifs that defined the original film are there, right down to the film opening with the immortal shower scene, a key set-up for what is to follow.

 

In his sleeve notes for the soundtrack to Halloween, John Carpenter stated that Psycho was ‘the film that inspired Halloween’ and it is a logical progression that Dean Cundey should be the person to have laid the canvas on director Franklin’s film. Like The Fog, Psycho II is richly and beautifully shot, adding to the air of unease. Perkins was never going to escape his role as Bates, a fact Hitchcock lovingly stated when he claimed he ruined Perkins’ career through Psycho. Jerry Goldsmith’s music is faultless, one of several great scores he did throughout the 1980s, and done around the same time he was nominated for another Oscar for his work on Roger Spottiswoode’s Under Fire (highly recommended if you can get hold of the CD).

 

After you’ve enjoyed the film, you can look forward to a host of special features on the disc, including writer Tom Holland’s audio commentary, archive interviews and press kit material and – if you are lucky enough to buy the film on its first release – a collector’s booklet with new writing on the film and a reprint of the Psycho II chapter from Richard Franklin’s unpublished biography.

 

All in all, Arrow Video have a gold-plated winner with Psycho II.

PSYCHO II / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: RICHARD FRANKLIN / SCREENPLAY: TOM HOLLAND / STARRING: ANTHONY PERKINS, VERA MILES, MEG TILLY, ROBERT LOGGIA, DENNIS FRANZ / RELEASE DATE: 31ST JULY

84 years ago a legend was born as a massive stop-motion animated ape climbed The Empire State Building – just as he would later ascend pop culture – swatting planes away and grasping Fay Wray in his monkey mitts. Since then the cinematic legend of one of cinema’s longest reigning monsters has grown and grown, with remakes by John Guillermin and Peter Jackson, some iffy sequels and even a crossover with Toho’s Godzilla back in 1962. However, in the case of this newly rebooted incarnation of Kong, that ‘60s mash-up is the most salient point here, as, after starting with a strong roar in Gareth Edwards’ (admittedly polarising) Godzilla in 2014, Legendary Pictures continues their budding MonsterVerse with Kong: Skull Island. So, ahead of Michael Dougherty’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) and Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong (2020), is this trip to Skull Island as monstrously enjoyable as hoped. Indeed it is.

Taking a departure from the 1933 classic and many of the romanticised movies that followed, Kong: Skull Island instead pays tribute to the kaiju film and re-imagines Kong through the misty eyes of hellacious war, with influences from Vietnam war flicks…Pacific Rim by way of Apocalypse Now if you like. A military unit, straight out of finishing up in the unsuccessful Vietnam war, are tasked with one last job to escort William Randa (John Goodman) and his fellow Monarch associates, along with former SAS hunter/tracker James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) and photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) to a mysterious island that holds many secrets. However, once they arrive, they gain the ire of its mountain-sized simian ruler and a deluge of other dangers also surface.

 

In a trend that is clearly visible in this cinematic universe, Jordan Vogt-Roberts is an indie director (his debut was 2013 coming of age Drama The Kings of Summer) that has been allowed space to create his own slant on this pantheon among movie beasts and the results are simply spectacular. After Edwards’ film was sternly told off by audiences for not featuring the title star enough, this film has no such problem, Kong is back in a big (and we mean big) way, in a film that relishes the elements – good and bad – of kaiju movies and at times recalls films like Predator (Henry Jackman’s great score certainly evokes a bit of Silvestri’s jungle set beats) with its constant action and intensity. However the script also allows for some depth in terms of its timely themes (mankind’s mistreatment and misunderstanding of nature and the futility of war), comic touches (John C. Reilly’s show stealing turn as stranded WW2 pilot Hank Marlow) and moments of beauty (a face-to-face between Kong and Conrad & Weaver being especially rather touching), not to mention some neat eschewing of the gender/racial stereotypes that have grown more and more noticeable in the original classic.

 

Admittedly the criticisms of lacking characters hold some water, after all this is a film that prioritises monster mashing over excessive character development but despite some supporting players being used as kaiju collateral damage and Hiddleston’s unusual casting as a very macho hero (he makes a good go of it though, to be fair), this cast of familiar faces deliver the goods. Goodman is always a welcome presence, as we say Hiddleston has his moments and kind of won this reviewer over in his part, Larson is effective in a turn that is pleasingly less sexually-driven and more ethical than the usual Kong series leading lady and Samuel L. Jackson is brilliant as the Moby Dick-esque obsessive character, army veteran Preston Packard, who is as misguided as he is near mad in taking the fight to Kong (who is brought to life with both enthralling special effects and splendid motion-capture by Terry Notary). Though it is indeed Kong’s movie, you will most feel the presence of the aforementioned John C. Reilly on the human side, as he excels in a part that allows for some laughs but more emotion than any of his fellow co-stars and he relishes the opportunity by delivering one of his most fantastic performances.

 

Overall Kong: Skull Island is just a complete blast from start to finish (and that end credits bit gets the blood properly pumping). The effects are superbly rendered, the tone is joyous and Vogt-Roberts uses Larry Fong’s gorgeous cinematography to the maximum to add some visual awe to his passionate, exciting and occasionally violent (some moments really push that 12A rating) take on King Kong. Which well and truly feels like his film and not a producers (a point anchored when looking into the films making)! This writer would easily rank it as one of the 2017’s most enjoyable movies, and certainly one of the most visually absorbing. So sit back, relax and enjoy your visit to Skull Island, though please remain seated for the entire tour, as some of these creative and deadly monsters don’t play nice.

 

Ladies and gentleman, Kong is king once again in a film that blends genres, wears its influences proudly and delivers huge skull crunching action to create an endlessly fun blockbuster. We cannot wait for the next MonsterVerse outing.

Special Features: Monarch Files 2.0 / Featurettes / Deleted Scenes / Director Commentary

KONG: SKULL ISLAND / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR: JORDAN VOGT-ROBERTS / SCREENPLAY: DAN GILROY, MAX BORENSTEIN, DEREK CONNOLLY / STARRING: TOM HIDDLESTON, SAMUEL L. JACKSON, BRIE LARSON, JOHN GOODMAN, JOHN C. REILLY / RELEASE DATE: 24TH JULY

What the hell was that?… Spaceship is written and directed by Alex Taylor, who’s known for making well-acclaimed short films like Release of the Flying Monkeys and Kids Might Fly, and has described this film as being a film “fuelled by teenage energy”. It revolves around a cyber-goth teen mysteriously disappearing, and following this, her father begins searching for her while other teens start fantasising the circumstances of her disappearance as well as being lost in their own little world. Sounds interesting enough, but in all honesty, this is the kind of film that will either fascinate or alienate audiences, and for this reviewer, it was kind of film that was truly hard to engage with emotionally.

 

A lot of the narrative and characters feel too vague to connect with, and while it can be okay to keep things unclear when telling a story on film if you think the audience is smart enough to work it out on their own, there is nothing here to draw them in emotionally. It could be that Taylor was to trying to give us a revelatory insight into teen culture and the notions of being a teen outcast with quirks and all, however, there’s isn’t any depth or intrigue to any of these characters. In truth, they all act like glorified mouthpieces spouting out all this pseudo-intellectual and philosophical platitudes of conscience and one’s self that Taylor thinks is thought-provoking but instead comes off as naval-gazing and disconnecting.

 

Taylor wanted us to embrace the strangeness and weirdness this movie throws up, but whenever you see filmmakers like Darren Aronofsky try to do strange, thought-provoking movies, they at least tried to make it clever while also generating an emotional response. In the case of this, Taylor thinks that rambling on about unicorns, alien abductions and rainbows amounts to depth that will fascinate the audience. It doesn’t though, despite it looking pretty to look at through its neon day-glow aesthetic, plus the actors are clearly trying their best despite the hokey dialogue.

 

In the end, Spaceship is a confusing mess, that’ll either entrance or befuddle you with its pseudo-philosophical dialogue and visual-heavy narrative. Maybe there is the germ of an idea in there that has the potential to be exciting and thought-provoking, but it’s a shame that there are all the other elements dragging it down, and it isn’t hard to see why this film has grated a lot of people off the wrong way.

 

SPACESHIP / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: ALEX TAYLOR / STARRING: ALEXA DAVIES, LARA PEAKE, LUCIAN CHARLES COLLIER / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Guillermo Del Toro has firmly established himself as an auteur in modern filmmaking. His stylistic and self-described ‘personal’ cinematic canon expertly combines fantasy with realism for narratives that are rich in both imagery and cultural context. Perhaps the most salient pieces of his filmic jigsaw are the three times he has made features in the Spanish language – Cronos (1993), The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Pan’s Labyrinth was obviously lauded the world over, but its predecessor and “sibling film” The Devil’s Backbone is not as widely renowned. However, this new Blu-ray re-release of The Devil’s Backbone from Umbrella Entertainment allows us to revisit this gothic tale in all its glory, with some informative special features thrown in for good measure.

 

The plot unfurls at an orphanage during the final few months of the Spanish Civil War as 12-year-old Carlos finds himself sent to the rural institution after his father is killed fighting for the Republicans. Analogies can immediately be drawn with the narrative of Pan’s Labyrinth that too uses the Spanish Civil War as an effective backdrop for a tale of fascism and fantasy to play out.

 

The antediluvian orphanage-cum-school is an ominous place, filled with memories and sadness. Most notably, an unexploded bomb in the courtyard serves as a daunting visual reminder that even in this remote place, the horrors of the war are manifest. The projectile too is apparently responsible for the disappearance of a young boy named Santi, who has been missing since the night the bomb fell. In many ways the orphanage can be read as a microcosm of the war, and Carlos comes to realise that internal and ideological conflicts threaten the stability of the small community.

 

There are two major narrative threads that transpire within the film; the first concerns the mystery behind Santi’s disappearance and after Carlos is plagued with visions of a grisly spectre that appears to be a child, he sets out to learn the truth. The second thread focuses on tensions between the adults, with the Republican loyalists Dr. Cesares and Carmen sit on a stockpile of Republican gold – much to the dismay of caretaker Jacinto. As the film progresses, these threads intertwine to create a revealing and historically pertinent melodrama.

 

As with Del Toro’s entire oeuvre, colour is tremendously important. The palette on show in The Devil’s Backbone is one of sheer artistry. Scenes in the courtyard and the daytime have an ochre-orangey hue that functions as a visual metaphor to show how the war entraps the inhabitants in the institution, just like the insects and foetuses that are shown entombed in amber in the opening vignette. The scenes at night in the orphanage have a juxtaposing bluish-green tone that plays on stylistic notions of Gothicism and twilight supernaturalism. Crucially, all these colours are there to fully marvel at as this Umbrella release presents the film in stunning, 1080p High Definition.    

 

The Devil’s Backbone truly is a masterful film, one rife with both symbolism and story. This is a poetic piece of cinema that manages to expose the horrors of war through the lens of fantasy.

 

THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE (2001) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: GUILLERMO DEL TORO / SCREENPLAY: GUILLERMO DEL TORO, DAVID MUÑOZ, ANTONIO TRASHORRAS / STARRING: MARISA PAREDES, EDWARD NORIEGA, FREDERICO LUPPI / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

With the live-action Resident Evil franchise having come to its conclusion, Capcom’s cinematic interest in the series now rests with its alternative CGI animation canon. This third film, taking place in the same universe as the games, includes characters from the previous two – Degeneration and Damnation – but works well enough as a standalone story and an introduction into this lesser oeuvre for those who have yet to sample it.

 

The story itself is simple enough; chemically-created zombies are now a bioweapon, an asset that can be bought and sold on the black market. Glenn Arias is an arms dealer who lost his wife and family on his wedding day, during a government-led assassination attempt, and who is now seeking revenge on those who wronged him. Our three heroes – the square-jawed Chris Redfield, the square-jawed and slightly troubled Leon S. Kennedy, and the elfin-jawed Rebecca Chambers – are assigned to find and deal with Arias before he can execute a full-scale attack on New York City. Or just after he does, as it happens, this being animation and location budgeting not being an issue. There are a few developments on the usual Resident Evil themes, such as the manner of the infection’s dispersal and its ability to create targeting mechanisms in its victims, but on the whole this is business as usual for the series.

As you might expect, the characterisation here is peremptory to say the least. Our three protagonists are given back-stories, narrative trajectories and motivations that suit the superficiality that comes of being animated; the men are muscular and taciturn, while Chambers is doe-eyed and intelligent and Arias’ hench-persons (Maria and Diego Gomez) exactly the caricatures you would predict. Nothing is included by accident, and the Gomez’ mini-arcs play out in an entirely foreseeable manner. Diego is a creation with a veneer of tragedy who elsewhere might have been considerably more interesting; here he’s a visual effect and little more.

 

The animation itself is a step-up from previous efforts, with the faces – and especially the eyes – almost photo-realistic, which in combination with the motion-captured movement creates moments that are almost indistinguishable from live-action. The facial expressiveness is less convincing, though, leading to a slight “uncanny valley” feel that is nevertheless not too distracting.

 

Where Vendetta really succeeds is in its action scenes, which are kinetic, well-choreographed and expensive-looking, and exceptionally violent. The climactic sequence in which the film’s cast finally come face to face is dynamic and intense, and not a disappointment. Adolescent boys, the obvious target audience, will be nothing short of eminently satisfied with the bloodshed and decapitation on offer. More discriminating audiences might, on the other hand, find little else in Vendetta to tickle their brains.

 

Special Features: commentary / three featurettes / motion capture set tour / mission briefing / 2016 Tokyo game show footage

 

RESIDENT EVIL: VENDETTA / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: TAKANORI TSUJIMOTO / SCREENPLAY: MAKOTO FUKAMI, JOE McCLEAN / STARRING: KEVIN DORMAN, REBECCA CHAMBERS, MATTHEW MERCER, JOHN DEMITA / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Italian locations standing in for the real thing – check. Italian actors doubling for other nationalities – check. Entirely ADR-ed soundtrack with poor lip-synch – check. Ennio Morricone-alike music score – check. Impassive American star flown in to play the lead – check.

 

Cinema history has always been rife with other countries producing cheap knock-offs of popular U.S. movie genres, but the Italian approach of using the English language – a case of beating the Americans at their own game – has meant the so-called Spaghetti Westerns have been more widely seen than most. Probabilità zero is a 1969 example of the slightly lesser known Spaghetti War film, enjoying an Antipodean DVD release thanks to Umbrella Entertainment and being sold on the basis of horror meister Dario Argento’s contribution to its script. It’s no Sergio Leone production, but it shares a lot in common with his pictures and it’s a mostly competent piece of entertainment.

 

Here the Italian countryside is – very effectively – representing WWII Norway, whereat a Spitfire containing valuable radar equipment has been shot down. Allied agent Duke (Frank Silva, who makes Clint Eastwood look like Jim Carrey) is given the task of infiltrating an underground facility and destroying the wreckage of the plane before the Germans can restore its contents for use.

 

It’s a simple set-up and mostly plays out eminently predictably. There’s an early resistance attack on a decoy convoy, followed by a cursory sequence in which Duke chooses his team for the main mission. Thereafter most of the main characters follow their predestined courses to their allotted ends with supreme certainty; it’s easy enough to spot not just who’s going to die but also when and in what manner – and that doesn’t spoil the film, it simply sets up a guessing game between filmmaker and audience that’s enjoyable enough to play.

 

In common with other films of its ilk, Argento and his co-writers even include a little moral ambiguity – the handsome local hero’s beautiful girlfriend who sleeps with the less unsympathetic German officer to advance the mission, for example, or the SS officer who takes over the German operation and assumes he knows better than the man he has replaced – although while the action sequences themselves are well-staged, they’re rather sporadic and the film’s climax is a little too briefly realised to fully satisfy. The narrative is, in fact, surprisingly uncomplicated by plot twists, as if providing setbacks for the mission might have proved too expensive for the producers.

 

This is a straight transfer from a rather poorly looked after film copy – the sound and picture vary from reel to reel – but that rather adds to the feeling of watching something lost in time. This is occasionally unintentionally hilarious, but mostly tremendous if unsophisticated fun.

PROBABILITY ZERO / CERT: M (AUSTRALIA) / DIRECTOR: MAURIZIO LUCIDI / SCREENPLAY: DARIO ARGENTO, MAURIZIO LUCIDI, GIUSEPPE MANGIONE, VITTORIO VIGHI / STARRING: HENRY SILVA, LUIGI CASELLATO, RICCARDO SALVINO / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (AUSTRALIA); UK RELEASE TBA

A hired guide leaves his family in an urban hellhole to navigate a path into a different kind of hell –  a restricted territory known only as the Zone. Thought to be the site of an ancient meteor strike or alien landing (no one quite knows any more), this decaying no-man’s land is somehow alive, possessed of a sentient intelligence that infests the minds of those who enter it and sends them towards the many traps it has laid to discourage them from discovering its secrets.

Only the Stalker knows how to make it through. His clients are a right pair of comedians known as The Writer and The Professor, who seek to traverse the Zone to enter a place at its heart known as the Room, which can apparently make dreams come true. But what if the Room is less interested in what is consciously asked for than what is unconsciously desired?  There may be trouble ahead, gentlemen…

 

Andrei Tarkovsky’s final Soviet feature is one of cinema’s true enigmas. If you’ve ever found inner peace exploring ancient abandoned buildings, old asylums or gutted chemical factories, Stalker is your 2001: A Space Odyssey. There’s an extraordinary alchemy in the way Tarkovsky’s camera lingers across the sunlit acidic streams, rusted machinery and asbestos-laced detritus of the various found town and country locations he uses to represent the mysterious Zone. The visual communion he brokers with this poisoned, organic landscape is at least as compelling as the one his characters seek from the mysterious Room at its centre. Tarkovsky’s use of sepia tinting for the framing scenes and vivid colour film stock for the body of the film imbues the Zone with a creeping hyper-reality. Even more than in Solaris (1972), he also avoids obvious ‘science fiction’ visuals to signify the fantastic, instead relying on a convergence of mutated countryside and industrial wasteland to convey the haunting ‘otherness’ of the Zone.

 

Talking of film stock, therein lies a tale. Having spent a whole year capturing his location footage, Tarkovsky returned to Moscow and lost the whole lot due to a film lab processing error. Whoops. When he went back to shoot it all again, he became unhappy with his cinematographer so fired him and started yet again. Which effectively makes the version of Stalker released the third version filmed. That’s one hell of a lot of time spent inhaling toxic industrial chemicals. And so it proved: many of the crew experienced horrendous allergic reactions and the subsequent early deaths of actor Anatoliy Solonitsyn (‘The Writer’), assistant editor Larisa Tarkovskaya and Andrei Tarkovsky himself were all from cancers attributed to the dangerous filming conditions. So don’t expect a director’s commentary.

 

The disc’s supporting interviews from 2002 with cinematographer Alexander Knyazhinsky, set designer Rashit Safiullin and composer Eduard Artemyev are all fascinating and embellish the sad legacy of the production. Knyazhinsky takes a look at one photograph of various crew assembled on location and announces “I am the only one still alive out of all these people!”. Suffice to say, such foreknowledge makes the experience of watching Criterion’s beautiful 2K restoration a deeply affecting experience. At 160 minutes, you may want to attempt it in sections because the whole thing can become completely hypnotic and lull you into a trance. And best not watch it after the pub, either. On a couple occasions, this writer nodded off into a ‘Zone’ dream and continued watching a version of the film in his head. It was pretty good, too. Who needs the Oculus Rift with that kind of VR?

 

However you experience it, experience it, because Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker is simply one of the most extraordinary films that has ever, or will ever, be made.

STALKER / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: ANDREI TARKOVSKY / SCREENPLAY: ARKADIY STRUGATSKIY, BORIS STRUGATSKIY, ANDREI TARKOVSKY / STARRING: ALISA FREYNDLIKH, ALEKSANDR KAYDANOVSKIY, ANATOLIY SALONITSYN, NIKOLAY GRINKO / RELEASE DATE: JULY 24TH

Conceived by writer and director Fritz Lang shortly after his mother’s death, 1921’s Destiny or Der müde Tod: ein deutsches volkslied in 6 versen (which translates as Weary Death: A German Folk Story in Six Verses) is his personal contemplation of death and mortality. Of course it also came just years after the end of WW1 and these two events would have clearly affected the film. It begins with the tale of a mysterious man (it’s no spoiler to reveal he is Death) arriving at a small town and making a deal with the community’s leaders to lease a plot of land next to the cemetery. Here he builds a huge wall around the land which seemingly has no gate or door.

 

A young couple engaged to be married are passing through. Death literally takes a seat at the same tavern table as them, and when she is distracted, he whisks away her beloved. The devastated young woman manages to find her way through the wall to Death in a great hall filled with candles that represent the passing of lives, to beg for her fiancé’s life convinced as she is that her love is stronger than death itself. Death, who must do what God instructs but is weary of the misery his task brings, makes a deal with her. His work will soon bring three more flickering candles to an end. If she can save even one of these from their destiny, Death will give her lover back to her. Three other verses of doomed romance follow, set in the Middle East, Italy and China.

 

This is the type of film you could use as an example of the ambition and sophistication that silent movies could attempt, though Lang’s direction is fairly flat here, relying more on the grandeur of the sets and costumes and giving the actors space to inhabit their roles. His concentration on the concept pays off, the tale he weaves with writing partner (and future wife) Thea von Harbou one that comments on grief, the immutability of death and would allow for deeper analysis on the collective post-conflict German psyche for those inclined.

 

The third lovers’ story attempts some comic relief to bring brevity to a heavy tale but more often skirts (as was very possible for the time) racist stereotype, but ultimately this cinematic fairy tale folds bold imagery and universal themes into a still-remarkable whole. Restored by the Murnau Foundation it’s in comparatively great shape for a near-100 year old film. It remains an important early achievement for Lang and an oddly hopeful meditation on the nature of love and loss.

 

DER MÜDE TOD (DESTINY) (1921) / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: FRITZ LANG / STARRING: LIL DAGOVER, WALTER JANSSEN, BERNHARD GOETZKE / RELEASE DATE: 17TH JULY

Dan Stevens stars in this sci-fi action film, Kill Switch.

Set in the near future, Energy Company Alterplex has pioneered a radical new source of energy. Former pilot Will Porter (Dan Stevens) is hired by them for a mysterious role, the benefits of which include flying his sister and nephew to Amsterdam where they are all set up in an expensive house. However, things don’t go to plan when the energy source swings wildly out of control.

Kill Switch (also known as Redivider) splits itself in to two sections that intertwine. Separated by the defining event, the activation of Alterplex’s power source, we have one half that charts the events leading up to it, which is told in the usual third person narrative style, and the second half which shows what happens to Will afterwards as he tries to shut the machine down. This section is shot entirely in first person, following on from films such as Hardcore Henry and the Elijah Wood starring gory horror Maniac. Here is the film’s biggest problem. The first person section, while trying to immerse us into Will’s world, only really works during action sequences. These are exciting and are bolstered by some good sound design. Where it falls down is when it attempts drama or plot. This isn’t helped by the fact that Dan Steven’s voice is obviously detached from the actor portraying him onscreen. You can almost hear him stood on his own in the sound booth. The first person section has a very video-gamey feel, complete with a HUD display and red filter when Will gets injured. Unsurprising really, as the short film Kill Switch was spun from (called What’s in the Box – it’s very good, you should check it out on YouTube) was itself influenced by seminal first person shooter Half Life 2.

That’s not to say that Kill Switch is an entire failure. As we’ve already said, the action sequences are fun and the visual effects are good, as they should be, director Tim Smit has several visual effects credits to his name; you never see the joins and Smit has stretched his meager budget well. The first person sections are shot fairly well with everything in focus and coherent; there’s barely a hint of shaky cam that can blight other films like this. The performances are solid but there’s just no meat on the bones of the film. Its emotional drama, provided by Will’s family who are unhappy in their new home and who Will attempts to save from a crumbling world, falls flat and outside of the action, there’s not much to the film.

Kill Switch is entertaining enough in fits and starts but its first person perspective is a problem, and though some of the action is fun, the film lacks any depth or heart.

KILL SWITCH / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: TIM SMIT / SCREENPLAY: CHARLIE KINDINGER, OMID NOOSHIN / STARRING: DAN STEVENS, CHARITY WAKEFIELD, BÉRÉNICE MARLOHE / RELEASE DATE: 24TH JULY