Review Category: Movie

Nestled in the French countryside, struggling theme park Zombillenium is staffed by monsters and the undead. The humans who come to the park think it’s all an act, but in reality the park is built on the mouth of hell and its staff were freed from damnation by the park’s manager making a deal with the devil. When the newly-dead Hector joins the operation he discovers a close-knit family of workers, and introduces modern ideas that rejuvenate the outmoded ghost house antics, much to the chagrin of the arrogant vampires who are determined to defend their position at  the top.

Zombillenium starts off well, immediately pulling viewers in with its surreal world of monsters hiding in plain sight as Hector is inducted into the park’s operation, and introducing a rounded cast of characters like metalhead witch Gretchen, with whom Hector starts a love/hate relationship, and Sirius, a skeleton stuck in the ‘80s. It also doesn’t skimp on the poignant side of things, with Hector’s ‘death’ condemning his young daughter to the life of an orphan in a boarding school and at the mercy of a sadistic teacher.

Amidst the tales of everyday monster life there is a heavily socialist message running throughout, with the zombies seen as disposable blue-collar grunts there to perform menial labour as the elitist vampires profit off their labour, while the park’s infernal owner is far more interested in making money rather than creating something new and spectacular. The messages are simplified ones (this is a kids’ film, after all) and a little heavy-handed at times, but come through strongly enough that young viewers will get them.

After a while the lack of conflict makes the story start to drag, so to push things along a takeover attempt is instigated by the vampires and their leader Steven, a posturing narcissist whose interminable sparkling and affected brooding make him a star attraction among squealing teenage girls and instil in him the belief he should be in charge. The mockery of the pretentious Twilight vampires is clear, but as fun as it was to relentlessly ridicule the atrocious saga while we were being subjected to it, it’s been over and done with for years with its relevance subsequently dwindling, so any jokes levelled against it now feel a little dated. As though atoning for the flagging middle, the film is revitalised by an exciting finale full of action, emotion and satisfying confrontation that will be exciting for the young viewers but not so intense that it’ll scare them.

The animation is bright and colourful, in particular during the moments that Gretchen’s magic is unleashed, and humour is regularly provided by neat touches such as a headless ghost fanning herself, or Cerberus, the triple-headed canine guardian of the underworld, having a dominant middle head of a yipping terrier.

Zombillenium starts off well with an imaginative setup, but while the central idea is a compelling one with a great deal of potential, the meandering story prevents the film from being truly special.

Zombillenium / Cert: TBC / Director & Screenplay: Alexis Ducord, Arthur de Pins / Starring: Emmanuel Curtil, Alain Choquet, Kelly Marot, Alexis Tomassian, Mathieu Monnaert, Esther Corvez-Beaudoin / Release Date: TBC

A woman named Ruth awakens in a dazzlingly bright and empty room, and a sinister disembodied voice demands answers from her about the work being carried out in the research facility beyond it. Although she claims to be too lowly an employee to have any answers, her assertion is tested by the chamber’s myriad torture functions, only for the truth to be revealed as far more complex.

White Chamber initially shapes up to be a single-setting mystery, reminiscent of Cube in its apparent simplicity and overlying inscrutability, not to mention the shape of the confinement and built-in devices designed to inflict myriad types of pain and suffering via intense heat, freezing cold, gas vents, acid drips and electric shocks. However, this only accounts for the first twenty minutes or so, and after that the story jumps back several days to recount the events that lead up to the opening sequence, unequivocally answering all questions and stripping away any sense of mystery.

The film actually exists as a post-Brexit allegory, putting forward a suggestion of where this country is heading if it continues on the road of xenophobic isolationism it’s currently careering down with barely any consideration of the consequences, all delivered with the subtlety of a sack of bricks. Opening with faux newsreel footage of the descent into civil war brought about by government incompetence, the setting is hammered home.

The opening sequence of Ruth’s torture is an odd structural choice as it adds little to the story, and actually throws up a massive inconsistency that is only cleared up right at the film’s end. While it’s commendable to consciously subvert the tired genre trope of a helpless woman being brutalised by faceless malevolence, there doesn’t seem to be any other reason to order events in such a way.

The film asks questions about what is truly justified in the struggle for what you believe to be right, but makes no attempt to pick a side in the unseen conflict tearing the country apart. As the characters’ backgrounds and motivations are gradually revealed we get explanations of why they each believe the things they do, but the development doesn’t go any further than this. The argument creates an us-and-them mentality, with the two sides defined by who they have been taught to believe the enemy is, and tacit blame being placed at the door of those who believe their bigotry is vindicated by the country’s vote to shut itself off from the rest of the world.

White Chamber has a lot to say but difficulty in adequately articulating it. At its core it’s a perfectly adequate psychological thriller with an underlying message and tinged with several moments of compelling unpleasantness, but with greater cohesion and less overtly blunt observations it could have been so much more.

White Chamber / Cert: TBC / Director & Screenplay: Paul Raschid / Starring: Shauna Macdonald, Oded Fehr, Amrita Acharia, Nicholas Farrell, Sharon Maughan / Release Date: TBC

2013’s Escape Plan was a fun action film that – save for their brief shared scenes in The Expendables franchise – was the first ever full feature teaming of ‘80s action icons Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Alongside a cool cast and a plot that served nicely as a throwback action picture, the film is not remembered as a modern classic but is well worth seeking out for a tough guy prison break action fix. So, while Escape Plan 2 (known in certain territories as Escape Plan 2: Hades) was not exactly requested, does it deliver the same enjoyable goods? Sadly, far from it.

The film sees Ray Breslin (Stallone) now in charge of a security company and running hostage rescue assignments. But when one of his best men Shu Ren (Huang Xiaoming) is kidnapped and thrown into a high tech prison, Breslin and the team must dig deeper into his whereabouts and in turn discover how to break him out.

As the straight-to-disc release status in the States, minimal cinema release over here and already filmed sequel denotes, Escape Plan 2 is not a pretty picture; in fact it is a mismanaged sequel and a dreary mess. Apparently budgeted at $20 million, certain CGI effects evoke shuddering memories of London Has Fallen’s PS2 cut scene effects, while the script is dragged into a sub-par Sci-Fi territory, which immediately jars with what came before. The film is a mish mash of other properties, with a sprinkling of John Wick here, a pinch of Mad Max Fury Road’s war boys there, some Saw-like editing beaten in and a whole topping of Tron Legacy/Blade Runner in both visuals and scoring but none of it comes together or feels right for the film.

Somewhere within lies a fun idea, perhaps a kind of earth bound Lockout but this film hasn’t the charisma to carry it off and it all feels like a weak assembly of clichés and scenes strung together with little natural progression or wit. At times the film jumps from one thing to another as sub-plots are forgotten about, ties to the first film are crowbarred in and the narrative becomes a mess the longer it progresses. No matter how many hologram environments, droid security or action bits are thrown at the screen; it feels garbled and confusingly fused together by people trying to go bigger (and failing) but forgetting to go better.

Worse than that though, is how wasted the genuinely up for it cast is, Schwarzenegger’s absence is unavoidably felt but Stallone (who alongside 50 Cent is the only actor that returns here) does what he can with his lines and a bone crunching final fight but he feels wasted on a film so lifeless and funless. Meanwhile Dave Bautista is underused and Huang Xiaoming has nothing to really work with in a film drowned with head scratching direction. Not to mention one of the most obvious twists in recent memory, which presents a villain that has little to no menace.

Escape Plan knew what it was, Escape Plan 2 is the exact opposite and it makes you appreciate the first movie even more and considering Escape Plan 3: Devil’s Station is incoming, it feels like the audience is the one doing hard time here.

ESCAPE PLAN 2 / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: STEVEN C. MILLER / WRITER: MILES CHAPMAN / STARRING: SYLVESTER STALLONE, HUANG XIAOMING, DAVE BAUTISTA, JESSE METCALFE, CURTIS “50 CENT” JACKSON, WES CHATHAM / RELEASE DATE:  JULY 20TH 

Expected Rating:

7/10

Zel is a lonely and isolated young man with a dead end job and a crush on his glamorous neighbour he is too afraid to act upon. After being introduced to lucid dreaming by an eccentric stranger, he attempts to use it to take command of his life.

Appropriately for a film revolving around dreaming, Lucid frequently behaves like one, the people and events acting as subconscious representations of the aspects of his life he wishes he could change.

Zel’s neighbour Jasmine exists as an unattainable fantasy who he idolises without actually knowing anything about her. His is the kind of silent worshipping from afar that shy guys should really have matured their way past while they’re still teenagers if they want to have any chance of appearing as anything over than creepy. She is supposed to seem enigmatic, but in truth it’s because he doesn’t actually know anything about her, and even in the dream sequences she’s still a fantasy girl, since his lack of knowledge of who she is beyond his obsession means there is nothing on which he can base anything resembling a functioning personality.

Meanwhile Kat, a cute waitress at the club where he works, is a more grounded concept of a romantic interest that he would be far better pursuing were he not oblivious to the inexplicable fact she finds him appealing, and his boss Theo, a one-note cockney thug who apparently has nothing better to do than harass his employees, represents the fears and intimidations Zel needs to overcome.

A big problem with the film is its lack of direction. The scenes progress from one to the next with little in the way of development and no sense of urgency, and any intent for the whole thing to feel like one extended dream removes any sense of consequence that would otherwise hang over Zel’s decisions. The dreaming sequences themselves have a suitable otherworldliness to them, seeming like just-off facsimiles of reality, but placing them entirely in the confines of the nightclub constricts their potential and only decreases any true sense of advancement.

Given the subject matter you’d expect that Zel would slowly become increasingly unable to differentiate between dreams and reality, but this is only briefly touched upon before being completely discarded without any consequence. Likewise the concept of being able to dictate the behaviour and emotions of those around you has highly sinister connotations and the potential to go to some dark places, but the implication is never even suggested.

If Lucid had picked a direction in which to go and stuck to it, it could have been far more compelling, but its meandering story and indistinct sense of purpose make it a frustrating watch. It takes a long time to not really go anywhere, but just fizzles out to an unsatisfying conclusion that leaves you wondering exactly what reaction you were supposed to have had to it all.

LUCID / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: ADAM MORSE / STARRING: LAURIE CALVERT, SOPHIE KENNEDY CLARK, BILLY ZANE, CRISTIAN SOLIMENO, FELICITY GILBERT / RELEASE DATE: TBC

Schoolgirl Anna looks forward to the imminent day when she can escape her cloistered town and discover what the rest of her life has in store for her. Unfortunately, as Christmas approaches an outbreak of zombies descends upon the world, and to have any chance of survival, Anna and her friends need to fight their way through the army of undead with slashing, stabbing, crushing and bashing. And singing.

How do you make a zombie apocalypse film stand out, when countless numbers of them are churned out year after year and every possible variation has been done to death, before being risen from the grave and killed again? Answer: you make it a Christmas musical. Anna and the Apocalypse’s combination of horror, humour and songs is highly reminiscent of Once More, With Feeling (the famous musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer). The mix of genres is balanced perfectly, and the song routines – some even complete with varying levels of elaborate choreography – establish the tone of misanthropic humour before the death and destruction even properly gets underway.

Early songs reflect the teenagers’ frustration with small town life (Break Away) and growing acceptance that the idealism they were taught as young children is a lie (No Such Thing as a Hollywood Ending). The cynical subject matter deliberately contrasts against the saccharine insipience of High School Musical, and any possible equivalence is then obliterated by the filthiest Christmas song you’ve ever heard that turns every holiday motif you can think of into smutty yet hilarious innuendo.

While this goes on the quiet beginnings of the zombie outbreak gradually surface until everything goes to hell in complexly composited scene that sees Anna dancing down the street and singing optimistically with her headphones in, oblivious to the tsunami of carnage rolling around and behind her, and from there a steady blend of violence and comedy is maintained right up to the film’s closing moments.

The visceral gore is a balanced mix of CGI and practical effects, and the numerous action sequences are an assortment of anarchic combat, frantic scrambling for survival and full-bloodied humour, a fight in a bowling alley with improvised weaponry being a particular standout.

The humour does dry up at points when things start to get serious. Much of the plot involves people who have been separated from their friends and family trying to find each other, and heavily emphasises the need for human connection in situations where fear and despair have set in, which also echoes the sense of isolation that lonely people often feel at Christmas.

As the eponymous heroine, Ella Hunt combines a fresh-faced purity and implacable determination that evokes horror starlets both traditional and modern, while the diverse assortment of supporting characters such as Anna’s friendzoned BFF, a teen journalist, an arrogant jock, a lovestruck couple, and the school’s odious headmaster, all keep interactions varied and interesting.

Anna and the Apocalypse is a compelling genre mashup that manages the rare achievement of doing service to each of its component facets. Its memorable songs, entertaining action, over the top gore and all-important humanity all combine into stand-out genre fare, and its seasonal setting should make it an annual favourite among horror fans.

ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE / CERT: TBA / DIRECTOR: JOHN MCPHAIL / SCREENPLAY: ALAN MCDONALD, RYAN MCHENRY / STARRING: ELLA HUNT, MALCOLM CUMMING, SARAH SWIRE, CHRISTOPHER LEVEAUX, MARLI SIU, BEN WIGGINS, MARK BENTON, PAUL KAYE / RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 30TH