WITCH HUNT

witch hunt

In a world in which witches are real, America treats them as America treats everyone who’s a little different: persecution. In this version of modern-day America, witchcraft is real, and illegal. Average teen Claire (The Craft: Legacy’s Gideon Adlon) lives with her mother (Elizabeth Mitchell), hiding a terrible secret behind the household walls. Mom Martha runs an Underground Railroad, helping young witches to freedom in Mexico.

The resentful Claire – who just wants to be Popular at school – is forced to confront her own intolerances when Mom brings two young orphans into the fold. As Claire befriends young Fiona (Abigail Cowen), so her coming-of-age story begins, complete with the manifestation of her own witchy powers. Part Jojo Rabbit, part The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s a YA dystopia with an interesting new hook – Harry Potter, if going to Hogwarts actually meant Guantanamo Bay.

And, like The Handmaid’s Tale, this film is not exactly subtle about its influences. Border walls made of salt; repeated references to kids in cages; Witch Hunt wears its politics on its sleeve. As well it should – these are charged times (and were even more so, when the film was written and made) and of course America would still be burning women to death if witchcraft were real. But – again, like The Handmaid’s Tale – this is a distinctly white perspective, with a mainly white cast.

Regardless, writer and director Elle Callahan does a solid job of building her world, integrating old-timey witch-hunting methods in along with the new. As the state-sanctioned witch hunter, Christian Camargo is of particularly good value, reminiscent of Michael Shannon’s Shape of Water villain.

Witch Hunt sets up an interesting, eerily plausible world, but struggles to take it anywhere new. Rather than defying gravity, it gets dragged down, caught up in itself; bogged down in-between the real and the fantasy.

 

 

FEAR STREET PART 1: 1994

The Great Algorithm has decreed that there’s an audience demand for but two things: cinematic universes and Amblin-esque nostalgia. With that in mind, the adaptation of RL Stine’s hit YA series Fear Street, and the beginning of a gory cinematic universe, spanning the years 1666, 1978 and 1994.

First up is 1994; director Leigh Janaik’s slasher movie and extended Scream riff. The director’s history on the Scream TV series stands her in good stead here – Part One feels like a lost slasher film from the late nineties or early noughties. It’s good to see Janiak return to feature length cinema for the first time since 2014’s Honeymoon; with not just one film but an entire trilogy of them, no less. New Leigh Janiak movies: they’re like buses, and they all go to Fear Street, apparently.

The story starts off simple, but doesn’t stay that way. A mask-wearing killer is stalking the town of Shadyside (on-the-nose, but these are kids’ books, remember), offing its teenagers. Deena (Kiana Madeira) is on the killer’s hit list, but is quick to learn that there’s more at play than just some incel hacking up his classmates. Janiak juggles as many plot threads and killers as a season of American Horror Story (most notably its most recent offering, 1984), all roads leading back to the legend of an ancient, long-dead witch.

Where Stine’s Fear Street books were geared towards kids and teens, Janiak cannily ups the ante to match readers’ advancing age. The books are over thirty years old now – and many of those who read them in their youth, even older than that. This is YA fiction with an R-rating; gore, heavy petting and surprisingly entertaining swearing. While the dissonance is jarring, it’s a lot of fun. Some may dismiss it as a cynical exercise in nostalgia-bating – and they wouldn’t be all the way wrong – but Part One is more than the sum of its parts.

For all of the references to dial-up, landlines and old TV sitcoms, Part One stands on its own as a tremendously thrilling little slasher movie. The kill sequences are genuinely shocking, the violence brutal. At the same time, old slasher archetypes are updated with a diverse young cast and heartfelt romance. It’s easy to be cynical about the proliferation of cinematic universes and Stranger Things copycats. But when The Algorithm works? It works.

THE TOMORROW WAR

tomorrow war

Many of us have been revisiting favoured old genre classics in recent months in the name of comfort viewing and, as the credits roll on the likes of Starship Troopers, Live Die Repeat, Total Recall, and even Independence Day, we have probably sat back with a sigh and muttered “Why don’t they make films like that any more?” to no-one in particular. Well, stop the presses, hold my beer and back the truck up because it turns out that they do make films just like that (perhaps a bit too much like that, in fact) as Amazon Prime’s The Tomorrow War is a time travel/alien invasion film that will hurl you right back into your cinematic past even as its story yanks you into a battered, war-torn future.

Chris Pratt – probably the closest we’re allowed to a big, macho, red-blooded action hero these days – plays everyman hero Dan Forrester, an ex-soldier dissatisfied with his post-service life as a biology teacher.  He is inadvertently given a shot at redemption – he’s a disappointment to his grizzled Vietnam War vet father James (JK Simmons) – when a troop of soldiers appear through a portal and announce that thirty years in the future Mankind is on the brink of extinction, the Earth having been ravaged by blood-hungry creatures called Whitespikes. Man’s only hope in the future is to recruit soldiers from the past to fight against the invaders and a worldwide draft begins that results in fewer than 20% of those enlisted returning from their perilous missions into the future. Twelve months later and there are increasing calls for the draft to be abolished, but not before Dan is himself enlisted and, with a bunch of other terrified rookies, finds himself pitched into a nightmare future where his old military skills are all that stand between him and a quick, brutal death.

The Tomorrow War, directed by Chris (The Lego Batman Movie) McKay, is a big, loud blast of a movie, two hours of extraordinary, explosive action and effects sequences that stagger in an era where we’re no longer supposed to be staggered by effects sequences, threaded into a time travel story that doesn’t concern itself with the logic of time paradoxes and alternate timelines and just gets on with blowing things up. The film explodes into action when Dan and his troop finally arrive in a devastated, blazing Miami on a mission to rescue a group of scientists working on a way to finally defeat the Whitestrikes – they’re hideous, hooting, scuttling, arachnid-type thing – and what follows in a breathless, edge-of-the-seat action sequence driven to extreme heights of tension by Lorne Balfe’s urgent, throbbing score.  Dan and his team prowl through the devastated city and all Hell breaks loose around them. The whole film is studded with similar FX-heavy scenes as the human survivors are pushed closer and closer to absolute extinction and, for his own part, Dan discovers that his past has caught up with him in the future and the fight for survival has suddenly become a lot more personal.

The Tomorrow War is, first and foremost, an unpretentious raucous action movie and its attempts at human interest can’t help but seem a bit trite and obvious. As a leading man, Dan is all about the importance of family and the realisation that sometimes all we need is right under our noses no matter how frustrated we may be or dissatisfied by our lot. The dialogue is often a bit creaky and the morality and humanity achingly simplistic but on this occasion, it really doesn’t matter because hey, look, horrible aliens, big explosions and lots of guns and impossible escapes! The Tomorrow War, a remarkably confident achievement from a director with no prior experience of film-making on this scale, was destined for the big screen but sadly it became yet another victim of recent circumstance and it finds itself on the small screen thanks to Amazon Prime. We’re glad to get to see it, of course, but this is a film that really needs the biggest screen and the loudest sound system and we can’t help feeling that this is a film that could have become this generation’s Independence Day. Don’t leave it a moment longer; catch up with The Tomorrow War today.

The Tomorrow War is streaming now on Amazon Prime

THE PLACE OF NO WORDS

“Where do we go when we die?” – an innocent yet complicated question. How does one explain that to a three year old? That and more is explored in the heartfelt, tragic and fantastical story of Mark Webber’s The Place Of No Words.

Akin to the likes of A Monster Calls or Where The Wild Things Are, the story centers around coming to terms with impending loss and the grief surrounding that, but there are several things that set Webber’s film apart from its peers.

Firstly, it stars Webber himself alongside his real life wife Teresa Palmer and their superstar scene stealing son Bodhi, and the three use their real names for their onscreen characters. This creates a raw, grounding and realistic chemistry between them which works extremely well. Moreover, the narrative is primarily told through the perspective of Bodhi and how he and his mind are coming to terms with his father’s illness.

As the two of them set off on one final adventure together, we see a fantastical world filled with Vikings, Fairies and creatures called Grumbles as Bodhi holds onto that special bond as we, as the audience, occasionally flick back to reality as Teresa deals with Mark’s deteriorating condition.

A fractured narrative technique rarely works but with the centre point of the child’s mind being the driving force, the film benefits from this structure. However the only downside is at times towards the final act, the pacing hits a bit of a stumbling block.

With a powerful, family driven story with unrivalled chemistry and some gorgeous cinematography, The Place Of No Words is a special, heartfelt and gut-punching emotional rollercoaster of a family’s bond in the face of tragedy seen through the incomparable imagination of a child embracing the realities of life.

The Place Of No Words is out on DVD and VOD now.

BAD HAIR

bad hair

Dear White People’s Justin Simien presents a satirical horror movie that is as prescient today as in its 1989 setting. Anna Bludso is a wannabe VJ for the black cable music channel The Culture, who unknowingly makes a deal with the devil to succeed in her chosen career. The secret to that success is good hair, and there’s only one salon in Los Angeles that can provide it, especially to a girl whose hair has been troublesome her whole life.

Elle Lorraine is great as Anna, who carries her vulnerabilities with her as she tries to climb the corporate ladder, and she engenders genuine sympathy for Anna’s put-upon nature that has you rooting for her to get a win. Standing in her way is new channel head Zora, played to perfection by Vanessa Williams, who all but reprises the role that relaunched her career in Ugly Betty, and Williams’ performance is just the right side of camp to ensure that the film works as a moral horror story and a fun comedy.

With appearances from Usher, Kelly Rowland, and James van der Beek, Bad Hair isn’t short on star power, and it makes the most of its cast in a swipe at the corporatisation of black culture, and the pressure for black women to fit into narrow societal norms of beauty. Quite simply, this is a fun film with a message, and some suitably-ropey special effects that should have been made in 1989 but thankfully has finally been made today.

Bad Hair is released on digital platforms on July 5th and DVD/Blu-ray  July 12th.

ENDANGERED SPECIES

Endangered Species

Desperate to please his wife, Jack Halsey takes his dysfunctional family on a Kenyan safari, the holiday of a lifetime, but things soon go awry in M.J. Bassett’s Africa-set redemption story.

The unpleasant Americans barely have time to grab a themed cocktail before oil executive Jack’s secret is out; wife Lauren discovers he’s been placed on administrative leave following a major incident. Wanting to recover his family’s faith, Jack speeds through the park checkpoint and sets off down a track past a ‘No Entry’ sign that, for dramatic effect, may well have written in blood. One encounter with a maternally protective rhinoceros later the van is on its side, Jack’s leg is gored, diabetic Lauren’s insulin supplies are gone, and the family are in a battle for survival.

Endangered Species is a confused film. All the elements for a man vs nature thriller are here: the sultry, spectacular vistas, a family in need of redemption, dangerous fauna and an environmental message that is worthy and important.

But nothing really fits together. Even the political message, which should have been an easy win, feels forced and at times undermined by the film’s own script; a disagreement over taking eco-friendly glass bottles instead of unbreakable plastic results in the family being without water when the latter would potentially have saved their lives.

The final act takes a somewhat predictable twist, asking the audience to ponder on who are really the bad guys of the piece, but it all feels a little like the filmmakers wanted to include every idea they had in development when less would certainly have been more.

And the CGI animals are bad, really bad.

FAST & FURIOUS 9

We have some earth-shattering news to report from our viewing of Fast and Furious 9 (also known as F9: The Fast Saga). Are you ready? Here it goes. Vin Diesel does not, in our recollection, say the word ‘family’ once during the entire duration. Not once! Hand on heart, we don’t recall it happening. But don’t fret because there are indeed fast cars and furious action to make up for this particular heartbreak.

At nine films (10 if you include spin-off Hobbs & Shaw, which we’re sure a certain Vinnie Diesel would rather not), a franchise surely has to just go for it. Hey, if you’ve made it this far, why the heck not? Be it the heart-devouring and worm hell souls of Jason Goes To Hell or the all-out kaiju madness of Destroy All Monsters, a ninth film has to go there! And for many sequels there, just so happens to be space. We all have made that joke about a series that keeps getting wilder haven’t we? “What are they going to do next, go to space?”. Well, about that…

Fast and Furious 9 sees Dom (Diesel) and his wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) called away from their retired tranquil family life by their crew, as they all must seek out the reasons for a hijacking of Mr. Nobody’s (Kurt Russell) agency aircraft by rogue agents, after Nobody had captured cyberterrorist Cypher (Charlize Theron). What they find is a long-gone face from Dom’s past in Jakob (John Cena), who is at the head of a world-threatening plot. 

Starting back in about 2009, this series has had an increasingly casual relationship with gravity, and even by the series’ own barmy standards, this new one particularly enjoys to flip off old Isaac Newton. Director Justin Lin’s return to the Fast and Furious franchise conjures some pretty darn big crash, bang and wallop for your money, and a few excitingly assembled set pieces, even if the series is showing its age in some respects.

The story races back and forth, capturing a snapshot of Dom’s youth, to help introduce Jakob onscreen, all while in the present it not only advances a villainous tech-stealing world domination plot, but sees old faces return and rewrites some previously established lore to keep things rollin’. In this series onscreen death has been merely a flesh wound, and so it is again, and cars are also not just for driving (duh) but for flinging around like a swing ball across the cliffs of a country border. It’s bold as brass (a rocket car in space!!!) and overstuffed madness, that is more ridiculous than ever and yet it’s rather irresistible at points. In embracing the madness for some time now, this series has evolved and while this latest one’s problems cannot be ignored, they can be forgiven to a degree thanks to some undeniably entertaining scenes of cataclysmic chassis crunching carnage.

Lin knows what the audience is expecting and delivers the family-driven story, complete with constant fast-paced action and ante-upping set pieces and a plot filled with callbacks and some rewards for those who have been along for this ride since the beginning. That said, where this one goes more off-track than some previous instalments is in that core story. Despite the main Dom’s crew/Jakob’s crew showdown promised by all the trailers, the film cannot quite keep its mind on one main purpose and it doesn’t help that the screenplay has surprisingly stripped star John Cena of much of his well-proven cinematic charisma. Dwayne Johnson’s absence is sorely felt here already but to waste the WWE legend’s already proven onscreen energy with a rather dry character feels like a bizarre move, and as such the script leaves it to Theron to handle more of the cool villainy duties (and she also is rather underused here), leaving the villains and story feeling a bit limp this time and very predictable at points.

There is plenty to laugh at and with, and a tonne thrown at the screen, not to mention some obvious builds for avenues where #10 (a two-parter apparently) will be heading but despite some things not really igniting, there are a number of big moments perfectly equipped for the cinema screen experience. Not as fun as 5, 6, and 8 then, nor as heartfelt as 7, F9 still, by the end of its near 2 1/2 hour duration, sees the fast family gather again to ultimately deliver a fun, preposterous, action spectacle. Where next? The centre of the Earth?

BEYOND FURY

beyond fury

Darren Ward’s Beyond Fury has been many years in the making. It’s the final act in a trilogy started in 1997 with Sudden Fury, and the low budget credentials show in the acting of some of the characters, but this brash, gory, revenge flick manages to rise above its humble origins.

When his heavily pregnant girlfriend (a brief appearance of British scream queen Dani Thompson) is killed and raped (in that order!) by a pair of thugs (Gary Baxter and Glenn Salvage) and he’s left for dead, former mercenary Michael Walker (Nick Roberts) is out for vengeance. He discovers the assailants work for Russian crime boss Ivan Lenzivitch (Giovanni Lombardo Radice, best known under the name John Morghen in numerous Italian classics) and sets about getting his own brand of justice for his girlfriend and unborn child.

Ward has crafted a love letter to the Italian exploitation films of the seventies and eighties, and although the pace may be a tad languid, you can’t fault the gore quota. Impressively for a low budget film, the physical effects are impressive and on full display. We defy anyone not to wince when a foot is given a pummelling (several times) or when a chainsaw motors through someone’s face. He also manages to get a few familiar faces involved. As well as the aforementioned Dani Thompson (My Bloody Banjo) and Giovanni Lombardo Radice (Cannibal Ferox), there are brief appearances from the late Dan Van Husen (Salon Kitty) and Jeff Stewart (we still miss Reg Hollis!). These cameos unfortunately show how questionable some of the acting is. Luckily, the main keep things going and if you’re savvy with independent films, you’ll be able to overlook such shortcomings, especially when the action is so well-orchestrated.

Beyond Fury is available on Blu-ray from darksidereleasing.com in the US and Vimeo on Demand.

VIOLET EVERGARDEN: THE MOVIE

Since the end of the emotional series in 2018, fans have been yearning for the definitive conclusion of Violet’s story – and, after a long wait, the true feature-length tearjerking climax is here with Violet Evergarden: The Movie.

Unlike the previous spin-off film in 2020, this story is a direct sequel to the 13-episode show. It follows the titular Violet in her quest to truly understand the complexity of human emotions through her work as a Ghost Writer (or as they are called in this world, a Doll).

Set several years later, the narrative takes place as telephones are becoming more prevalent, resulting in sending letters potentially being rendered obsolete (a parallel with today’s society). Violet is now the most famous doll in Leiden and still grieves over the loss of her beloved Major Gilbert. However, after some revelations, it seems that her true love may not be completely lost

Just like with all of their work, the team at Kyoto Animation have impeccably crafted another captivating and heartfelt piece of art that put them firmly at the top of their craft. Consistently gorgeous animation and visuals; which has become a staple of KyoAni’s extensive catalogue; coupled with writing that allows the emotionally beats to really hit home hard, even with a runtime of 140 minutes – Violet Evergarden: The Movie really is a marvel to behold.

Yui Ishikawa once again plays the role of Violet pitch-perfectly and delivers another legendary performance that will be remembered forever and cements her at the top of working voice talent in the industry today. One scene that stands out to us particularly is when Violet is working with a young dying boy who is trying to craft letters for his parents and younger brother that he is about to leave behind – there wasn’t a dry eye in the house!

Violet Evergarden: The Movie is a sublime and stunning film with frame-after-frame of art gallery worthy animation and is the perfect send-off for Violet and her story – a sure-fire future classic character and story in the anime community.

Check out our interview with star Yui Ishikawa from last year before the release of the Violet Evergarden spin-off film and the review of that film here

UNEARTH

Two families on neighbouring farms in rural America begin feuding when one of them sells their land to a fracking corporation. Kathryn Dolan (genre legend Adrienne Barbeau) and George Lomack (the least-good Buffy ex, Marc Blucas) are at loggerheads after the skint dad sells up. What is unleashed – sorry, unearthed – is a simmering hotbed of hate and resentment. The cause? Toxic family dynamics, or whatever ancient evil has been coughed up from all the fracking? Described as an anti-fracking horror film, Unearth is pretty clear as to the what and the why, but its horrors are only exacerbated by volatile personalities and the death of the farming industry.

A kitchen sink soap opera by way of HP Lovecraft, this ecological horror film seethes with menace and dread. The use of fracking as a plot device has grown in recent years, but Unearth is the first to actually be about fracking, rather than the silly CGI monsters it dredges up. It’s a film about consequences; specifically those which our children face in the onslaught of man-made extinction.

Unearth is more than just a lecture though, and the film is heaving with mood and atmosphere. Its story may be a slow-burn, but directors John C. Lyons and Dorita Swies keep that sense of dread permanently percolating, bubbling away beneath the surface. Cinematographer Eun-ah Lee does good work in ensuring that audiences can still see through all of the murk (it’s not just the story that’s dark), but it’s Jane Saunders’s soundtrack which audiences will remember most. Unsettling and oppressive, it makes Unearth an unforgettable experience, even as the story trudges slowly along. This is a deep, dark excavation of festering resentment and opportunism gone wrong. It can be too grounded for its own good, but, by the time its earth-rending finale comes about, the message is clear and true.