PARADISE Z

paradise z

If you managed to stick with The Walking Dead during its meandering, community-building episodes, you will have a better chance of getting a lot out of Paradise Z than those looking for an ass-kicking zombie onslaught.

Two young woman are enjoying the luxurious surroundings of a tropical resort. Except they are the only people there and daily they have a wander around carrying a gun and a baseball bat. We discover through a radio broadcast that there are ‘infected’ people who are very contagious and bitey. Yep, there are zombies out there. Sylvia (Milena Gorum) and Rose (Alice Tantayanon) try their best to live a normal life, reading all the books, swimming in the pool, making their own art, and having the occasional fumble at night. That is until the outside danger invades their mundane lives.

For the first third of Paradise Z, you may be forgiven for thinking you’ve accidentally put on an episode of The Red Shoes Diary, the softcore offering from the ‘90s that was regularly on Channel 5 (yeah, don’t pretend you don’t remember it!). Once we get out and about with the girls as they forage for supplies like petrol to keep their cushy existence going, things pick up. With minimal dialogue, there’s a genuine tension built, with the rhythmic score doing all the lifting.

When the zombies do turn up, they are of the fast-moving type. They spring into action by sound, and appear to have kept some incredible motor skills, including using banisters to steady their way up staircases. It’s clear the budget didn’t stretch to elaborate gore effects, but it doesn’t matter as they become a real threat to the pair.

Paradise Z is the third re-titling of director and cinematographer Wych Kaosayananda’s film, and it’s not one that does it any favours. Viewers expecting a sun, sea, and zombie film will be disappointed, even when the undead turn up. There’s much more to enjoy here though as Kaosayananda’s lush photography (if you’ve seen his previous films such as One Night in Bangkok, you’ll get the idea) and measured pace allows a more thoughtful film to develop.

YETI

PLATFORM: DVD | RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 11TH

It’s really important for monster movies to get the title right. Think of some of your favourites and how just the title sums up the chills and thrills guaranteed by a name that succinctly describes the wild ride we’re going on for the next couple of hours. The Thing from Another World (and The Thing itself), Tremors, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Jaws… the list is endless. The right title for the right film. Originally known as Abominable (presumably changed to avoid confusion with last year’s bright-and-breezy animated film), Yeti is a bland and vague name but then it’s unlikely anyone would have taken a punt on a film that should, by rights, be called “Poor Sod in a Baggy and Hopelessly-Unconvincing Monster Suit with a Poundland Halloween Gorilla Mask Jammed Over His Face.”

Yeti is as threadbare as its titular monster’s costume and even at under seventy minutes it quickly wears out its welcome. Deep in the Himalayas (and never has a location looked less Himalayan), a research team seeking a rare plant with extraordinary medicinal properties discovers the equipment abandoned by a previous ill-fated expedition. There’s a Yeti lumbering around protecting its domain and it begins to pick off the second group in a handful of gore sequences that might amuse the easily pleased but otherwise there’s nothing of real creative worth going on here. The acting is acceptable, the direction is competent but the crashing and intrusive musical score really belongs to a much better movie. The name-change to Yeti is actually quite ironic as this movie really is abominable.

SONGBIRD

songbird

CERT: 15 | PLATFORM: AMAZON PRIME VIDEO | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The circumstances that brought Songbird to the screen are actually far more interesting than the film itself. Conceived by writers Adam Mason (who also directs) and Simon Boyes in March, greenlit in May, filmed in July and August and released in December, Songbird is a triumph of the creative spirit in times of direst adversity but it’s hard to shake off the feeling that it’s a bit on the nose, a bit too exploitative, a bit ‘too soon’.

In 2024, Covid-19 has mutated into the far more lethal Covid-23 and Los Angeles is in a state of virtual siege. The city is on permanent lockdown, the infected are forcibly taken from their homes and thrown into quarantine camps known as ‘Q Zones’ where they are left to die. Nico Price (Riverdale’s KJ Apa) is a motorcycle courier immune to the virus and delivering packages to wealthy locked-down residents. He is in a frustratingly-virtual relationship with Sara Garcia (Sofia Carson), who is living in lockdown with her grandmother and his boss Lester is using his couriers to deliver illegal immunity wristbands. When Sara’s grandmother falls ill, Nico races against time to obtain an immunity wristband for Sara before she is shipped off to a Q Zone but to do so he has to navigate the mean streets of a dying city and face the psychopathic sanitation department chief Emmett Harland (Peter Stormare), and William Griffin (Bradley Whitford) and his wife Piper (Demi Moore), who are supplying the illegal wristbands.

Songbird is a missed opportunity its own right as it isn’t much good but its bigger problem is that it can’t help leaving a sour taste because it’s based on a situation that has caused genuine grief and despair to hundreds of thousands of people and postulates a situation where things get a whole lot worse. The story itself has little to offer; it takes no surprising turns, it jumps through all the hoops we expect from the moment it lays out its world and introduces its players.  It’s well-mounted, though – there are some evocative, if uncomfortable, scenes of deserted, barricaded streets – and the acting is as good as the perfunctory script requires. There may be a time when a more elegiac and reflective film about the days we are living in might be appropriate but Songbird clearly has no interest in being that sort of film. Its very existence is admirable enough but that’s really the only thing in its favour.

THE MIDNIGHT SKY

midnight sky

George Clooney directs and stars in this quiet, unsensational and extremely thoughtful Netflix adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton’s 2016 novel Good Morning, Midnight. The Cloonster, sporting a luxurious grey beard, plays scientist Augustine Lofthouse, living with terminal cancer and eking out his last days at a remote research facility in the Arctic in 2049, a few weeks after an unspecified cataclysm has wiped out life on Earth and left the planet an irradiated, uninhabitable wasteland. He sets about trying to contact any extant space missions to advise them of the fate that’s befallen the Earth and eventually makes contact with the Aether, a ship returning from a mission to explore one of Jupiter’s habitable moons. But his radio equipment is too weak for his signal to properly reach the ship – its crew includes Iris Sullivan (Felicity Jones), Commander Adewole (David Oyelowo), and Mitchell (Kyle Chandler) – so he sets off across the hostile, wild Arctic landscape to reach another base where he hopes he will find a more powerful antenna. Accompanying him on the trip is a young girl he finds on the base, apparently left behind during its emergency evacuation.

There’s a grim irony in the arrival of a slew of apocalyptic films at the end of a long, bleak year in which the real world has been far more challenging and worrying than that any work of fiction. The Midnight Sky might be too uncomfortable for many in the current and enduring climate but this is a film that is unconcerned with hollow spectacle and cheap, lurid thrills; The Midnight Sky is a low-key, contemplative story that offers up a desperate, hopeless scenario and manages to imbue it with a real sense of the enduring spirit of humanity even in the face of utter extinction. The grizzled Clooney cuts an exhausted figure, limping around the deserted Arctic base with only the hope of reaching out into space keeping him alive. But the discovery of the girl, unwilling or unable to speak, seems to give him the strength he needs to push on despite his weakening strength and failing health.

The Midnight Sky is an unfussy, often ponderous film punctuated by a couple of thrilling set pieces – Clooney and the girl almost come to grief out on the ice and a dangerous space walk to repair meteor damage to the Aether is heart-stopping stuff – but it’s an absorbing, contemplative, beautifully-directed piece that asks its audience to stick with it as it builds towards a climax that’s both hugely emotional and surprisingly uplifting.

THE BLACKOUT: INVASION EARTH

After a worldwide catastrophic event wipes out all of humanity bar a small section of eastern Europe known as “The Circle of Life”, a team of Russian soldiers must venture into the quarantine zone to discover what happened in Russia’s latest foray in the action sci-fi genre, The Blackout.

In recent years we have seen plenty of our eastern European compatriots up their game when it comes to film; Russia themselves have treated us to the likes of Why Don’t You Just Die!, Attraction and the exceptional Sputnik to name a few. In terms of The Blackout, it shows once again that they have great potential to create a special film, although that flawless recipe hasn’t quite been discovered just yet.

The narrative follows the story of two different soldiers Oleg (Chadov) and Yuriy (Fyodorov) whose paths cross at various points in the runtime as what is left of the world’s military sends teams deep into uncharted territory to find out how and why the population was suddenly wiped out. For the first half of the film it feels very cut and paste with other military action films, albeit with some commendable special effects considering its budget compared to a Hollywood blockbuster, and at times it’s a little top heavy. It’s only in the second half when there is a revelation that the film began to pique our interest as they tried something fairly unique in the sci-fi sub genre – it’s just a shame that the journey to this interesting narrative took over an hour to get there.

A solid sci-fi action film from Russia that proves that they have good ideas but haven’t quite perfected the formula just yet with a clunky first two acts.

Release Date: 28th December 2020 (VOD), Jan 20th (DVD)

THE SILENCING

PLATFORM: APPLE, SKY STORE, AMAZON, GOOGLE PLAY | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Retired game hunter and full-time alcoholic Ray Swanson (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) faces an entirely different kind of hunt when a mystery man takes to kidnapping and murdering young women on his land. While Swanson attempts to fend off the killer, local Sheriff Gustafson (Annabelle Wallis) is hard at work trying to uncover his identity. Whether they mean to or not, together they might finally bring to justice the man who killed Swanson’s own daughter, years ago.

This chilly backwoods thriller finds the Game of Thrones star in appropriately grizzled form. The story by director Robin Pront and writer Micah Ranum doesn’t require him to do much but look sad and act world-weary and defeated. This he does well enough – his time as the one-handed Jaime Lannister certainly gave him plenty of practice playing a sad-sack has-been. This is the sort of role you’d usually see our modern Nic Cage playing, and the film certainly could have benefitted from something a bit livelier than Waldau is able to muster. Thankfully, Wallis is less subdued as the town Sheriff, and together their double act gets the job done.

What would Twin Peaks be like played straight? It would probably resemble The Silencing; a typical small-town crime story not dissimilar to The Backwoods or Insomnia. There’s little here to surprise hardened genre fans, save for a cool-looking killer and excellent cinematography. It looks pretty and it’s well cast, but it’s desperately dull and predictable – down to the boring reveal at the end. It does moody and atmospheric well, but that will only take you so far. Ultimately, it’s too muted for its own good.

BREACH

breach

The year is 2242 and Earth has become unliveable. Those who can afford to leave are being shuttled off the dying planet and to their new home, inventively dubbed “New Earth”. Thomas Jane and Bruce Willis are the two big names attached to Breach (formerly known as Anti-Life), a low-budget, direct-to-VOD space thriller from genre filmmaker John Suits; though Jane only receives about ten minutes of screen time, Willis is a steady presence throughout, bringing grizzled charisma to this otherwise unremarkable genre fare.

Aboard the last ship leaving Earth is a pregnant Hayley (Kassandra Clementi) and her stowaway boyfriend Noah (Riverdale’s Cody Kearsley), the latter of whom poses as a member of the ship’s small custodial staff, the only people awake while the rest of the 300,000 passengers slumber in cryostasis. As one might have garnered from the title, it isn’t long before the crew realises something alien has breached their ship and is turning people into black goo-oozing zombies.

Breach cannot quite decide on its tone. Despite the B-movie fun and dead-pan quips, writers Corey Large and Edward Drake seem to be trying for serious drama with Kearsley’s protagonist – unfortunately, the characterisation is as devoid of humour and energy as it is of depth, causing him to disappear amidst the supporting cast. The latter is rounded out by some recognisable faces doing their best to sell the material, from Timothy V. Murphy eagerly chewing the scenery as Commander Stanley, to Rachel Nichols offering a grounding presence as ship medic Chambers.

As far as sci-fi actions go, Breach is reasonably produced, and much of the cast are clearly having a grand old time. Unfortunately, it’s also completely forgettable and never quite succeeds in hitting its stride, confused as it is about its own identity.

 

SURVIVAL SKILLS

SURVIVAL SKILLS

Shot in 4:3 and with added tracking loss, Survival Skills starts out as a training film from the late-1980s for rookie policemen, following an everyman named Jim in his first year on the job with Middletown Police. Vayu O’Donnell’s Jim is a blank slate who very quickly realises that life on the force is not always going to go by the book, and the film follows our cipher as he finds that the training he’s been given hasn’t quite prepared him for the job at hand.

Writer and director Quinn Armstrong imbues his debut feature with an unreal, hallucinogenic quality as the constructs of Jim’s exemplary life fail to withstand the reality of his surroundings, and O’Donnell plays Jim’s naïvety to perfection. The training video is narrated by Stacy Keach with all the qualities of a man who has done these things for real, and able back-up comes in the shape of Jim’s partner Allison and abused wife Leah, played by Erica Kreutz and Emily Chisholm, respectively.

Survival Skills is at times disturbing, and Armstrong just about keeps a handle on what could have been a difficult tonal switch, and the end product is something quite special. 2020 may have been the wrong year to humanise a literally inhuman police officer but Survival Skills will stay with you long after the credits roll.

THE SWERVE

CERT: 18 / PLATFORM: PRIME VIDEO (VOD) / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Holly (Azura Skye) is a mother, wife, daughter, sister, and teacher and she appears to be falling apart mentally. Her children ignore her, her husband is distant, her sister is an ex-junkie who relishes in humiliating her at a family dinner, and one of her students is infatuated with her. This is a woman with everything on her plate and is struggling to digest anything. To top it all, she has a mouse in her house that has bitten her. As her world collapses around her, can she trust what she thinks is real?

This is writer/director Dean Kapsalis’ first feature and it’s an assured, measured, and thoughtful work. Even the moments that could have been overblown for shock value are presented in a rationed fashion, bringing us ever deeper into Holly’s crumbling psyche. The character isn’t an easy one to get behind, but Azura Skye is fantastic in the role, and the descent of her mental health is handled so well that it’s hard not to feel sympathetic to her cause, even if you don’t agree with what she’s doing. Much of the pacing and claustrophobic framing brings to mind the work of Ingmar Bergman and we’re often left questioning the reality we’re being shown as Holly’s view becomes more tainted by her psychiatric state. Naturally, it all leads to a devastating climax that will leave you reeling.

Although The Swerve isn’t a traditional horror film, it is nevertheless deeply disturbing and will resonate with viewers, regardless of gender.

SKYLINES

RELEASE: 18TH DECEMBER

Released back in 2010, independent, small-budget sci-fi disaster movie Skylines was broadly panned by critics. No one really expected it would receive a sequel and yet, seven years later, Beyond Skyline would introduce Frank Grillo as an LAPD Detective searching for his son amidst an alien invasion. Along the way, he rescues and becomes guardian to a mysterious child (later named Rose) who, though human, is supercharged with alien DNA that allows her to interact with their technology. The film’s epilogue sees a now-adult Rose readying herself to take on the alien invaders.

The third instalment of the franchise, Skylines (stylised as Skylin3s) now sees The 100‘s Lindsey Morgan reprise the role of Rose Corley, with events picking up just moments after Beyond Skyline‘s end. Rose leads humans into battle against the alien fleet; just as she is about to deliver the fatal blow against the mothership, though, she freezes. Her moment of hesitation costs thousands of people their lives.

The story then jumps forward five years, during which Rose has stayed in hiding, burdened by guilt over the lives lost. When she is found by General Radford (Alexander Siddig), he offers her a chance at redemption: join a group of elite soldiers on a stealth mission to the aliens’ home planet, in order to save what remains of the human race from a devastating disease. What ensues is an engaging, humour-filled action space romp which is sure to delight genre fans.

Morgan fronts Skylines with charisma and an unmistakeable action star magnetism. Sarah Connor with a softer side, Ellen Ripley with combat skills, or even Trinity without the sunglasses, Morgan’s Rose does not look out of place within the prestigious sci-fi heroine canon. The cast is rounded out with solid performances from Siddig, Jonathan Howard, Daniel Bernhardt, Rhona Mitra, and James Cosmo.

What lets this third entry down is the back-and-forth between events happening on Earth and the main action up in space. Where the latter steadily builds up to the movie’s eventual climax, the former serves only to bring the action to screeching halts without adding much to the narrative. Nonetheless, the space-set storyline is impressive enough to sustain the viewer throughout. With fantastic special effects, convincing alien designs and a stylish use of neon lighting, Skylines does not let its small budget get in the way of its vaulting ambitions. A fun, action-packed space caper led by a fantastic performance from Lindsey Morgan, Skylines is by far the most self-assured of the trilogy.