Apollo 18 is a major missed opportunity. What could have been a creepy, X-Files inspired science fiction story is nothing but a tedious, crash landing of a film.

Starting off with a quick intro to NASA and some home footage of the three astronauts at a BBQ that show us these guys are normal and fun-loving family men – it’s reminiscent of the BBQ scene in the Right Stuff, (though it reminded me more of Al Adamson’s opening footage of his kids on carnival rides in the Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher, its inclusion serving to merely pad out the movie).

With the cover story that NASA has lack of funding to send another mission to the moon, Apollo 18’s actual covert objective is funded by a government black budget in order to establish monitoring equipment on the moon to spy on the Russians.

My first thought was, okay there are enough spy satellites that could do this during 1973 (it worked in Ice Station Zebra released in 1968), plus we had the SR-71 Blackbird that could easily run a few photo recon missions a day over Russia. Cheap and effective.

Regardless, they travel to the moon (which for thirty minutes you’d have more fun watching paint dry), with one astronaut in the Command Module and the two main protagonists in the Lunar Module to land on the dark side of the moon. Why they’d set up monitoring equipment on the moon facing away from the Earth that’s supposed to be spying on Russia just didn’t make any sense.

Here, they discover a crashed Soviet lunar lander with blood everywhere and a dead cosmonaut out on the moonscape with a rock protruding from his leg. A great idea and moment that was used effectively in the end in Countdown starring James Cann, but both the director and writer drop the ball here.

Communications to Earth and the Command Module are lost and the astronauts are on their own as they discover these moon rocks are actually alien life forms out to inhabit their bodies. The third act reminded me of an amalgamation of the Outer Limits episode with Robert Culp, Corpus Earthling and Roger Corman’s, Night of the Blood Beast.

There are a few surprises and scares on the moon and the art direction is excellent, but we’ve seen those scares before. You’d have more fun testing your mortality on a ride that sounds past its prime in one of those urine soaked, traveling carnival fun houses.

Another thing is, how did these guys have 27 cameras or so to document the mission from every angle? Payload weight is a major factor with space craft and at the most they would have had only two.

What could have been a great film just doesn’t come close. On the dark side of the moon they could have found the remnants of an alien civilization as Robert Hoagland describes in his books, a Sargasso Sea of alien space craft (Corman’s Galaxy of Terror comes to mind) or even a base that the Germans established during world War II with their rocket program as in Heinlien’s, Rocketship Gallieo or Clive Cussler’s book Cyclops that had a group of American scientists living on the moon in secret conducting experiments. It’s not even in the same ballpark as these greats.

Overall, I’d save my money on this one and wait for a free rental at the local library.

Expected rating: 6 out of 10

Actual rating:

Apollo 18 is in US and UK cinemas now

Craig Gillespie’s decision to reanimate Tom Holland’s 1985 kitsch celebration plays like a joke retold without the energy and comic timing of the original. Whereas Holland carefully modulated the gag, keeping the schlock and shock in their right proportions, and always with a knowing humour, Gillespie’s retelling is simply too sober to succeed. The humour’s there, but it’s cynical and aggressive, not to mention in short supply, in place of Holland’s upfront silliness.

Compare and contrast the two incarnations of Peter Vincent, here reimagined as a pastiche of Russell Brand. Roddy McDowell’s version was a harmless old ham who specialised in low rent scares; the perfect primer for Holland’s B-movie shocks. David Tennant, however, is a slick showman; a bad-tempered charlatan who indulges in groupies and drink. Their take on the character personifies the difference between the two films; one’s affectionate and funny, the other struggles to be endearing, content to peacock its audience into submission. Fright Night 2011 is propped up with polished CGI and conspicuous gimmicks, in this case 3D. The use of the third dimension, skewering the forth wall, is the only part of the movie that faithfully recalls the 80s.

It all begins promisingly enough with a set of titles that expand across the sky over Las Vegas, like blood in water, and soon we’re up to our necks in suburban paranoia with Christopher Mintz-Plasse’s tale of a missing friend failing to move Anton Yelchin’s Charley, who’s outgrown his old pal’s penchant for fantasy. If he’s not concerned about the empty chair in the classroom it’s because of the threat to his mother’s singledom from new neighbour Collin Farrell, whose predatory glare and sexual overtures speak to the worst fears of any boy who grew up with an absent father.

Farrell’s the man you warned your Mother about.

The first half, though lacking the charm of the original film, at least has some of its wit. Exchanges like, “Dusk, do you know what that means?” “No, let me consult my pocket dictionary” show that cover artist Marti Noxon has the ear for a good joke, but that’s as inventive as the Buffy scribe gets.

Once the action moves to Vincent’s vampire museum and the Las Vegas nightlife, it becomes the kind of CG augmented stalk and slasharama that we know by rote. Crucially, the film loses its innocence; the quality the original maintained throughout; becoming dry and overblown.

It’s not all bad. Colin Farrell enjoys himself in a role that has him flit between quiet threat and outright monstrousness, and Mintz-Plasse, though content to play the likable geek, perhaps in perpetuity, combines innocence and humour to good effect; qualities the rest of the film would have enjoyed.

That, unfortunately, is the best of it. David Tennant is too young and too crude to fill the Roddy McDowell shaped hole in the story and Yelchin’s a blank in the lead role. Ramin Djawadi’s score is suitably creepy and lifts the moribund second half, but Gillespie and co. fluff the opportunity to reinvent a minor horror classic by forgetting what made the original work so well.

Expected rating: 7 out of 10

Actual rating:

Fright Night 3D is released in the UK on September 2nd

Sometimes cult films really should be left alone. Nobody remembers the sequels to Blue Brothers, The Exorcist or Repo Man do they? No. The original Wicker Man is quite the effective little piece of cinema. It has a sense of creeping dread in the daylight and has a darker than black ending. It’s been hugely influential on many young filmmakers and remains a great piece of horror. It was with some hope however that I approached the semi-sequel The Wicker Tree as it is directed by Robin Hardy, the 82 year old director of the original. Prepare to have your hopes dashed however as The Wicker Tree is awful.

The film is based on the sequel novel Cowboys for Christ, written by Hardy himself and follows two monsters of Christian rock, Steve (Henry Garrett) and Beth Boothby (Britannia Nicol) who decide to leave their flock in middle America to preach the word of god to the heathens in Scotland, which makes no sense. Beth has attained a measure of celebrity amongst Christians so her arrival is greeted by some fans that she holds a concert for. Steve is a somewhat dim cowboy who is having problems abstaining from physical acts of love with his fiancée Beth. Once in Scotland they find doors slammed in their faces as they go door to door preaching the word of god to the residents. A Nuclear power tycoon, Sir Lachlan Morrison (Graham McTavish) invites the twosome to his remote Scottish village where he feels that the residents will be more susceptible to the word. Once there Steve and Beth meet some of the strange residents and are made to feel extremely welcome. Steve’s eyes start to wander over to local trollop Lolly (Honeysuckle Weeks) and Beth starts to feel that something sinister is going on. Surprise surprise, there is something weird going on. Sir Lachlan has invited the two of them to his village to be sacrifices to some pagan god.

Nothing about this film works. The plot is a straight up remake of the first film, just with a different setting and a different cast but with a confused tone, veering between straight horror, carry on style comedy and camp. The acting is terrible; Britannia Nicol is so shallow and wooden that it just comes across like a parody of a Miley Cyrus type when she is supposed to be deep. There are hints that the character has a pop slut Britney Spears like past which is never expanded on. Henry Garrett is equally bad as the dim cowboy, reading his lines as if on cue cards with a far away look in his eyes that you would expect from an actor on Hollyoaks. These characters are written so badly that they are mere ciphers to propel the plot. The supporting cast fare little better, all of them are playing pretty much your standard pier end panto villains with eeevil lines and innuendo laden speech, and it shows.

Within twenty minutes of this film I tuned out. You can take nothing seriously here, not the performances, the plot or the horror. If the intention was pure farcical comedy then why include such a potentially horrifying cannibal scene come the climax? And why include a wicker type structure at all? Just so it can be burnt in the climax and tick off the box, that’s why. In horror I suspect that you are supposed to at least care about one of the characters. It’s impossible to care about Steve and Beth as they are both just such cardboard cut outs. Graham McTavish is actually a solid actor and gives the best performance here but that’s not saying much. It’s almost like he is in a different film entirely, something that is infinitely more interesting. One that involves poison from his nuclear plant flowing down the river to the village making the inhabitants infertile. This is mentioned pointlessly in a few scenes to never be mentioned again until the final scene where we are supposed to go ‘oh yeah, I get it’. Trouble is, everything up until that point has been so bad that it’s hard to give a toss. To add insult to injury, Christopher Lee pops up in a badly conceived and poorly acted flashback scene to add a tenuous link to the original film. Please don’t let this be Christopher Lee’s last acting role.

Some will have you believe that this was supposed to be a comedy, I’m not buying it. The film is so bad that it seems like a Wicker Man remake directed by the team behind Meet the Spartans and Epic Movie. This is one cult film that should have been left alone, even the 2006 Nicolas Cage remake of the first film is better than this. Avoid at all costs.

Expected rating: 7 out of 10

Actual rating:

The Wicker Tree is currently awaiting a release date

Like the zombie movie, the found footage sub-genre is definitely in its death throes. Whilst the corpse twitches and expels another Paranormal Activity sequel there are still some interesting ideas coming out, they just aren’t coming out of Hollywood. Troll Hunter is from Norway, a country not really that well known for its cinematic output and it’s one of the best found footage films made so far.

Troll Hunter follows a student film crew as they traipse around the Norwegian wilderness following a series of supposed bear attacks covered by the local news. At each location they find a dead bear and some suspicious tracks. At each scene they also find  a mysterious man named Hans (Otto Jespersen) and decide to follow him. Hans seems to be some kind of wildlife hunter, but huge shreds and marks on his Land Rover seem to indicate he has been attacked by something bigger. Eventually after hounding Hans across the countryside, he reluctantly agrees to let the film crew tag along as he feels he is underpaid for the work he does and doesn’t get the benefits that most employed people enjoy. Hans lets the crew know that he is what is known as a trolljegeren (troll hunter) and he patrols the wilderness looking for trolls to kill so that they don’t make their way into populated areas and wreak havoc. The film crew think he is deranged until a troll shows up and they witness the extent of the government’s attempts to cover up the existence of the creatures.

This is a great premise for a film and really works well. The troll attacks are reminiscent of the first Jurassic Park film as the build up has shaking trees and thunderous footsteps until finally an ugly looking beast rampages out of the forest. These scenes are thrillingly staged and the creatures themselves are extremely well realised. Some trolls have three heads, some are large rampaging brutes, some are hairy and go around in packs and some are the size of Godzilla. The effects work is impressive, on the surface hearing about a film of this type coming out of a country like Norway no one could blame you for thinking the creature effects might be sub-par. I’m pleased to say though that the monsters here measure up to anything Hollywood can produce. It could be the fact that the found footage format hides the rough edges of the CG creations but the creatures are never less that impressive. Each sequence with a different troll is staged slightly differently. The tensest sequence takes place as the crew are trapped in a cave with a bunch of sleeping trolls and one of the crew has a panic attack whilst trying to remain silent. There is also a scene towards the end of the film with a gigantic troll being fought on an open snowy wasteland which is suitably epic. This scene also contains another neat nod to Jurassic Park; you’ll know it when you see it.

Luckily the scenes between troll attacks are equally good. Director Andre Ovredal uses these scenes to flesh out the mythology of the trolls, taking in things like the fact that they turn into stone in the sunlight and how they use the underneath of bridges. Otto Jespersen as the world weary hunter is brilliant and really sells the character of a world weary man who has a really important job. He comes across more as a man pulling a nightshift in a café rather than a defender of civilisation. Much of what happens between action sequences is also frequently hilarious. Troll Hunter has a great sense of humour and much of it comes from the government’s attempts to cover up the troll’s existence and how this relates to everyday life.

If there is a complaint it’s that Troll Hunter takes a while to get going and isn’t always as fast paced as it should be. This is a minor complaint though asTroll Hunter is one of the most entertaining and original films to come out this year and as a genre fan you really should seek it out. There will be a sanitised Hollywood remake along any day now but don’t let its Scandinavian origins put you off. This is brilliant filmmaking and should be seen by as many people as possible.

Expected rating: 7 out of 10

Actual rating:

‘Troll Hunter’ is in UK cinemas now

Director Lucky McKee has so far ironically been quite unlucky in his career. May was a great debut, a twisted take on the Frankenstein myth that didn’t catch on as it should have and ended up straight to DVD nearly everywhere. The Woods was an interesting idea but compromised by studio interference. Then he was fired from the film Red after just a few weeks. With The Woman, adapted from the novel by himself and Jack Ketchum, McKee has very definitely arrived. This may very well be the best film about the seedy dark underbelly of suburban America since Blue Velvet.

We begin the film with the Cleek family, on the surface a seemingly normal friendly American family enjoying a summer barbeque. As things progress we learn that the father Chris (Sean Bridgers) a successful lawyer, is casually abusive and lords over the family. His wife Belle (Angela Bettis) is living in fear of her husband and what he might do should she step out of line. Daughter Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter) is becoming more and more withdrawn and raising the suspicions of her teachers and son Brian (Zach Rand) is a vindictive and spiteful little prick with some worrying habits. One day whilst out hunting Chris spots a feral woman (Pollyanna Macintosh) bathing in the forest and decides to kidnap her and take her home. Chaining up the woman in the shed, he brings her presence to the attention of his family intending her to be domesticated as a ‘family project’. As time goes on Chris’s real intentions with regards to his new pet become clear and the ties that hold the family together start to fray.

The Woman is an amazing film. It is many different things all at once. It’s a savage satire on suburban America and the nuclear family. It’s a pitch black comedy, a feminist masterpiece and, of course, it’s a brutal horror movie. The reception that the film garnered at Sundance this past January would have you believe that this is an exercise in brutality against women and a non stop torture fest. This is totally not that sort of film. The torture and brutality that the feral woman experiences whilst held captive is mostly implied and hinted at through clever editing.  It’s somehow more effective rather than showing you the full extent of what happens. You know right at the start that something is seriously off with Chris and Brian Cleek and you know that they have sinister intentions towards the woman. The tension builds and builds towards the inevitable and when it happens, McKee has spent so much time subtly building these immoral characters that showing the full extent of their brutality would have been a disservice towards all the previously subtle character and tension building. When things reach boiling point in the final act of the film, McKee quite literally unleashes hell. The film gets graphic as characters get their just desserts but it feels cathartic and justified as well as being pleasing for gore hounds who may be scratching their heads as to what all the fuss is about.

A film like this rises and falls on the performances and thankfully the two central roles here are among the best performances of the year. Sean Bridgers is terrifying in this role, coming across like an evil Will Ferrell he is all smiling evil and calculated manipulation. It’s absolutely chilling because on the surface he is the picture of the hard working American family man but underneath something dark and terrible is hiding. The scenes where he goes about his day, casually flirting with any females he comes into contact with are horrid because you know what his home life is like. It is without doubt the best villain of the year.  Pollyanna McIntosh as the woman is equally brilliant, she is also terrifying, right from the start she is a brutal force of nature. As the film goes on she reveals more and more humanity making it that much more satisfying when she does what she does in the full tilt climax. It’s a brave fearless performance and if there is any justice we should see more of her in the future. Angela Bettis and Lauren Ashley Carter as the Cleek’s wife and daughter figures are brilliantly fragile. Right from the start they are timid and seemingly on the verge of a breakdown and they sell it really well, ultimately becoming the main object of the audience’s sympathy. For a child actor this is probably a very risky role to take when you are just starting out but Zach Rand as the son is chilling as he truly is a chip off the old block. Like father like son is definitely the case and Rand gets this across with very little dialogue and often just a look or glassed over gaze as he does something terrible.

McKee’s directorial style is very reminiscent of Wes Anderson or Richard Kelly and The Woman is a very stylised well made film. McKee uses a brilliant soundtrack with songs written by Sean Spillane combined with slow motion to ironically score and shoot scenes which in another directors hands would have been straight out chilling. McKee goes for black comedy time and again in scenes which are profoundly disturbing. Again I feel that in less subtle filmmaker’s hands this could have been unwatchable. It all comes together with the performances, editing, cinematography and soundtrack to make The Woman something you will never forget.

The phrase ‘The Future of Horror’ is bandied about too liberally sometimes but with The Woman and a cinema release, Lucky McKee has truly arrived. The Woman is a powerful, brutal and beautiful film that will stay with you long after the credits have rolled. Horror, as true horror fans know, is something that should make you uncomfortable and The Woman is that film as well as something to make you think.

Expected Rating: 6 out of 10

Actual Rating:

The Woman is on limited release in the UK from September 30th, and available to buy on DVD/Blu-ray from October 17th

Remember that feeling you got when you were a kid? When there was something in the darkness. You didn’t know what it was, you couldn’t explain it, and you just knew that there was something dark and evil lurking under your bed or in your wardrobe. Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark taps into this feeling very well and puts it on screen; no easy feat. Guillermo Del Toro’s fingerprints are all over this one as co-writer and producer but, somewhat unfairly, his presence has overshadowed a really great directorial effort from Troy Nixey.

Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark starts in the 19thcentury with an old man in a big dark basement of an old house. He is doing the bidding of some dark and evil force that lives in the furnace that seems to crave human teeth. After a truly wince inducing teeth extraction scene we move forward one hundred years and a bit to modern times.  We meet young Sally (Bailee Madison) a lost and lonely young girl who has been dumped by her movie star mother to go live with her father Alex (Guy Pearce) in Rhode Island with his new beau Kim (Katie Holmes). Alex and Kim are restoring a large colonial house, the one seen in the prologue and are nearly finished and planning to sell it on for a tidy profit. Sally explores the grounds and resists Kim’s attempts to bond with her. Something starts whispering to her from the darkness, something that seems friendly and playful at first. Initially intrigued, Sally finds that the whispers come from something ancient and evil that has anything but the best intentions.

The less you know about the plot of this film the better. I knew nearly nothing apart from the fact that it’s based on a TV movie from the early seventies. As the story unfolded I found myself constantly surprised with how dark it gets and there are some clever revelations that line up nicely with Guillermo Del Toro’s usual obsessions. The film has a lot in common with Pans Labyrinth in that it follows a young girl who may or may not be making up an elaborate fantasy which becomes increasingly disturbing. The adults here are a lot more approachable than those seen in that film though. Bailee Madison is fantastic in the role of Sally, a really talented child actress who can cry on cue and portray absolute terror without skipping a note. The whole thing would have fallen apart had this actress not been A plus and luckily every time she cries or whimpers the audience is right there with her. Katie Holmes is also pretty good as the woman trying desperately to be a mother figure but not really knowing or wanting the responsibility. It’s a character that could have fallen very easily into cliché as the malevolent force sows seeds of doubt and mistrust between Sally and Kim, but doesn’t because the script is better than that and there are no drawn out confrontation scenes, just a woman trying to understand a child’s trauma. Guy Pearce unfortunately is given little to do in an under written role, and for an actor of his talents he really deserved more.

Troy Nixey wisely sets most of the film in dimly lit grand old rooms or shadowy basements and bedrooms. There is a masterful use of shadows here and the whole time watching the movie your eyes are drawn to the darkness just hoping and fearing that you’ll catch a glimpse of something. I thought Insidious would be the last word on jump scares in 2011 but this film trumps it. There is a scene involving a child’s eye view of searching underneath the duvet for something which is without doubt THE jump scare of the year. The scares are not telegraphed the way they are with most films these days (hello Scream 4) and the film manages to be darkly funny whilst scaring you witless. The creatures are also brilliantly realised, I’m not sure what the budget was here but the subject matter necessitates keeping things mostly in the shadows and as such the limits of the CG creations are not tested so they remain very convincing and very scary.

Ultimately though, there is something that holds Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark back from greatness and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. Maybe it’s because the ending doesn’t quite live up to what has come before. Or maybe its because there are a few plot threads left hanging that aren’t necessarily wrapped up or developed as well as they could have been. I suspect there is more material with Katie Holmes’ character on the cutting room floor but an eventual DVD release will likely clear that up.

Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark is lots of dark scary fun and should still be in cinemas by the time Halloween rolls around. It’s no classic but it’s certainly better than most horror related sequels to one note gimmick films that will probably be released in October.

Expected rating: 9 out of 10

Actual rating:

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark will be in UK cinemas October 7th

The first instalment of Final Destination was released in 2000 with a cast of young hopefuls (including Devon Sawa from Idle Hands, Slackers and that’s about it really) and directed by James Wong, who at that point was a member of the team that brought us The X-Files. It was tongue-in-cheek horror that offered some gruesome and inventive deaths that I am glad to say make a welcome return in the newest instalment of this franchise.  Steven Quale is in the director’s seat and his knowledge and respect for the original film certainly comes across. Tony Todd makes a welcome return in his role as Bludworth who manages to come up with some cool and creepy lines, delivered in his usual deep tone: “I don’t make the rules, I just clean up after the game is finished.”

A group of work colleagues are on their way to a team bonding session when the bridge they are travelling across starts to fall down. This opening major disaster scene is full of suspense and edge of your seat moments and of course some brutal and fun deaths – all introduced by the very apt Dust in the Wind playing on the radio – which adds to the humorous tone. In classic Final Destination style all of this is imagined in a premonition by Sam Lawton (Nicholas D’Agosto from Heroes) and he manages to persuade his colleagues to get off the bus and cheat death. If you are a fan of the franchise, this is one of the best of the lot and you will know what to expect.

Sam is introduced as the sensitive psychic one in the beginning sequence of the film, and all the characters are introduced to some extent before they set out on their perilous journey. Not all the characters are particularly nice people though, David Koechner plays the obnoxious boss with fervour and P.J. Byrne excels at being the worst work colleague you could ever wish for. I don’t want to give too much away but these colleagues pursue some hazardous activities outside of work including gymnastics (ouch!), training to be a chef and going for spas… 

The deaths were inventive, fun and gory and the pacing was quick, with funny little moments that put you off the scent of the intended victims’ real fates. The action is removed from the quiet moments that move the story along and allow for a small amount of character development and pressure cooker tension to build. There are plenty of subtle (and not so subtle) nods to the previous films and the filmmakers have created a 3D montage sequence of some of the best kills from the franchise that takes the viewer on a little nostalgia trip of the last ten years. Overall, a solid horror that delivers on blood splattering, cover your eyes moments, but also brings the franchise to a satisfying conclusion.

Expected rating: 6 out of 10

Actual rating:

Final Destination 5 premieres in the UK at FrightFest on 25th August and is on general release from 26th August.

Craig Gillespie’s remake of Tom
Holland’s 1985 classic Fright
Night is definitely not
afraid to go its own way beyond the recognisable title and basic premise of a teenager’s encounter with a vampire next door. This ends up both a good and bad thing.

Jerry Dandridge, as essayed by Colin
Farrell, is ‘the shark from Jaws’ according to Evil Ed (Christopher
Mintz-Plasse). However this zaps him of personality completely, but perhaps
that’s the whole point. Here we have the humdrum vampire: the banality of
vampirism. He kills, he feeds, he lives. Holland’s version was a Ted Bundy-like
charmer with a sweet tooth for blood. Some of this serial killer aesthetic
remains, but not much.

Jerry is a mean and moody charm vacuum
and when he doesn’t get invited into the Brewster home – he torches it, forcing
the family out. While we can appreciate his directness and lack of manners,
it’s also a bit OTT. We first meet Jerry murdering a family before Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) and Amy (Imogen Poots) enter the picture as a standard
Hollywood high school pair. Yelchin’s Charley is nothing at all like William
‘You’re so cool Brewster’ Ragsdale.

Here he’s a teenager trying to be one
of the hip kids and hides his geeky past. He’s not even friends with Evil Ed
and sees him more as a pest than anything. The arc of the narrative is
changed fundamentally because Charley discovers Jerry is a vampire through
hearsay and only acts when mounting evidence suggests Jerry is clearly not all he seems. The Peeping Tom set up is discarded, again changing course for the
remake, but robbing it of interest.

Charley’s pervy antics in Tom Holland’s
film became the portal into a nightmarish world of sex and death. In discarding
this idea the plot becomes simply ‘the vampire must be destroyed!’ and no
longer the boy who cried wolf. Charley’s mother features a lot more in Gillespie’s remake than she figured in the original too. 

Screenwriter Marti Noxon’s time on Buffy
the Vampire Slayer and Angel provides the film with a bit of charm, laughs and some nice
gags. Indeed, Joss Whedon’s spirit rests in this material as if it’s more a
homage to his work than Tom Holland’s film.

Fright Night also features some of the
murkiest cinematography seen for a very long time. The 3D doesn’t help one
iota. It causes some serious eyestrain and what could have looked atmospheric
is rendered near anti-cinema. The Las Vegas setting doesn’t add much to
the narrative. It’s still humdrum suburbia mainly.

David Tennant as the new Peter Vincent
is a world away from the gentle, callow-hearted and avuncular actor played by
Roddy McDowell. Tennant goes for rock star posing and spoilt brat gestures before
removing the make up and being much more in line with McDowell. It works well
enough but one senses the Americans will find his antics more amusing than a
British audience used to his mugging as Doctor Who.

At times, Noxon’s story changes feel
completely cosmetic and not truly a new vision of what Fright Night could be.
The set pieces are bigger and the finale more action-packed, but the material
was never about explosions and car chases.

Chris Sarandon, the original Jerry, gets
a cameo as a murder victim and the disco scene is referenced too. But therein
lies another problem – Brad Friedel’s rather cool soundtrack is replaced with
bland pop songs – clearly the marketing have an eye on CD and iTunes sales.

Noxon brings the nice idea of ‘types of
vampire’ which feels very Buffy, in some respects. This does allow for some new
background information on Jerry but again Hollywood seems obsessed with
explaining back stories and origins.

The film, thankfully, is funny. There’s
the obligatory Twilight gag and the hospital scene is excellent with Charley fixing crucifixes all over his mother’s room and quipping to a nurse she’s very religious. Fright Night (2011) is a vampire flick for the post-Whedon
generation. As remakes go it’s not as bad as it could have been in the hands of a hack and the
creative team clearly love the original whilst staking a claim for their own
vision.

But where are the iconic moments, the
truly memorable scenes? There are none. Jerry gets to say “Welcome to Fright
Night for real,” but it makes no real impact given the context of Peter
Vincent’s background and occupation have changed. Yes, his magic show is called
Fright Night, but it’s very weak compared to Holland’s late night horror show
idea which more accessible and recognisable to horror fans. 

Expected rating: 5 out of 10

Actual rating:

Fright Night is released in the US August 19th, and the UK on September 2nd

If I’m honest, I wasn’t expecting much from this movie. I really liked the first two in the series. The third was OK, and the fourth one bored the pants off me. The fifth movie in any series is not usually an improvement on its predecessors (look at Friday 13th: A New Beginning, or Nightmare on Elm St: The Dream Child).

This instalment starts off in much the same manner as the others. It introduces you to a group of people (in this instance, a group of workers in a paper mill, off to a company retreat), sets up the massive, effects laden disaster, kills them all off in glorious 3D and then has one of the victims wake up from his vision, in time to save his friends from being splattered.

The special effects are very well done, especially at the start, but as the movie rumbles along and the body count increases, the sense of déjà-vu becomes overpowering.  I started to lose interest, despite the elements of black humour and the couple of sly winks to other films in the series.

Then, around 2/3 of the way through, the film surprised me. The story took an unexpected twist that threw things up in the air, and made me sit up and take notice again. The ending actually impressed me.

The film has its faults. Some of the acting is woeful, and more than a couple of the characters are little more than cardboard cut-out caricatures, waiting for their inevitable demise. I also got the feeling that they spanked most of their special effects budget on the opening disaster. A few of the death scenes were very sudden, and lacked the red herrings or build up from the earlier movies in the series.

On the positive side, the special effects work very well, especially in 3D. A few of the deaths made me cringe and/or laugh out loud, and I loved the ending, which ties the whole series up nicely.

If you liked the other Final Destination films, then you’ll enjoy this one. It’s not exactly cerebral, but it’s fun, hits all the notes that fans will expect, and adds a couple of plot twists to keep things interesting. It’s a refreshing return to form for a series that I’d all but written off. I wouldn’t complain if they ended things here, but deep down I know that somebody, somewhere, is probably working on Part 6. Another Final Destination, at this point, seems as inevitable as death.

Expected rating: 4 out of 10

Actual rating: 

Final Destination 5 is out now in the US, and is released in the UK on the 26th of August

Favreau fails to inject any amount of fun into this western meets science fiction mash up. On paper this film should work; it has a strong cast including the man who played Han Solo, Harrison Ford and the current James Bond, Daniel Craig. It has an original premise with a lot of potential for creativeness to shine, but somehow it manages to be boring. A disappointing offering from director Jon Favreau, who is yet to reach the same high standard he managed in the first instalment of Iron Man.

When aliens attack Earth and abduct the innocent inhabitants of Absolution, a group of locals team up and form a posse to get them back. The strapping Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) leads the charge on this rescue mission along with cattle ranch owner Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), enigmatic Ella Swansen (Olivia Wilde) and the local bar owner Doc (Sam Rockwell).

The main problem with this film is that it doesn’t achieve the mood of a great western film or offer enough development of the alien presence to reach the levels of solid science fiction. There are some redeeming qualities though, the metal bracelet attached to Jake Lonergan’s arm offers a wealth of cool special effects and there is an excellent battle scene that reveals some extra alien assets but overall it is lacking severely in terms of character development and tension. The tone is much darker than the title would suggest and the focus is mostly on the western side of the tale.

The performances are all pretty solid; Sam Rockwell provides some comic relief by being the one man in the Wild West who can’t use a gun, Olivia Wilde is a welcome female presence who can hold her own, and the young Noah Ringer (The Last Airbender) plays the wide-eyed kid in the troupe with flair. Paul Dano makes an appearance as the spoilt brat son of Woodrow Dolarhyde who takes on the mysterious Lonergan in an act of arrogance. The strength of the opening act of the film, where the coward takes on the cool, fits in with the western styling and gave the film an intriguing and attention-grabbing beginning. Unfortunately it just didn’t continue throughout as it loses pace with a rambling sequence through miles of desert.

It looks as a western should – full of cattle, swinging saloon doors and a whole lot of horses – and delivers on the witty banter between the characters, but the pacing and the way the story plays out overall is jagged. Nothing seems to flow that well, one moment you are holding your breath at  an alien abduction and the next the characters kind of shrug the whole thing off and you are left feeling deflated. The reactions of the characters are not emotionally engaging enough to warrant any real investment in caring about what happens to them.

The set pieces are immense and are pretty impressive to watch on the big screen and all the actors are suitably attired in authentic looking garb, it’s just a shame the actual film lacks that certain spark needed to connect with its audience. The cowboys and aliens interaction is minimal with one major battle scene being the most contact they have. The focus is on the humans and their quest to save the world from destruction. This leads to the generic go-to reason for the alien attack on Earth, and a deficient amount of time being spent on developing the alien presence.  Imagination is lacking in their appearance also, with the usual H.R. Giger inspired replicas being churned out.

Scott Mitchell Rosenberg of Platinum Studios fame penned the graphic novel on which this was based but he doesn’t appear to have had a hand in the screenplay. Instead of being innovative with the source material Favreau and his band of writers (six in total, including Robert Orci who was a part of the team responsible for the fabulous Star Trek reboot) turn this into a hackneyed, boring and unsatisfying watch.

Expected rating: 8

Actual rating:

Cowboys & Aliens is released in the UK on August 17th