Review Category: Movie

ANNABELLE COMES HOME / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: GARY DAUBERMAN / STARRING: VERA FARMIGA, PATRICK WILSON, MCKENNA GRACE, MADISON ISEMAN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

After the creation came Annabelle, and then Annabelle came home. Set after the events of The Conjuring, the Warren’s (portrayed once again by Wilson and Farmiga) return to their home with the most dangerous doll in the world to keep the evil at bay by storing it in a blessed glass case. But when Ed and Lorraine Warren leave their daughter Judy (Grace) with babysitter Mary Ellen (Iseman) while they go on an investigation, Mary’s friend Daniela haphazardly releases Annabelle, the demonic force of the doll brings the most haunted collection of artefacts to life to terrorise the girls.

Directed by the Conjuring Universe veteran Gary Dauberman in his debut behind the camera, this third instalment of the spin-off saga is average at best. The opening act shows a lot of promise with a well built up atmosphere, which creates a layer of tension and dread with false jump scares scattered throughout, but as soon as Annabelle is released, the film dissolves into a by-the-numbers modern horror that is predictable and ultimately not scary in the slightest. As is the case in horror today, the only real potentially jumpy moments were all shown off in the trailer – essentially to try and get the audience to jump, they use ‘grotesque’ dead people to scream at the camera – a total waste of potential.

That’s not to say that everything is all bad. As previously mentioned, there are moments of brilliance scattered throughout. One of our favourite moments of visual storytelling comes when Annabelle is thrown from Judy’s bed, knocking over a multicoloured film reel lamp that slowly reveals the true form of the demon through shadows on the wall using the doll as a conduit.

Over the last couple of years as James Wan and his team have inundated us with countless spin-offs in the Conjuring Universe, the quality has started to dramatically dwindle (except for the rather brilliant Annabelle: Creation) from the greatness of the main series. Here’s hoping that they can get this horror train firmly back in the tracks with next year’s The Conjuring 3, as otherwise, this franchise is going to fall into the trap and become a ghost of its former self.

Expected Rating 7 out of 10

I SEE YOU / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: ADAM RANDALL / SCREENPLAY: DEVON GRAYE / STARRING: HELEN HUNT, JON TENNEY, JUDAH LEWIS, OWEN TEAGUE, LIBE BARER, GREGORY ALAN WILLIAMS / RELEASE DATE: TBC

When a young boy is abducted in the woods near a small coastal town, the home of the detective leading the investigation is beset by odd occurrences as the tormented family address their own issues while they to figure out what’s going on.

I See You starts off mildly intriguing, its litany of strange goings on providing a bizarre mystery that doesn’t seem to conform to any one particular set of rules for hauntings or supernatural occurrences and the like. As well as the mystery, personal issues are also dealt with such as the detective’s wife recently having had an affair and their teenage son now resenting her. It’s an odd mix, and for a while it feels like parts of separate films that have been inexpertly welded together into a single fusion.

In any film involving an abduction, you would imagine that the most emotion would come from the family of the missing child, so the decision to focus events on the domestic drama of someone entirely different seems like a bizarre choice, made all the more egregious when events check in with the investigation, thus periodically reminding you that a more interesting story is playing out elsewhere.

The odd events are shot in such a way that suggest they have been copied from supernatural thrillers without properly understanding what makes them eerie or compelling. Some are filmed from an angle that simply prevents you from seeing the entirety of what’s happening, while others are bizarre but fairly innocuous occurrences that could easily have reasonable explanations, but are portrayed as possibly being the actions of some mischievously malevolent force tormenting the family. Because there is no wider context in which to place them, they appear meaningless in their failure to link into any kind of complete story, and instead come off as exactly what they are: random events that simply aren’t being explained to us.

The mystery is uncovered at the halfway point with a big revelatory moment, and at this point what little cohesion the film previously had completely falls apart. A climactic moment is interrupted with no explanation, and the story then rewinds back to the start with the purpose of making the audience re-examine everything to have so far happened. The film is clearly of the opinion that the twist is one of the most genius pieces of storytelling ever to be encountered, since it then proceeds to make you practically the entire film from this new perspective as it deigns to now show you the truth of what was occurring.

However, far from the narrative neutron bomb it’s presumed to be, the repetition quickly becomes grating upon the realisation the recap isn’t going to be condensed, but that every scene is going to be revisited, growing ever more frustrating with each passing moment. When a further twist is later revealed, it becomes clear just how many coincidental occurrences were required to have crashed together like an intersection pileup for any of the main plot to have actually happened in the first place, further straining its already questionable credibility.

There is nothing at all mysterious or intelligent about simply withholding information, and not realising this is I See You’s primary stumbling point in its lacklustre effort to build compelling ambiguity, along with its unclear sense of what kind of film it’s trying to be, and the lack of understanding of what makes strange mysteries truly compelling.

ANIARA / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: PELLA KÅGERMAN, HUGO LILJA / STARRING: EMELIE JONSSON, BIANCA CRUZEIRO, ARVIN KANANIAN, ANNELI MARTINI, JENNIE SILFVERHJELM / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 30TH (CINEMA/VOD)

The Aniara, a spaceship leaving the ravaged wasteland of Earth for an ever-expanding colony on Mars, meets with an accident soon into its journey and is knocked off course and towards the inky and empty depths of space. With no hope of repair or rescue, the crew and passengers must learn to make the best of the only home they will have for the rest of their lives.

There is a great deal of potential available from any kind of setup where people are placed in a confined situation with no way of escape and their true characters begin to emerge. It could be especially effective in this case, where the opulence of the ship matters little when everyone was expecting to be aboard for only three weeks, so it would only be a matter of time before things come to a head.

Except things never do, not really. People’s despondency is initially kept under control by the use of Mima, a VR interface room that leaves users in hallucinatory tranquility, but any true reactions to developments goes unseen, as the necessary human responses all take place during increasingly lengthy time skips that lurch the story forwards like chapters in a novel that has chunks of pages intermittently torn out. It’s impossible to get a proper handle on how life aboard the ship is progressing due to the inconsistency of people’s behaviour. One section of the film has them becoming addicted to the illusions of the aforementioned holodeck (which it later transpires is some kind of semi-sentient AI being slowly driven insane by the fear and anguish it’s increasingly called upon to blank out) only in the next for social mindset to descend into an orgiastic sex cult worshipping the need for relief from the black emptiness of space, which by the onset of the next section seems to have disappeared, instead being replaced by people become entranced by the swirling colours of interstellar gas.

Pieces of world building eventually start to niggle, such as a brief statement that life on Mars isn’t all that much of an improvement and that being aboard the ship is actually a better class of living, but there’s no confirmation of how truthful this actually is. It’s stated at the outset that communications will be cut off for the duration of their journey without being justified why, simply being a requirement of the plot for the ship to be unable to call for or receive any help. As for basic resources, self-sustaining food and oxygen is explained by algae farms, and likewise a mention of water treatment suggests the capability to repeatedly recycle it, but no mention is made of how the ship generates electricity despite its constant use with seemingly no risk of depletion.

Aniara is an assortment of ideas that never gel together into a single narrative, instead half-forming into a fractured tale that fails to connect with the human emotion it tries to portray. The existential dread the story attempts to impart is never adequately expressed or explored, leaving it, like the voyage of its titular starship, a meandering journey with no clear destination.

BOYZ IN THE WOOD / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: NINIAN DOFF / STARRING: RIAN GORDON, LEWIS GRIBBEN, VIRAJ JUNEJA, SAMUEL BOTTOMLEY, EDDIE IZZARD, GEORGIE GLEN, KATE DICKIE, KEVIN GUTHRIE, JAMES COSMO / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Dean, Duncan and, ahem, DJ Beatroot are a trio of teen delinquents sent to the Highlands on the Duke of Edinburgh Award in the hope of rehabilitating their behaviour after they blew up a public toilet. They are joined in the endeavour by Ian, sheltered, homeschooled and friendless, who just wants the experience of real teamwork. Unfortunately for the boys, a pair of masked and armed aristocrats are stalking the moors, bent on removing what they see as worthless undesirables.

Boyz in the Wood is many things packed into a mere 87 minutes: an exciting low budget action thriller, a compelling look at young male friendship and a sharp meditation on contemporary youth prospects. But most significantly, it’s also very, very funny.

Much of the humour is mined from the interaction between the central quartet. None of them are especially bright, and as the boys blunder over the wilderness and survive through obstinate determination, their flawed but oddly compelling logic, and sheer blind luck, you become genuinely fearful of how they will manage to permanently escape their upper-class pursuers.

Several running jokes pepper the action, such as a runaway minibus, a lump of tar mistaken for a block of hash, and hallucinogenic rabbit droppings, but none are focused on to the extent that they dominate, leaving plenty of space for drawing humour out of the inherent ridiculousness of the over the top situations and the dim-witted exploits of the various characters who nevertheless remain endearing.

Many filmmakers would have been tempted to portray the boys as mindless chavs, but their brash exteriors hide insecurities about their place in the world, along with how much they can expect of themselves and how much other people can expect of them. It’s also a refreshing change to not have a character like Ian be ridiculed by the others for his enthusiasm about activities they couldn’t care less about, and instead they try to draw him out of his isolation and make him a part of the group.

Some variety in character comedy comes from a sub-plot involving the largely ineffectual local police who rather than addressing the commotion instead ponder whether they might better devote their time and resources to searching for a relentless thief plundering the region of all its precious bread, along with an assortment of middle-aged farmers who act like partying teenagers.

Amidst its black humour and bonding amidst life and death altercations, there is also a streak of social commentary running through the film examining the state of society. The ageing hunters represent past generations who resent the teenagers for their very existence, while the young people are just trying to survive as best they can while trapped in a situation their elders have created but refuse to take responsibility for. The perspective is spelled out near the end, but it doesn’t lessen the impact of the embittered observations.

Boyz in the Wood is an alchemical concoction of many ingredients, but they all mix together to become a transmuted whole that transcends each of its facets to become a sharply witty and consistently funny journey of personal discovery for each of its characters.

MEMORY: THE ORIGINS OF ALIEN / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: ALEXANDRE O. PHILIPPE / STARRING: DIANE O’BANNON, CARMEN GIGER, VERONICA CARTWRIGHT, DAN O’BANNON, RIDLEY SCOTT / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Alexandre O. Philippe previously gave us a history of film zombies with the decent Doc of the Dead, and now brings us a fairly self-explanatorily titled documentary, charting the genesis of the seminal sci-fi horror movie that still chills audiences 40 years after its debut, along with the creation of one of the most iconic movie monsters of all time.

You might go into Memory: The Origins of Alien wondering how much of the story is left to be told after four decades of analysis and pop cultural immortality, and for a while it manages to surpass expectations. The opening twenty minutes or so are quite engaging, relating Dan O’Bannon’s inspirations for Alien’s screenplay, identifying the direct influences that ‘50s monster movies and EC horror comics had on the story’s look and events. It also delves into the writer’s early life that shaped his need to escape into imagined worlds, and with some archive footage of O’Bannon and input from his widow Diane, the story is given a highly personal touch.

However, the interest doesn’t hold up. Once the story of the film’s growth moves past O’Bannon’s work with John Carpenter in the creation of micro-budgeted sci-fi comedy Dark Star and onto Alien’s actual production, it begins delving into far more familiar territory and retells stories heard dozens of times before. The lack of major names involved in the production is notable, with Veronica Cartwright (Alien’s Lambert) being the most significant interviewee, while the rest of the talking head contributions, aside from Diane O’Bannon and Carmen Giger (conceptual artist H.R. Giger’s widow), consist of various writers and academics.

The film’s main issue comes from the latter of these, with each attempting to ascribe a symbolic significance to the film that really isn’t there. Arguments are made such as how characters’ positioning and movement within shots represents the moving through societal hierarchy, or drawing out significance from the crew meal right before the chestburster scene, where in the background the cat is also eating. And as for that infamous moment of gore, we get yet another retelling of its composition and filming, although to be fair having Cartwright relate the story of getting drenched in fake blood does provide it with a degree of personal authenticity.

There is a great deal of effort put into comparing the Xenomorph to various primordial deities and figures of ancient legends that feels too forced to be taken seriously, as though the contributors are dictating a graduate thesis and trying to make intellectual points with neither the demonstrable evidence to back them up nor arguments that in any way convince. In particular, the Furies of Greek myth are paralleled with the creature, to the extent that a trio of actors dramatise their summoning to avenge Clytemnestra, along with and several location shots of the Delphic oracle. One of the things that makes the Xenomorph such a terrifying creation is its utter otherness that defies natural laws to be completely, yes, alien (which is in itself one of the reasons for the film’s change in title from the far more B-movie-esque Star Beast), and attempts to quantify this only belittle the achievement and actually end up sounding a somewhat pretentious.

Although Memory: The Origins of Alien does contain some interesting talking points, overall the film feels like little more than a DVD extra, and lacks the substance attain the relevance to which it aspires.