Review Category: Movie

DOMINIQUE

Following her plane being shot down by cartel goons, Dominique (Oksana Orlan) kicks the ass of the wannabe looters (and one particularly abhorrent henchman who gets appallingly hands-on when he thinks she’s dead!) Dominique makes it into the local town San Lucas, where she instantly hooks up with Julio (Sebastian Carvajal), who works for the corrupt local police and looks after his widowed sister (Maria del Rosario) and her children. With the cartel looking for the person who slain their men and danger getting closer, Dominique must fight for her – and her friend’s – lives.

Thrill-packed and not as predictable as many of its type, director (and co-writer) Michael S. Ojeda’s film is often startlingly brutal and a must-see for action fans. Orlan is commanding as the hard-as-nails hero who manages to give the character a heart despite the tough exterior. Dominique stands on its own feet in a genre saturated with cookie-cutter thrillers. Ojeda’s decision to keep the locals’ original language rather than go for full English is bold and adds a greater sense of realism. This approach also comes into play in the startling, unpredictable climactic shoot-out, which takes no prisoners.

DOMINIQUE is available on digital platforms now.

BLOOD STAR

On her way back to her boyfriend, Bobbie (Britni Camacho), is stopped in the middle of the New Mexico desert by a local Sheriff (John Schwab), whose hostile attitude about speeding. He accuses her of damaging his flashing siren light and fines her. Menacingly, he offers to lower the fine for $300 cash. He takes her phone while she gets the money from the ATM in the gas station. It turns out this isn’t the sheriff’s first time doing this…

Beautifully filmed, London-born director Lawrence Jacomelli (who co-wrote with George Kelly and Victoria Hinks Taylor) walks the fine line between cautionary tale and misogynistic exploitation. The lone woman’s fear of travelling alone is often used as a catalyst for horror, and it’s often the people who you’re taught to trust who turn out to be the antagonists in these tales. It’s this familiar scenario that puts Blood Star on the back foot. However, to Jacomelli’s credit, the film takes a few different paths and keeps the viewer’s interest throughout, and boasts some interesting curveballs and a genuine shock moment.

Taking its cues from classics that have gone before such as Duel and Breakdown, the cat-and-mouse nature of the chase is never less than thrilling and rises above its simple, familiar premise. The sheriff’s motive often comes across as deadly playfulness, and getting off on the thrill of the hunt rather than greed, and there’s no apparent sexual motivation other than power. Blood Star is thrilling and frustrating in almost equal measure, but worth the ride.

BLOOD STAR is available an digital now.

SMILE 2

Early morning, she wakes up. Knock, knock, knock on the door.
It’s time for make-up, perfect smile.
It’s you they’re all waiting for. They go “Isn’t she lovely, this Hollywood girl?”
And they say: “She’s so lucky, she’s a star.”
But she cry, cry, cries in her lonely heart.

Britney Spears, Lucky (2000)

Director Parker Finn has big ambitions for the sequel to his 2022 supernatural horror film. Where Smile’s relatively low-stakes story followed a nervy therapist as she attempted to navigate a malignant curse and her own childhood trauma, this follow-up shows that the rich and famous get sad sometimes, too.

Catching up with afflicted host Joel (Kyle Gallner) in the days since the previous film ended, this sequel travels further down the chain to global pop sensation Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), who picks up her sinister follower while trying to score from a seedy dealer (Lukas Gage).

You know the drill – you see the smile, you die. Riley is now cursed and will be forced to spend the next few days bearing witness to the entity’s various manifestations before being doomed to kill herself too.

Like predecessor Rose, Skye is already going through some shit. The first film wasn’t exactly subtle – a thinly veiled, vaguely unkind allegory for how poor mental health and trauma are passed down to survivors – and this sequel is just as ungraceful in its metaphors. Skye’s pain is both mental and physical, with the star having barely recovered from a serious road accident which left her partner dead and her body riddled with scars.

It’s not exactly the ideal time for a world tour, but showbiz never sleeps. Mom (Rosemarie DeWitt) is determined to get Skye back on the train, mental health be damned. Where the first film explored childhood trauma and guilt, this sequel delves into the unhappiness of the rich and famous, slyly mirroring the pain, exploitation and public humiliation of such famously troubles stars as Britney, Lindsay and Amanda.

Beyond the glitzy packaging, Smile 2 is more of the same – the same curse, the same jump scares – even the same twists. However, it’s a marked improvement over what came before, upping the ante on what was already a perfectly respectable supernatural thriller. Scott is phenomenal in the lead, and the film rings true where many failed before, making her actually feel like this universe’s Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga.

The film’s jump scares are effective but largely unnecessary – as shoehorned in as the Voss water product placement. The story is solid enough without, furthering the first film’s lore (thanks to an info-dumping Peter Jacobson) while keeping it just vague enough to brush its semantics under the rug.

Finn has honed his eye for frightening imagery in the years since Smile, and this sequel is full of it, perverting the visual language of Skye’s dance routines for its own sinister purpose. Elsewhere, a greasy fanboy gets too close for comfort, and a man smashes his own face in with a lifting weight. Images of Skye screaming in agony in the aftermath of a horrific accident are among the film’s most troubling, no smiles in sight here.

As Skye begins to unravel publicly, a morbid sense of humour comes to the fore, utilising Skye’s showbiz trappings to further her torment and humiliation. Its final destination may be somewhat obvious, but the surrounding pageantry keeps things feeling fresh and propulsive to the last.

Smile 2 is a confident version of the horror sequel, repackaging everything that worked from its predecessor while offering a unique perspective in the glamorous yet unrelentingly grim world of Skye Riley.

SMILE 2 is out now in UK cinemas.

MEMBERS CLUB

An ageing group of male strippers get far more than they had bargained for when they take on a private gig at a desolate members-only club in rural Essex. Led by absentee dad Alan (Dean Kilbey, also starring in this year’s Abigail and Derelict), the lads must attempt to survive the night when they are served up as guests of honour in an occult ritual intended to raise an ancient force from beyond the grave.

This crude comedy-horror assembles a lively cast of British talent, including Sightseers star Steve Oram, Peep Show’s Liam Noble (Big Mad Andy, to you and I), and This Is England star Perry Benson. It’s a less misogynistic version of the sort of thing Danny Dyer would have starred in during his early 00s horror phase, eschewing the casual sexism in favour of fart gags and ripped-off willies.

Opening on a sign which reads ‘No Dogging,’ it’s clear what kind of path Members Club is headed down, and writer and director Marc Coleman rarely deviates from course. A subplot involving Alan’s daughter and her dimwit best friend is clumsily inserted, but Kilbey’s grubby earnestness helps see the film through its less convincing moments. If not all of the jokes land, something more (or less) palatable is never far off, including cameos from Peter Andre (!) and Alan Ford.

It’s The Full Monty by way of Green Room and From Dusk Till Dawn, with all of the gross-out humour and bloody violence that entails. A crude, oafish work, but one that possesses a certain vulgar charm.

MEMBERS CLUB is released on digital platforms on October 21st.

SALEM’S LOT (2024)

Stephen King’s second full-length novel, Salem’s Lot, was released in 1975 and is probably his most dramatized work of fiction. The 1979 miniseries starring David Soul is seared into the memories of those who were terrified by it at the time. However, this new no-frills version from Gary Dauberman – a film that languished in limbo for a couple of years and was in danger of slipping into ‘tax write-off’ oblivion for a while – does a pretty good job of retelling a familiar story with a few embellishments to give the narrative a new spring in its step, particularly towards its fiery climax.

Author Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman) arrives in his hometown of Jerusalem’s Lot in Maine to write a book about his childhood. He is attracted to local girl Susan Norton (Mackenzie Leigh). He is intrigued to learn that the long-abandoned Marston House that overlooks the town has a new owner in the shape of the mysterious Richard Straker (a ripe performance from Pilou Asbaek), who covertly instals a coffin in the basement of the house. Before long, a local kid goes missing – sacrificed to the vampire Barlow (Alexander Ward) – and his brother dies of pernicious anaemia but is soon resurrected as one of the undead. Ben begins to realise that there’s a sinister presence lurking at the Marston House, and before you can say “What nice sharp teeth you have”, he and a group of allies – Susan, local medic Dr Cody (Alfre Woodard), faithless priest Father Callahan (John Benjamin Hickey) and brave youngster Mark Petrie (Jordan Preston Carter) are fighting for their lives as the town is overrun by blood-suckers.

Salem’s Lot mercifully doesn’t try to reinvent vampires as romantic figures or use them as allegories for the trials and tribulations of growing up different in a world that doesn’t understand; these are ruthless, snarling, ghastly monsters, and they’re all the better for it. In fact, Salem’s Lot as a whole is better for having no pretensions, no hidden meanings, and no purpose other than to present a spooky horror story about mad-eyed vampires on the rampage. The action is brisk and well-staged, the denouement is particularly clever, and if our hero Ben Mears is a bit listless and uninspiring in the first half of the story, he really springs to life in the third act as all Hell breaks loose in Salem’s Lot. This new version of the story doesn’t add anything new to the vampire genre, but it really doesn’t need to. Bloody good fun for the Halloween ‘season’.

SALEM’S LOT is in UK cinemas now and streaming on Max in the USA.

V/H/S/BEYOND

Since the V/H/S anthology horror franchise has moved to Shudder post the franchise’s nadir V/H/S: Viral, the results have been excellent. In fact, after three sequels already, this is becoming a much anticipated yearly treat from the horror streamer, and that is a really neat trick!

So, after arguably the best outing in the series in V/H/S/85, does V/H/S/Beyond keep the momentum going? Absolutely! Beyond may not be the best in the series but is certainly another winner in the Shudder era of the franchise.

Unlike prior instalments, Beyond aims for a more sci-fi overarching theme to its segments with a frame story (Abduction/Adduction) presented as a documentary looking into supposed VHS taped evidence of an alien encounter. The intervening segments are as follows: Jordan Downey’s Stork, Virat Pal’s Dream Girl, Justin Martinez’s Live and Let Dive, Christian and Justin Long’s Fur Babies and Kate Siegel’s Stowaway.

The sci-fi/alien theme was technically prevalent and rather inspired, though one or two segments stray a bit from the theme, and there is the odd break in the found footage rules at times (a soundtrack in one of the segments) and the wraparound frame narrative was very weak (V/H/S/85 remains the only instalment that nails the wraparound) never really delivering on the build but there is tonnes of fun to be had with the sheer insanity and inventiveness on show through all the short stories.

Stork is a Raid style bloodbath with a twisted payoff tapping into a fun mythos, Dream Girl is a Bollywood infused Carrie inspired takedown of celebrity worship, Live and Let Dive a frantic and grisly dive into UFO chaos that is incredibly shot, Fur Babies is varying degrees of messed up and Long has used a few beats of his own horror career on this one, and Stowaway is a building and human drama into pursuing an obsession and losing yourself, ending with a nightmarish result.

Throughout there are excellent creature designs, buckets of practically accomplished gore, and real standout stories (Justin Long, the hell is wrong with you man?!), and moments (another reason we’ll never skydive!!). Gruesome, constantly interesting and off the leash crazy at points.

We look forward to next year’s entry in what has now become a much welcome pre-Halloween Shudder tradition, and at this rate, it could run to infinity and, ahem, beyond.

V/H/S Beyond is showing now on Shudder.

THE CROW

If a new adaptation of The Crow seems to have been in the making for a long damn time, that’s because it has! Changing shape a lot over the years, with everyone from Bradley Cooper to Ryan Gosling to Jason Momoa attached to it. We finally have the finished product in Rupert Sanders’ new adaptation of James O’Barr’s comic book series.

In this incarnation Bill Skarsgård stars as Eric, a struggling addict still impacted by his early childhood trauma, who – at his rehabilitation centre – comes across Shelly (FKA Twigs), a young woman escaping a nasty person in a position of power who not only is trying to silence her but take her very soul. In each other, Eric and Shelly find a love each never thought imaginable, until Shelly’s past comes back to haunt them both…except some things never die.

The Crow (2024) is admirable in striving to be different (think supernatural John Wick in its aim) and with this property, you really need to be because Brandon Lee’s silhouette still resides over this character onscreen and the 1994 film remains a definitive piece of craft that spoke to so many and resonated further because of the tragic story on and off screen. So you are very much in a tough spot with any adaptation of this one.

Credit to Bill Skarsgård and FKA Twigs, who each give it a good go in the leading roles, and do start the film off in some promising fashion but in spite of one strong ganrly action sequence at an opera house towards the end of the movie, this film was a muddled mess overall.

The script is inconsistent, with fluctuations in tone and some really hammy dialogue. The mythology is even more all over the place, and as erratic as the titular soul-carrying birds, as evident by the ‘there it is’ ending. Which falls victim (victims aren’t we all?) to rather overly ambitious sequel baiting.

Really this film suffers most because of its overcomplification of The Crow’s poignant story of undying love and soul, which leaves this version feeling distant from the source material. The rules are never properly set in this film’s world of the living and dead, and the added immortal demonic antagonist sub-plot is indebted completely to Danny Huston’s effortless menace but never gives the villainous part he portrays any real reason for being here.

Despite the odd violent flourish, this film is not artistically satisfying nor as emotionally impactful as it should be, leaving it not only a little lifeless but also in the shadow completely of both the iconic 1994 adaptation and the comics as well. Dead on arrival sadly.

The Crow is still showing in select UK cinemas, and is available now on Digital release.

WE ARE ZOMBIES

Based on comic series The Zombies that Ate the World, We Are Zombies throws us into a slightly unusual zombie apocalypse: one where the dead are just a nuisance. They don’t feed on human brains, they don’t spread a virus, they’re just sort of there, refusing to die, as one of the ‘living impaired’.

In this shuffling corpse-riddled near future, three slackers try intercepting regular zombie collections and find their bungled heist leads to kidnaps, murders, complicated and slightly unfathomable corporate plots and quite a lot of blood, gore, and smutty jokes along the way.

There are some interesting ideas in We Are Zombies, particularly the use of the living impaired as ‘art’ by a kind of Gunther Von Hagens character (although the uber camp artist is not so interesting or original) as well as other forms of zombie exploitation, from zero wage labour to zombie-themed cam shows for ZILF fetishists. However the script is more interested in what shenanigans it can throw its unlikely heroes into and thus loses track of any satire that might be up for grabs, in spite of it also making space for a liberal peppering of pretty juvenile gross-out gags that mostly fail to land (although the fallout from a zombie pedestrian impact is admittedly quite funny).

The key saving grace is three likeable leads (Alexandre Nachi, Derek Johns, and Megan Peta Hill) whose charisma supplants a lot of the work the script fails to do for their characters, and a general feel of a whole cast having a good deal of fun with their roles, even when the dialogue does them no great favours. Fun but thin, We Are Zombies may leave you hungry for something more substantial, or with more braaaains.

JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX

There’s a somewhat muddied and confused narrative currently prevalent regarding Todd Phillips’ mesmerising and utterly confounding Joker: Folie à Deux, the unexpected – and initially unwanted – sequel to his stunning 2019 Joker. It’s hard to remember a film that’s been more vilified, more pilloried and, ultimately, more misunderstood than this vital, edgy, dark, disquieting yet gloriously magical film that isn’t exactly a sequel to the original but rather the second half of a story that we didn’t realise hadn’t been fully told. In many ways, Joker: Folie à Deux is the second piece of a two-piece jigsaw; it not only completes this story of Joaquin Phoenix’s troubled, psychotic Arthur Fleck, but it also ties up all the loose ends and unanswered questions from the first film in a way that’s beautiful, heartfelt and even morbidly appropriate.

Perhaps the reasons for this huge wave of hatred that has risen up towards the film are two-fold; the casting of Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel led many to believe that the film was going to take the well-worn path of creating the infamous Joker/Harley Quinn criminal dynamic from the DC comics and the revelation that this was going to be a ‘musical’ caused many to throw their arms up in despair and wail that the fans were being betrayed and let down and not given what they wanted. To hell with that.Joker: Folie à Deux is, in fact, not a musical – at most, it’s a jukebox musical, and its musical numbers (gorgeously staged and performed, incidentally) are clearly figments of Arthur’s twisted, struggling imagination and Todd Phillips and Phoenix would never have been interested in doing the obvious and just turning Joker/Harlequin into the criminal lunatics we’ve seen time and time again. This isn’t the story of the Joker as we’ve seen him in comics and films over the decades. This is a new spin inspired by that character, but it is not slavishly recreating him and his story. This Joker is as different to Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson, and César Romero as the Batman played by Christian Bale, Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Robert Pattinson, and Adam West are from one another. This is a Joker whose destiny isn’t to become the Clown Prince of Crime; this is a Joker who is just a lost, abused, isolated, disturbed loner, and fans who were expecting this take on the character to be twisted into something they more readily recognise from comic book/cinematic history were always on a hiding to nothing. But to rise against the film and decry it for what it is – a work of art and not a more traditional comic book movie – seems to suggest that there’s perhaps a huge portion of the original Joker film audience didn’t really understand at all. Joker and Joker: Folie à Deux are resolutely not comic book movies – and they’re all the better for swimming against the still-prevailing cinematic tide.

Joker: Folie à Deux leans heavily on the events of the first film – of course it does, it’s a continuation of that story. Arthur Fleck (Phoenix delivering another astonishing performance that easily deserves him a second Oscar nod for the role regardless of the film’s box office) has been in prison in Arkham for two years, awaiting his trial for the murders he committed in the first film. He’s constantly bullied and abused by the prison guards, especially the sneering, sadistic Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson). Arthur tries to present as a changed man, but his Joker persona is never far from the surface, and when he chances upon Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) in the prison, the pair form a bond that soon seems to turn romantic. As the trial begins, Arthur plays to Lee, apparently released from Arkham as Arthur is felt to be a bad influence on her, in the gallery as the DA Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) presents a strong case against Arthur. Arthur eventually dismisses his attorney and represents himself. The film spends most of its time either in Arkham or the courtroom. The court sequences are magnetic, Pheonix delivering a performance of barely-contained insanity that finally boils over when he decides to speak for himself. It’s spicy, jagged stuff, and as Arthur becomes more and more convinced that he’s found his soulmate in Lee, his musical fantasies become more extravagant, simultaneously joyous and yet full of dark portent. The film quite literally explodes in the final act as Arthur races headlong into his only true destiny…

Joker: Folie à Deux clearly isn’t a film for everyone – but then what film or work of culture ever is? But despite whatever Rotten Tomatoes pundits, foaming clickbait-obsessed YouTube ‘critics’ and even the wider, professional critical world might tell you, this is by no degree a bad film – it’s far too immaculately-crafted for that to be even a remote possibility. It isn’t, clearly, what many of them wanted or expected, and that has led to a degree of exasperation and vitriol that’s wildly out of proportion to the actual quality of the film; it’s almost as if they’ve closed off their own proper critical faculties purely because it’s a film that swerves off into areas that they can’t quite come to grips with. And that’s exactly what we have – a film that confounds all expectations, subverts them, and upends itself into something quite unlike any other movie that takes its cues, even as remotely as this, from the world of comic book legend. People clearly don’t like Joker: Folie à Deux and that’s fine. But the winners here are the people who get it, understand it, embrace it, and appreciate its beauty and genius. Joker: Folie à Deux is definitely not what we might have expected, and it’s probably not even what we deserve. But like its predecessor, it’s an extraordinary, extravagant, and audacious piece of filmmaking that makes us feel uneasy and uncomfortable and, at times, fills us with joy. Joker: Folie à Deux is anything but a cinematic folly. Outstanding.

JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX is on general release now

TERRIFIER 3

Move out of the way Tim Burton, Damien Leone has made a new nightmare before Christmas, and it takes no prisoners! Terrifier 3 is definitely the biggest and bloodiest chapter yet, with Art the Clown wanting to add a bit of terror to the Yuletide season. Once again, David Howard Thornton lives and breathes the murderous antagonist, every gesture dripping in both terror and comedy. Equally, Lauren LaVera cements herself in the pantheon of Final Girls with this film boasting her strongest performance yet as Sienna – there is nothing that will break her, and LaVera makes that known.

With a bigger budget comes bigger and bloodier kills. Here, the FX team have raised the bar even higher, reaching new levels of horror and even besting Allie’s infamous Terrifier 2 bedroom scene. These new set-pieces go above and beyond – each kill creative, inspired, and deeply horrifying… so much so, you may want to hold onto your stomach to make it out of the screening safely! Writer-director Leone adds even more context to the lore introduced in the second film and manages to both answer some of our questions and raise new ones regarding Art’s connection to the Shaws. Ultimately, Terrifier 3 is for the diehard fans, and the subtle bits of fan service throughout this film will make you feel warm inside.

All in all, this is the undisputed best entry of the franchise. It has everything you would want in a Terrifier film: blood, fun, and even more blood. This film is truly a feat of greatness and will not disappoint. If Art the Clown weren’t already a horror icon, he would be after this!

TERRIFIER 3 is in cinemas from October 11th