I was quite upset with Kevin Smith last July 4th. There I was, on my way to a preview screening of Red State, when I got an email telling me that the screening had been cancelled. Fair enough I thought, these things happen. But later that evening I read some stuff about why Smith had decided to cancel the press preview and instead offer places at a future screening to his fans via Twitter, mentioning something about them being more deserving than the ‘shit scribblers’.

Now that hurt. So when the opportunity came to attend a subsequent preview I was cautious to say the least, making sure that the Mrs was on standby with a 50 Hilarious Sporting Injuries DVD and a pot noodle, should I return home early as the result of another cancellation.

However, the film went ahead and after seeing it I can happily say that Kevin Smith (whether he likes it or not) is forgiven. Because as far as I’m concerned, if he keeps making films like this then he can call me and my ilk whatever he likes (within reason). Red State does have its flaws but it’s been a long time since I’ve sat in a cinema and watched something so compelling without having the foggiest about what will happen next or how things are ultimately going to turn out.

As the story gets underway we meet Travis (Michael Angarano) who, on his drive to school, observes members of the Five Points Church picketing the funeral of a gay teenager. After some admittedly awkward exposition whereby a school teacher explains just how bat shit crazy this group is, we then head into horror film territory with a scenario that seems familiar enough: horny teens and the price they’ll have to pay for not being able to keep their hormones in check. Travis and his two friends, Jared (Kyle Gallner) and Billy Ray (Nicholas Braun), have arranged to have group sex with a woman in their neighbourhood. However, shortly after arriving at her trailer they are drugged and subsequently wake up to find themselves in the hands of the Five Points Church and their leader Abin Cooper (Michael Parks). It soon becomes apparent that Pastor Cooper and his congregation aren’t the types to leave the punishment of sinners to the Almighty.

One of the most impressive achievements in this first half hour or so is the way Smith ratchets up the intensity and tension as though he’s been directing thrillers all his creative life. In one extraordinary sequence in particular, Abin Cooper delivers a chilling yet mesmerising sermon to his congregation while a figure that is concealed by a white blanket occasionally stirs on a crucifix behind him. That this sermon lasts for about 10 minutes, the camera seldom straying from Parks, is a testament to the confidence Smith has in both his script and the actor delivering the lines. Parks, who many people will recognise as Texas Ranger Earl McGraw from Kill Bill, Death Proof etc, has rarely been better than he is here, his laid back tone of ‘lets be reasonable about this’ sincerity providing a chilling contrast with the religious insanity that falls so easily from his character’s lips. He also has this way of blinking slowly that in some awful way reveals the immutability of the Pastor’s religious mania, a characteristic he last utilized this well when conveying the ruthless misogyny of Esteban Vihaio, the Mexican pimp he played in Kill Bill Volume 2.

Cruel, taut and unsettling, this first act is dominated by the character of Cooper and it is only when the film moves into its second act and introduces Joe Keenan (John Goodman), an Agent with the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau), that you feel like you can take a deep breath and clear your lungs of some of the malignancy and oppression built up while inside the Five Points abode. Again we have some overdone exposition as Keenan receives a phone call from his superior and is told that he must investigate Cooper’s compound following reports of the possession of illegal firearms. How this investigation will play out given the horror film set-up established so far isn’t easy to predict but it is only when Jared attempts to escape that the film becomes something completely different. It does this, not in a slowly evolving transition from one thing into another but as suddenly and unexpectedly as, well, as a rifle shot ringing out across a still and silent morning landscape as a terrified teenager makes a run for it.

One of the objectives of film is to put us into a place or situation and make us experience those events as though we were there, not merely to observe but to empathize, take part and respond to what we’re seeing. As members of the church pursue Jared through the compound and then the sound of that single rifle shot is heard, there is one glorious moment when the characters on screen seem to share their bewilderment with the watching audience, a moment where none of us, the watchers and the watched, know any more or less than the other for just that single instant. It’s a rare thing to experience in cinema and isn’t something that can be sustained but this instance provides a brilliant undermining of the audience’s omnipotence as events veer off down a path that was completely unexpected.

Once Keenan and his men make it to the compound events conspire to create a scenario in which few characters emerge with any credit, as Smith presents a conflict that shows how easily men (and women) can become inured to the consequences of their own actions most readily when they perceive an offer of absolution from either God or the State. Memories of the Waco siege are evoked as Keenan’s superiors order him to take action that goes against every moral instinct the man has. Personal morality, the desire to do what is right for its own sake, is rendered impotent as Keenan, the one good man in the midst of this insanity, is left bewildered and floundering. He feels powerless and there’s a good chance you will too as you scour the screen for the character on whose shoulders the hopes for some sort of redemptive resolution to the story will rest.

But then just as the film is careening to an ending that threatens to deliver the bleakest finale since The Wild Bunch, we’re taken in another direction with a turn of events that finally enables us to recognise Red State as a Kevin Smith movie. It comes with a punchline that may well split audiences, reminiscent as it is of the rather abrupt conclusion to proceedings in the Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading. I was so utterly thrown by what was going on that I half expected two characters from Smith’s Dogma to show up in the final act (you’ll understand who I mean if you see it), as I really couldn’t imagine what the alternative resolution would be. In deciding to implement such a huge shift in tone Smith takes a risk but somehow it’s one that pays off and for my money he succeeds where the Coens failed, conjuring up a finish that is satisfying and wryly amusing.

Up to that point you’d be hard pressed to recognise this as a Kevin Smith film at all, displaying as it does few of the familiar tropes of slacker culture and an obsession with the minutiae of the everyday that is evident in much of his other work. First it’s a horror, then it’s a war film, then it’s a drama. However, it moves through the gears with such consummate ease that you never feel as though the whole thing is going to spiral out of control at any point, a confidence that is repaid when Smith takes the chequered flag with some style before whipping off his crash helmet and revealing it was him behind the wheel all along.

With Red State, Smith isn’t saying anything particularly original or profound about religion, tolerance or belief, but he does say it all with such hellfire and brimstone intensity that I was happy to watch and listen anyway. I’ll admit that much of my enjoyment was derived from how utterly this film confounded my expectations, so I’m not sure how well its narrative would stand up on a second viewing once its surprises and inventive twists have been revealed. But for now I’m just delighted that Smith has proven himself to be a filmmaker whose movies are more worthy of attention than his pronouncements on social networking sites and, with Red State, he has made his finest picture in years.

Expected rating: 6 out of 10

Actual rating:

Red State is in UK cinemas now

Now I’ll freely admit that ‘A Lonely Place To Die’ is at best borderline ‘Starburst’ material – I suppose part of the movie’s climax, shot amidst a ‘Wicker Man’-esque local pagaent edges the film towards our remit – but some familiar horror movie tropes are utilised here and there to give what is essentially a familiar ‘vacation-goes-wrong’ thriller a bit more edge than many of its type.

As a buttocks-on-couch kinda guy, I really don’t see the appeal of mountain-climbing or really anything else much associated with being up very high dangling on a bit of rope. But Alison (Melissa George) and her friend Ed (Ed Speleers) seems to be having a fine old time with their friends clambering about in the Highlands and spinning around on ropes and even an accident which almost kills Ed doesn’t dampen their enthusiasm. Pressing on into the cold, wild countryside, they discover a breathing tube sticking out of the ground and they quickly rescue from a makeshift coffin a terrified young Serbian girl who can’t speak a word of English. As they set off to return the girl to the nearest town, through harsh and unwelcoming Scottish terrain, they’re under attack by the kidnappers (one of whom is played by the brilliant, underrated Sean Harris). But the kidnappers are being tracked too, by the girl’s desperate, ruthless father who will stop at nothing to get her back.

 

‘A Lonely Place To Die’ is derivative stuff but director (and co-writer) Julien Gilbey tells his tale with some style and scale, the remote forbidding Highland setting giving our reluctant heroes  a third antagonist to struggle against and Melissa George, fast becoming the go-to girl for low-key thrillers and horror movies (‘30 Days of Night’, ‘Triangle’) really throws herself into her role as the tough, no-nonsense action hero battling to stay one step ahead of her pursuers even if her determination to save a foreign girl she can’t even communicate with seems a bit overwhelming considering the personal sacrifices she has to make to protect someone she’s only just met.

 

For the first couple of acts, ‘A Lonely Place To Die’ is a brisk and bloody thriller, its bleak locations, often stunningly-photographed by Gilbey, giving the movie a real sense of desolation and hopelessness. Things start to go a bit wrong in the last third, however, as the survivors of the group make their way to a nearby Scottish village in the middle of some seasonal pagan festival and the film loses its bite and a bit of its focus as the ‘real world’ impinges on the storyline and Alison takes refuge at the local Police station, even though she’s not really safe there for very long.

 

Sadly the tension seems to dribble away for the rest of the film as the kidnappers rampage about the village, Harris’s character meets up with – and tries to bluff – the girl’s father who has her own bunch of assassins on hand. By the time the film rushes to its fiery conclusion the plot’s lost much of its appeal, any sense of mounting dread and horror has evaporated, sacrificed for the sake of a few shoot-outs but there’s at least some shred of satisfaction in seeing the merciless Harris getting his come-uppance.

 

Enjoyable without being  especially memorable ‘A Lonely Place To Die’ is efficiently-made and has its moments and least marks Gilbey out as a director who, with a stronger story and perhaps a greater faith in his original concept – the Highland chase scenario would have been enough if he could have just maintained it – could be capable of something very special indeed in the future.

 

Expected rating: 6 out of 10

 

Actual rating:

A Lonely Place To Die is in UK cinemas now

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

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

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