Review Category: Movie

It has been six years since Jim Mickle’s Stake Land delivered a right hook to the stagnant face of the vampire genre. His impressive post-apocalyptic survival film managed to thrill, horrify, and depress in one almighty swing, whilst pushing Mickle into the limelight. Stake Land 2, AKA The Stakelander, sure has a lot to live up to.

New directors Dan Beck and Robert Olsen (The Body) dwell with what they have, but this time The Stakelander doesn’t have surprise in its corner. Or Mickle for that matter. Luckily, Beck and Olsen do have Nick Damici on their side.

Damici was the secret weapon of Stake Land; a badass vampire hunter with nothing to lose and he continues to be the main attraction of this particular world. In a way, Damici is the Clint Eastwood of this western-tinged nightmare: consummately cool and dangerously cynical. One of the problems is that, master vampire or not, he doesn’t have a good enough villain to duel with.

As a sequel, The Stakelander offers up a pointedly less nihilistic story but doesn’t quite cash in on the potential for action. In the first five minutes Berk, Olsen, and Damici do their best to prove this is the same Stake Land as before; just as violent and unforgiving. But the film shows it’s dark heart too soon in a great opener and, like the first, doesn’t quite escalate to a satisfying final showdown. It’s a shame because vampire zombies (Vombies or Zampires?) in a Mad Max style future sounds all kinds of terrifying and fun.

Especially when the production value is so good. Sara McCudden, who helped imbibe Jennifer Lynch’s Chained with a grimy lived-in quality, manages the same here on a larger scale. The Body’s cinematographer Matt Mitchell gets way more to do, finding a dusky western palette, which gives this sequel its own visual style. Special effects are in the safe hands of indy effects guru Pete Gerner. With notable work in recent favourites like Cold in July, I Sell The Dead, Late Phases, and The Mind’s Eye, Gerner is fast becoming the man for independent genre production. With so many great parts, it’s a real shame things don’t come together.

Berk and Olsen are fine stand-ins for Mickle, but without Damici, The Stakelander would be a tough sell. It’s not a step up, more of a step-to-the-side, with great supporting performances (A.C. Peterson and Steven Williams in particular) and good action. If we’re getting a third entry, Damici needs to take director’s duties and turn things up to a hundred.

THE STAKELANDER / CERT: 15 / DIRECTORS: DAN BERK, ROBERT OLSEN / SCREENPLAY: NICK DAMICI / STARRING: NICK DAMICI, CONNOR PAOLO, A.C. PETERSON, STEVEN WILLIAMS / RELEASE DATE: UK RELEASE DATE TBA

Expected Rating: 7/10

Actual Rating:

James Cullen Bressack is a writer/director/producer/editor and almost anything else you can think of, with a huge list of credits, some of it well-regarded, some of it not. Bethany is the second film from the production company he established with actor Zack Ward, who also co-writes here with Bressack.

 

Claire is a woman haunted by tragedy and an attempt on her own life, and she’s incredibly fragile as a result. When her mother dies and Claire is given her childhood home in her mother’s will, out of necessity she moves back with her husband Aaron in tow. It brings up memories of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother and as Aaron’s work increasingly keeps him busy, Claire is home alone. Those memories of her childhood start to become something even more sinister as Claire’s paranoia deepens and a figure from those past reflections starts to appear in her present. Is the house or Claire herself haunted?

 

Claire seems pretty unbalanced from the start. The question throughout is more about whether it’s as a result of lingering damage from her loss or a malevolent presence in the house. The way we find out is via one cliché bumping into another, before the whole troop of them tumble down a hill together towards this movie’s end. It folds a lot into the mix, from the ‘is-she-mad?’ influences through body horror to J-horror.

 

Due to its themes of child abuse, abandonment and grief it’s inevitably a sad, dour film with little in the way of relief. Despite this there is enough to recommend. Shannen Doherty appears effectively in flashbacks as Claire’s emotionally and physically abusive mother. Ward is a long established actor and gives his everyman Aaron a realistic concern regarding the wife he loves and worries about losing. Stefanie Estes brings a delicateness and brittleness to her portrayal of Claire that works.

 

Even though it’s really little more than a collection of off-the-peg influences, there’s a few effective moments scattered within despite them smacking of things you’ll no doubt have seen before. The writing might not be original but it is solid. The real problem comes from struggling to figure out who would actually enjoy this. It’s grim stuff, and works hard to bum you out. This is not a film you’re going to be using the word ‘enjoyed’ about any time soon. If it works on any level it is one of catharsis, though not in the same way as say something like The Exorcist. But really, we’re probably being unnecessarily harsh. It’s a fine enough film that does the job it sets out to do.

 

BETHANY / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: JAMES CULLEN BRESSACK / SCREENPLAY: JAMES CULLEN BRESSACK, ZACK WARD / STARRING: STEFANIE ESTES, ZACK WARD, SHANNON DOHERTY / RELEASE DATE: 7TH APRIL (US); UK RELEASE DATE TBA

 

Blue Jean (Walker) is a former baseball player who has been eking out a living as the owner/proprietor of an unremarkable strip club on the outskirts of a small town that’s seen better days. Things ain’t what they used to be and there’s no living to be made for Blue Jean, so she has decided to sell up and get out of the business. It’s closing night at her club, as Blue Jean’s handing over ownership to someone else, and it’s the usual run of booze and boobs until she can clear out. That is until a group of dirty miners turn up, celebrating a discovery of ‘oil’ and bringing with them a disease that turns its victims into violently crazed murderers. From that point on, those that are not infected must do whatever it takes to survive and escape.

 

There are a lot of fluids in Peelers, especially from the oily killers, the copious blood and a few effectively gory-on-the-cheap set-pieces. It’s full fat hard cheese, too. The absurdity of what takes place is not lost on the filmmakers, and the movie knows exactly what it is, with humour (most of it very much on purpose) sprinkled liberally throughout. We spend a little bit of time with the girls that dance and the guys that watch over them as the night initially plays out. It has got strippers as main characters, and there’s a few dance routines, one with an ending America’s newest president would certainly not approve of. We don’t really get to know anyone though before things kick off, because while it seems about the breasts, Peelers is also about the gruesome. Once the infection has started spreading, naked flesh is forgotten as one after another meets a grisly end.

 

This is not a badly made film, competently put together as it is, but it’s not a good film either. It’s not involving in respect of making you care about anyone. Performances range from the level you’d expect to awkward glances at the camera. The writing mixes up its jokes with an over abundance of swearing that gets tiresome. For all the surface gore on display, it’s actually somewhat timid when it comes to showing too much. It ticks every box along it’s way to doing everything you think it will, even adding in a little X-Files conspiracy for good measure. You’re not going to find anything new here at all and it frequently feels at least a little laboured, arguably cynically so.

 

Still, Walker makes a winning hero and despite it being really nothing special, it’s hard to dislike a film so brazen in its pursuit of a late night audience.

 

PEELERS / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: SEVÉ SCHELENZ / SCREENPLAY: LISA DEVITA / STARRING: WREN WALKER, CAZ ODIN DARKO, MADISON J. LOOS / RELEASE DATE: OFFICIAL UK RELEASE TBA

 

A film that begins with a creepy, dancing Ron Jeremy cameo and ends with the rape of a young woman by a demon from the underworld always promises to be an interesting watch. And VooDoo should have been just that, but it fails on almost every level as it strives too hard to shock and surprise it’s unwitting audience.

 

Described as an “innocent Southern girl”, Dani (Stewart) heads to Los Angeles after breaking up with her married boyfriend. Staying with her cousin Stacy (Reynolds) she plans to have some easy fun to get over the relationship. Oh, and her ex’s wife is Haitian and has apparently put a curse on Dani. Nonsense, right? Well, actually yes. What follows is a film divided into two clearly defined halves, and one that struggles with a need to put its audience through some kind of trippy haunted house experience.

 

Initially, director (also writer and producer) Tom Constabile opts for the found footage style as Dani mooches around Los Angeles. Justification for the camera being there is predictably scant; Dani says she wants to document the trip for her dad, and then goes on to film herself making out. The dialogue is also a problem, as, if ad-libbed to seem natural, it comes across as tediously contrived, with the characters merely acting out various clichés.

 

Direction in the second part becomes more traditional, but no explanation is offered as to whom might be holding the camera. Mooching complete, and with that curse now kicking in, Dani is dragged through various torments as a version of hell is revealed. Paedophilia and torture, ghoulies and sexual assault, nothing is left out as Constabile guides us through what his imagination can conjure up. There are some impressively disturbing scenes, and for a low budget film the visuals are at times effective, but it is the relentless screaming and shrieking that you will remember most. It is often unclear quite what is happening and why, and how relative this is to Dani’s largely innocent crime of being the other woman which is never explored, but it is a welcome assault on the senses given the bland tedium of the first half.

 

As a whole, VooDoo is an overly ambitious mess that never decides quite where it’s aiming for. As a found footage film, it is flawed, and while the extravagance of the second half is at times impressive, you never feel fully engaged, as if everything is too detached to be interesting. In truth, the film never recovers from Ron Jeremy dancing.

 

VOODOO / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: TOM CONSTABILE / STARRING: SAMANTHA STEWART, RUTH REYNOLDS, RON JEREMY / RELEASE DATE: 24TH FEBRUARY (USA); UK RELEASE TBA

 

When he’s caught trying to scam his own employers out of a few million dollars, Wall Street hotshot Lockhart is given a make-or-break assignment to get his greedy ass off the hook. His elderly CEO has gone AWOL to a secretive ‘wellness’ clinic in the Swiss Alps, seemingly out of his mind, right at the time his signature is needed on a merger deal that will save the ailing company from financial oblivion. With the clock ticking down, Lockhart is dispatched to the beautiful mountaintop spa to retrieve the old buffer, only to find that the watery ‘cure’ on sale there is slowly killing all of the residents. You guessed it: check-out is not an option.

 

Gore Verbinski showed he could deliver superior scares with his 2002 Ringu remake and does so again with this very classy horror thriller. It may not have an original fishbone in its body but that’s half the fun – the soufflé of fruitcake paranoia Verbinski cooks up deftly draws upon a range of sources. Viewers of The Prisoner will recognise the Shangri-La world of the clinic, with its zombiefied elderly residents, Kafkaesque underground labyrinth of bizarre treatment rooms and the tormented progression of Dane Dehaan’s neutered Wolf of Wall Street as he increasingly rages against his captors, culminating in a very McGoohan-esque scream of  “I am not a patient!” that’ll have you ducking an imaginary weather balloon. There’s also a heady whiff of Jacob’s Ladder, underrated 60s psycho-chiller Eye of the Devil and – in the spectacular Viennese Waltz climax – Eyes Wide Shut, which seems to have defied its original critical mauling to become one of Kubrick’s most influential works. And fans of extreme tooth torture (that’s us) rejoice, the reprise of Marathon Man’s dental assault sequence is an absolute shocker and well worth seeing with a Friday night crowd. That’s a whole lot of homage even before the full-tilt anarchy of a last act that’s pure Roger Corman in Edgar Allan Poe mode. But, like Brian DePalma before him, Verbinski pulls off this remixing with plenty in reserve and keeps all his plates spinning to the manic conclusion.

 

Delivering on the promise he first showed in Chronicle (and that was utterly wasted in The Amazing Spider-Man 2), Dane DeHann’s Lockhart has our sympathy from the off. In support, the very aptly-named Mia Goth is winsomely effective as the mysterious, ageless girl he encounters on his way down the rabbit hole. But Jason Isaacs steals the show as head clinician Dr. Heinreich Volmer, oozing the kind of fiendish charisma that would make for an excellent Bond villain. Through no fault of his own, Isaacs has long been associated with a tooth-looseningly irksome meme perpetrated by Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode’s Radio 5 film review show, which encourages its simpering acolytes to jump up and down and shout at Isaacs whenever they spot the poor bloke in public. Perhaps the dark relish Isaacs displays as he ties a screaming DeHaan down, forces a giant rubber hose down his throat and releases a humongous vat of eels and dirty water into his belly is founded on a wish to do the same to the imbecilic morons that regularly shout “Hello to Jason Isaacs!” at him in airport toilets and his local supermarket. But it’s probably just really good acting.

 

With a very odd title for a big budget horror (let’s be honest – it’s a total duffer), no major star names and no franchise potential to speak of, A Cure for Wellness was never going to set the box office on fire. The running time doesn’t do it any favours either; at two and a half hours and with at least one false-ending too-many, it does rather outstay its welcome by a good 30 minutes. Most of that extra running time is spent either following DeHaan as he explores the (admittedly stunning) interiors of the clinic or watching him on the receiving end of yet another unpleasant treatment so you have to wonder why it wasn’t trimmed down a bit. But you also have to admire Verbinski’s audacity for pulling off such a sprawling and decidedly un-Hollywood slice of strangeness in this day and age. Heck, the time may even have come to forgive him for Pirates of the Caribbean. But let’s not get too carried away.

 

A CURE FOR WELLNESS / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: GORE VERBINSKI / SCREENPLAY: JUSTIN HAYTHE / STARRING: DANE DEHAAN, JASON ISAACS, MIA GOTH / RELEASE DATE: 24TH FEBRUARY

 

Expected Rating: 7

 

Actual Rating:

After Spring Break’s instantly classic chant of “Look at all my shiiiit”, it seems James Franco is cruising for another catchphrase in King Cobra. While pumping iron in this gay-porn-gets-nasty true story, Franco repeatedly warns his pimped-out partner Harlow, “No Little Bitches”.

It’s an apt motto for this sleazy tale of control-freak porn producers, and the murder that results when contracts are broken and jealousies rage. Sean is a pretty boy picked up by Cobra Video’s entrepreneurial Stephen (Christian Slater) and contracted to make gay porn under the stage name Brent Corrigan. Brent’s popularity quickly goes through the roof, but Stephen continues exploiting his young star despite his own inappropriate lust and affection for his hottest young property. When unhinged producer Joe (James Franco) from rival porn outfit the Viper Boys attempts to get his best boy Harlow together with Brent in a video, Stephen is not so keen to let his most profitable asset go.

There’s plenty of time to explore the relationships of these pairs of men before a murder goes and spoils the gay porn party. Taking place in wealthy middle class neighbourhoods, the calm, wholesome exteriors hide the debauchery, exploitation and power struggles inside. The dynamics shift, particularly between the more interesting couple of Stephen and Brent. But it’s difficult to have much sympathy with either, and even less so with the damaged and unhinged partnership of Joe and Harlow. For what it’s worth, Franco gives his all, whether in raunchy sex scenes or flipping out over his jealousy of Harlow. But both of these roles are underwritten and could have done with a little less flesh on show, and a little more fleshing out in the script.

But it’s Christian Slater who gives great sleaze and emerges as the most interesting character; his older man is a complicated combination of victim and predator and purveyor of the male-on-male gaze. Even though King Cobra has its funny moments, it dips its toe into some interesting issues, most notably in a brief discussion of the generation gap between gay men. And while it’s great to see icons Molly Ringwald and Alicia Silverstone given roles, this is a movie about the dudes and both actresses are given awfully little to do.

Until it smacks up against the dead end of its murder plot, King Cobra is riotous fun. Director Justin Kelly relishes the sleazy world these characters inhabit with an early montage set to the Scissor Sister’s Filthy/Gorgeous being a cheeky, raunchy highpoint.

However, King Cobra isn’t all fun and filth, but it could certainly be accused of promoting some pretty negative stereotypes. While it’s occasionally amusing to see just how dumb, damaged and self-obsessed these characters are (see the ‘no little bitches’ scene), a more progressive story featuring gay characters would be welcome from Justin Kelly and James Franco next.

KING COBRA / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: JUSTIN KELLY / STARRING: JAMES FRANCO, CHRISTIAN SLATER, GARRETT CLAYTON, KEEGAN ALLEN, ALICIA SILVERSTONE, MOLLY RINGWALD / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Expected Rating: 7 out of 10

Actual Rating:
 

It’s 1961 and the Space Race is proceeding apace. But NASA has taken a tumble and the Russkies have launched Yuri Gagarin into the history books as the first man in space. The US Space program clearly needs a kick up its propulsion units and into its starchy, white-shirted male-dominated world march three raw new faces ready to shake things up; a maths wizard, an up-and-coming engineer and a potential computer genius. The trouble is, they’re all women. Oh, and they’re black…

 

Theodore Melfi’s gorgeously-realised period piece is both refreshingly heart-warming and wonderfully uplifting and, as troubled as the world is today, it shows us just how far we’ve come – in some regards – in the last fifty years. Hidden Figures isn’t a hectoring, badgering movie wagging a disapproving finger at the past; it uses its three endlessly likable leads to slowly eat away at the ferociously-entrenched prejudices of the era and allows them to slowly dismantle them as they begin to earn the (sometimes grudging) respect of those around them. The contributions of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson to the American space effort are well-documented and rightly regarded (Johnson even, coincidentally, crops up as a character in a recent episode of US sci-fi TV drama Timeless) but as Hidden Figures makes quite clear they had to fight tooth and nail every step of the way.

 

Initially – and reluctantly – employed by NASA as “computers” (hand-checking calculations worked out by a phalanx of white male scientists) the trio have a fight on their hands just to be even recognised by their superiors. The segregation, racism and sexism might appear shocking to sophisticated 21st century eyes – the girls have to use ‘coloured only’ restrooms and eating areas and there’s even a ‘coloured only’ coffee pot – but it’s handled with good grace and common sense, presented as horribly outdated and ‘of its time’ but the film never patronises or passes heavy judgment. Each of the girls locks horns with a straight-laced superior – Costner’s Al Harrison heads up the Space Task Group and Kirsten Dunst’s starchy Vivien Mitchell is in charge of “the computers” – but in time not only do the girls prove their worth as intelligent, forward-thinking professionals, those above and around them start to learn not to judge people by their sex or the colour of their skin. Respect is earned and learned on both sides.

 

Johnson’s story really powers the movie as she’s right at the heart of the battle to get America into pole position in the Space Race. Her mathematical skills are formidable much to the annoyance of her colleague Paul Stafford (Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons playing the role a bit like a properly-medicated Sheldon Cooper and minus the Bazinga! T-shirts) and by the time of John Glenn’s legendary Earth orbit in 1962 (which would have ended in disaster without her contributions) she’s pretty much a vital part of the team. The performances by the three leads tear up the screen – Henson, Spencer and Monae are forces of nature – and it’s a bit of a shame that once they’re settled into their posts we don’t spend more time with the three of them together. They do the film’s really heavy narrative lifting but Costner as the bristling and yet inwardly kindly Harrison is on the sort of form that reminds you just how good he can be (although the scene where he smashes up a ‘coloureds only’ sign hanging outside a restroom is a little hammer-handed) and whilst there’s not much for Dunst to get stuck into as ice maiden Mitchell, she’s at least allowed to show a touch of humanity at the film’s end as her fractious relationship with the resolute Dorothy Vaughan finally develops into an acceptance of each other’s place in the scheme of things.

 

Hidden Figures is a rich and uplifting experience. It may play fast and loose with historical accuracy (most of the girls’ achievements took place in the 1940s and 1950s, they were well-established by the 1960s, and many of the supporting characters are amalgams of various real-life folk encountered along the way) but then it’s the story that matters here, the thrust of what the girls did, the obstacles and resistance they encountered and how they rose above those obstacles to become enduring figures in modern American mythology. It’s a genuinely feel-good film which deals sensibly and with a commendable lack of hysteria with unpleasant prejudices and attitudes which have been pretty much long since consigned to the history books. Terrifically enjoyable and sweetened with just a hint of space age saccharine here and there, Hidden Figures is nothing less than a joy.

 

HIDDEN FIGURES / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: THEODORE MEFLI / SCREENPLAY: THEODORE MELFI, ALSION SCHROEDER / STARRING: TARAJI P HENSON, OCTAVIA SPENCER, JANELLE MONAE, KEVIN COSTNER, KIRSTEN DUNST, JIM PARSONS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

Expected rating: 7 out of 10

 

Starburst rating:

Co-pilots Cane (Rupert Graves, best known for Sherlock and V for Vendetta) and Eva (Ellie Kendrick – Game of Throne’s Meera Reed) are ordered to investigate a strange signal from a distant planet. Stuck on a ship for however long it takes to get there when your only companion is in stasis whenever you are awake would drive you mad too. So it happens with Cane, and the mission is threatened by both His fragile mental state and Eva’s increasing concern.

First screened at the 2016 Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival, Native reels in the simplicity of its look. The film’s most appealing features are little visual tricks on the holographic ship controls – as realistic as they are hypnotic – rather than gargantuan CGI sequences. These, interspersed with wide shots of an empty cosmos just to remind you that this is actually in space, make Daniel Fitzsimmons’ feature debut sincere and beautiful in its own understated way.

Graves is utterly convincing as the deteriorating Cane, but it is Kendrick who deserves the most praise. For almost the entire film her conversations with Cane are functional, instructive and cold. As the film progresses, however, Kendrick gradually works more internal doubt and worry into her stern outside appearance. By the film’s climax, she is overcome by grief and indecision (not helped by her telepathic brother talking constantly in her head). Her progression is more drawn out than Cane’s and is a gripping change to witness, performed impeccably by Kendrick.

Said climax is when Native is at its most intense. It sees what could easily be a predictable ‘will they, won’t they’ scenario play out in an unexpected and satisfying way. The storyline starts slow, and then more tension and dilemmas surface well past the eye-widening point when you see where their mission has sent them. The whole film rests on the line between heart and head, communication, and probing the moral conviction of the two protagonists.

The stars do not quite align. The comments about human interconnectivity and technology, which bizarrely features a brief clip from The X Factor among other things, feels rushed and insignificant compared to what has come before. Yet somehow a meaningful point is still scraped together when it could easily have been lost.

It doesn’t hit the grand heights of Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special, but it is still up there with the finest examples of indie science fiction. It captivates from the first telepathic chat to the last. It leaves you with thoughts and ideas which make you question, even if only for a moment, the current direction of humanity. It doesn’t get more sci-fi than that, and Fitzsimmons is clearly a talent worth keeping tabs on.

NATIVE / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR: DANIEL FITZSIMMONS / SCREENPLAY: NEIL ATKINSON, DANIEL FITZSIMMONS / STARRING: RUPERT GRAVES, ELLIE KENDRICK, LEANNE BEST, JOE MACAULAY, POLLYANNA MCINTOSH / RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 23RD 2018

Expected Rating: 6 out of 10

It’s 1933 in small town America. Prohibition is soon rumoured to end, which is a blow for a cop like Jack Malone (McFadden). He has made a healthy living out of applying taxes on the bootleggers and anyone else who makes a profit from criminal activity to ensure he and his fellow cops look the other way. There’s a new speakeasy in town, and it should be another easy mark. But Malone soon suspects something else other than just selling booze to willing patrons is going on there. He figures there’s a bigger pie to take a chunk out of, but the truth isn’t what he was expecting.

 

Turns out this speakeasy is run by vampires who think the town should be theirs and the people in it their blood factory, with head creep Chesterfield played by Ice-T. They don’t take kindly to Malone discovering their secret and a bloodbath ensues. Now Malone has to do his actual job and protect the townspeople from the evil that is stalking them.

 

Writer McFadden and co-writer and director Dan Lantz clearly wanted to live out their gangster and vampire fantasies with Bloodrunners, and they definitely go to town on both here. For a movie that cost little to make, the costumes and cars are all present, making for a handsome production. By keeping the movie based in only a handful of locations it manages to help deliver a reasonably convincing atmosphere, but let’s pause here for a word about digital filmmaking. Being shot on digital makes everything super clear, almost brutally so. For low budget horror films it loses the ramshackle magic being shot on film gave a lot of cheap 60s/70s/80s movies and sometimes serves only to highlight the artifice of the finished product, as it does here.

 

Those vamp and gangster fantasies are also resolutely nothing new here, made up of so many clichés. The vampires are the usual type we’ve seen over innumerable television shows and films in the recent years. On the plus side it has got some humour that does on occasion work and some nice little character notes or behaviours that suggest time was spent thinking it all out. Most of the performances are fine, with one or two forced notes, and although Ice-T is no acting genius he is nevertheless a force of charisma.

 

Although there’s very much a tongue-in-cheek approach here (albeit not a parody) that borders on the outright silly sometimes, especially in the literally batty conclusion, there are also no pretensions at high art either. This is filmmakers having a good time and making something eminently fit for a late Friday night’s undemanding viewing, and sometimes that’s all you need.

 

BLOODRUNNERS / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: DAN LANTZ / SCREENPLAY: DAN LANTZ, MICHAEL MCFADDEN / STARRING: ICE-T, MICHAEL MCFADDEN, AIREN DELAMATER / RELEASE DATE: TBA

 

Inspired by Irish playwright John Millington Synge’s ‘Playboy Of The Western World’, Sean Brosnan’s directorial debut is a heady blend of striking imagery and bloody confrontation. As an actor Brosnan has busied himself with interesting low-budget fare, without ever leaving any notable impression, but as a director he may well have found his true calling.

 

Treading a well-trodden road of familial revenge, My Father Die’s plot is simple yet effective. Brutal father Ivan (Stretch) kills his eldest son in a fit of jealous pique while youngest son Asher (Anderson) watches on. Himself beaten, Asher becomes deaf and mute after his father is imprisoned. Released early, a bloody, fateful collision is inevitable.

 

With the macabre backstory shot in stark black and white, and musical beats hitting as hard as the protagonist’s punches, My Father Die is as arty as it is brutal. Essentially a thriller, the sparse plot careers towards a predictable finale, but it is how Brosnan guides the journey that is impressive. It is to his great credit that the visceral, Tarantino-esque violence is both shocking and surprising, with quieter moments observed with respectful distance. Never do you feel you have a true understanding of the extent to which the characters will go in their quest for vengeance. And yet, equally, you slowly garner some empathy for their motivations.

 

Much of this comes from the intensity of the performances. Perhaps due to Brosnan’s own experiences, the cast respond to his direction, providing note perfect delivery of characters that are truly lost, with little to break the monotony of their lives prior to the wave of destruction that overpowers them. Anderson has always been an interesting actor, with a combination of independent films (Horns, The Crazies) and mainstream television (Hannibal, The Divide) to his name. With My Father Die he demonstrates subtlety amid explosions of passion as the “retard” Asher, a young man endlessly underestimated by those around him. It is a performance of real depth, and with impressive support from Stretch and Candace Smith as the third wheel in a bizarre love-triangle, this is a film with a true ensemble.

 

A festival favourite, My Father Die deserves to be the film that puts Brosnan on the map. Co-produced by famous father Pierce (who would have been interesting casting as the malevolent Ivan), it is a debut feature that instantly releases him from any parental shadow, and bodes well for future works. A stylish, violent and engaging thriller that draws on the best of Tarantino, and with nods to Tony Scott’s True Romance, My Father Die is one to seek out as soon as possible.

 

MY FATHER DIE / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: SEAN BROSNAN / STARRING: JOE ANDERSON, GARY STRETCH, KEVIN GAGE, CANDACE SMITH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (US); OFFICIAL UK RELEASE DATE TBA