Review Category: Movie

A teenage girl fancies herself a modern Joan of Arc in this adaptation of Don Roff’s best-selling novel Clare at 16. Directed by Mitzi Peirone and starring Bella Thorne as the titular Clare, its story follows the teenage serial killer as she investigates a human trafficking conspiracy on her own doorstep.

The murderous high schooler may or may not know how Joan of Arc felt, but she’s doing good work regardless – offing creeps and psychos in small town America. And, if all the recent disappearances are anything to go by, there’s a few of them about.

This black comedy thriller plays somewhere between Dexter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, balancing Clare’s murderous proclivities with her high school antics; starring in the school play one minute, investigating a sleazy sex dungeon the next. If it feels like a TV show, it’s at its strongest when it leans into its monster-of-the-week type story, with Clare searching for clues at a boozy house party and purposefully getting herself kidnapped by the comically incompetent villains.

Unfortunately, Thorne is a vacuum in the leading role, failing to sell either dangerous serial killer or mischievous schoolgirl. She’s better when she’s exploring Clare’s sad past, but the character is never as interesting as the things she does. Thankfully, Rebecca De Mornay and Frank Whaley are on hand to liven things up as Clare’s gran and the, uh, dead mailman, respectively. Ryan Phillippe’s role in the thing is obvious, but what the film is really lacking is convincing villains, and there’s never a sense that Clare has met her match in the weirdos and losers she faces here.

Saint Clare’s goofier elements clash with its heavy-handed religious imagery and its star’s po-faced attempts at seriousness. There’s a fun Jennifer’s Body buried in there somewhere, but it never comes together into a cohesive whole.

SAINT CLARE premiered at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 25th, 2024 and will be released on digital via 101 Films later this year – date TBC.

Zoe Kravitz’s feature debut is a bold, confident, and quietly discomfiting story of abuse, terror, and bloody revenge that takes its cues, unconsciously or not, from the likes of Get Out, The Menu, Promising Young Woman, and even Knives Out: Glass Onion. It’s also quite clearly a #metoo-influenced look at toxic masculinity taken to extremes, the corrupting nature of power, influence, and wealth, and especially how people – women in particular – are often expected to sideline or even forget traumatic events in their lives. It may be a late entry into this particular thriller subgenre – it might even come across as a little dated in some regards – but it’s a gripping, coruscating work that probably deserves the ‘trigger warnings’ prefacing many cinema screenings.

Cocktail waitress Frida (the striking and expressive Naomi Ackie) meets charismatic tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum at his most laidback) at a fundraising gala. The attraction between them is instant, and he invites her and her friend Jess (Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat) to join him and a group of friends on a dream vacation on his private island. At the island, they’re showered with lavish gifts, wined and dined and tempted to imbibe potent hallucinogenic drugs. The vacation turns into a Bacchanalian whirlwind of parties that spiral out of control to the extent that Frida and Jess can’t remember everything that’s happened and start to suspect that all is not as it seems in Slater King’s too-good-to-be-true paradise. Then Jess disappears… and none of the other girls on the island seem to be able to remember that she was ever there.

Blink Twice is in places a brutal and disquieting experience and Kravitz deftly builds up a sense of dread and unease as the paradise island vacation is slowly revealed as something else entirely. Kravitz seems to focus on close-ups and medium shots deliberately – there are precious few long shots here – that increase the sense of intimacy between audience and character so that we are as disorientated and disenfranchised as they are, their immediate surroundings out of shot almost as if the fact of where they are is less important than the situation they’re in and the things they’re experiencing and, very often, quickly forgetting. This is very much an actor’s film and the performances are stunning, from Ackie as the innocent caught up in a nightmare and realising that something very odd is going on in King’s world to Channing Tatum, who overplays King’s oily charm until the final act where the tables are turned and the payback begins. Fine supporting performances too from Christian Slater, Haley Joel Osment, Kyle MacLachlan, and, particularly, Geena Davis as  Slater’s away-with-the-fairies assistant Stacy.

Blink Twice is a tough and demanding viewing experience. Its morality is generally pretty grey, but ultimately, this is a film about manipulation, memory and the monstrous ways human beings can treat one another. Whatever you take from it, you’re sure to agree it’s a striking and impressive debut from Zoe Kravitz.

BLINK TWICE is on general release now.

Kibby (Andrea Figliomeni) works at a video digitising shop, copying old, ‘dead’ formats to files so they can be enjoyed anew. On the same day as someone leaves a smelly, gunky VHS player at their door, a trans man Gator (Chrystal Peterson) brings in a bunch of tapes of her father’s anarchic punk band destroying computer equipment. Kibby’s attraction to Gator confuses her, but they go on a few dates to get to know each other. Unfortunately, since her contact with the video machine, she’s begun feeling strange; disassociating from her surroundings. When she feels sick, a piece of video tape comes from her mouth. She splices it into a cassette out of curiosity, only to discover a message to her from a mysterious man, Dr Analog (Hunter Kohl).

There’s an obvious theme in Video Vision: transformation; be it Kibby’s monstrous tape-spewing alter ego, Gator’s physical transition, and even the simple act of copying one so-called outdated format to a more modern one (which will no doubt soon be superseded). Writer/director Michael Turney (Danny Pennington in 1990’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!) has crafted a visually stunning film, particularly if you’re a fan of looking at old media items. While the script goes overboard a little on some issues, it’s always handled sensitively and level-headed. It might not be the successor to Videodrome that we’d want it to be, it works steadfastly in its own space. While some of us might relate more to the shop owner Rodney (Shelley Valfer) in his care of items cast aside by ever-evolving consumerism than Dr Analog, there’s no doubt many who will feel ‘seen’ by the romance between Kibby and Gator.

Genre films are constantly pushing boundaries, and Video Vision certainly manages that. We hope it finds its audience to be a cult favourite in years to come.

VIDEO VISION screened at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest.

Director Coralie Fargeat exploded onto the scene in 2017 with Revenge, a shockingly brutal version of the rape-revenge film, marking her as a talent to watch. The French filmmaker returns to FrightFest with this Hollywood-set body horror, starring Demi Moore as ageing celebrity Elisabeth Sparkle. Learning on her birthday that she is to be fired from her hit show, a desolate Elisabeth resorts to a black market drug known as ‘The Substance’ – a cell-replicating serum which creates a younger, better version of herself, who she names Sue (Margaret Qualley). That it looks like Herbert West’s Re-Animator formula should be warning enough that this is a bad idea.

Regardless, Elisabeth persists, and this miracle drug comes with a set of Gremlins-like rules which must be adhered to – the most important of which being that she and Sue must switch back every seven days, with no exceptions. And, as Sue’s fame grows, so does her reluctance to go back to being plain-old Elisabeth. The two sides of her personality soon find themselves at odds, with Sue taking more and more each time. And what has been lost cannot be recovered…

As Revenge shattered audiences’ perception of what a rape-revenge film could or should look like, so The Substance is a body horror revolution, fusing the DNA of Brian Yuzna’s Society with a hagsploitation version of The Nutty Professor; throwing Barbie into a blender with David Cronenberg’s The Fly. From the grotesque, gruelling gore to Dennis Quaid gluttonously demolishing a bowl of seafood, there’s something to upset every tummy in town.

Moore and Qualley are magnetic as the warring halves of one woman’s personality, with the former bravely baring all as the sad, angry Elisabeth. For all the bloodshed, The Substance’s most affecting scene is one in which the older woman prepares for a date, tormented by visions of her younger, ‘better’ self. The allegory for feminine self-loathing and internalised misogyny is not subtle, but nor does it need to be – The Substance is a scream of fury, and the heated battle between Elisabeth and Sue shows how vicious self-hatred can be.

Eventually, that anger turns outward, and into cries of hurt and anguish. All bets are off as the curtain is raised on its final act, a transcendent work of boobs-to-the-wall Grand Guignol which cements The Substance as one of the most incendiary body horror films of all time.

THE SUBSTANCE premiered at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 26th, 2024.

The latest documentary from Sarah Appleton and Phillip Escott (The Found Footage Phenomenon) puts its focus on the 21st-century resurgence of horror that was bloodier, nastier, and a lot of fun.

There’s an interesting mix of talking heads recounting their personal journey as well as an overview of the genre’s evolution in the new millennium. This eclectic bunch includes familiar faces such as Joe Lynch, Neil Marshall, and Christopher Smith, but there some people who don’t normally get their time in front of the camera. There’s interesting input from Xavier Gens (Frontier(s)), Srdjan Spasojevic (A Serbian Film), Thomas Fenton (I Spit on Your Grave 2), and Simon Barrett (You’re Next). Some are underused, such as Alice Lowe (Prevenge) and Rob Zombie, but their input is still important.

From Final Destination to ‘torture porn’, the doc covers every element of modern horror. The aftermath of the horrendous terrorist attacks on 9/11 weighs heavy on the start of the 21st century, and there’s the commentary puts a lot of perspective on how the genre reacted and responded to the building fears of the public.

Generation Terror is an engaging and enlightening example of how to do documents right, providing an overview of how the horror genre developed into the slick bloodbaths we see today.

GENERATION TERROR screened at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest.

 

Earth’s oceans first formed some 3.8 billion years ago. During mankind’s brief but eventful stay on this rock, they’ve largely been in the same place, moving with the tides, occasionally throwing up an iceberg or a tsunami or two, but largely keeping to themselves. What Survive asks is “what if they moved?”

Celebrating their son’s birthday on a yacht, a family find themselves caught up in Earth’s latest mass extinction event, and one which sees the oceans uprooted when the magnetic poles suddenly reverse. What this means for Julia (Émilie Dequenne), Tom (Andreas Pietschmann) and their children (Lucas Ebel and Lisa Delamar) is that the oceans have gone walkies – leaving their yacht stranded (but otherwise intact!) on a now dried-up ocean floor. The family must learn to adapt to this new world… and the terrors that have very suddenly been dredged up.

After a striking, genuinely tense opening, this high-concept apocalyptic thriller soon finds itself adrift in a vast ocean of silliness. A quest to get the family moving is concocted by director Frédéric Jardin and writers Alexandre Coquelle and Mathieu Oullion, the clock ticking before the poles reverse again. Along the way, the family are faced with all of the devastation that humanity has caused; fields of toxic waste barrels, mountains of plastic and a dogged asshole (Arben Bajraktaraj, genuinely unsettling) who’s hunting them for… reasons.

All of this was very clearly filmed at the bottom of a dusty ravine, but some effort is made to resemble the ocean floor – sprinklings of dead fish, a rotting whale and an encounter with a hammerhead shark. The film’s production design is ambitious but not always convincing – impressive but far too dry for what is being sold.

But there’s no accusing Survive of being dry, swinging for the fences in a narrative that plays out somewhere between The Day After Tomorrow and Mad Max; one minute the world is being flip-turned upside down, the next, we’re fighting it out with a madman over a can of Heinz baked beans.

Earth’s oceans first formed some 3.8 billion years ago, with our planet exploding into the universe around a billion years before that. If you’re reading this, you just happened to blink into existence at the exact same time as this deeply silly apocalyptic action film.

SURVIVE premiered at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 24th, 2024.

Chained up and crawling to freedom on his hands and knees, a man scrawls a desperate message for help onto a scrap of paper. In his final moments, this miserable, terrified figure shoves his last-ditch SOS into a handily-located mailbox before a brutal and humiliating recapture.

This curious act of desperation kicks off the strangest crime story in the annals of American history – recorded with exacting vision by directors Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy. From here, Post Office celebrity Jasper (Tomas Boykin) picks up the case and sets about solving the mystery of the blood-smeared postcard. Along the way, all the questions you never knew you had about the US Postal Service and 1980s synthesizers will be answered.

Dead Mail doesn’t just commit to the bit, it commits to all the bits, hitting the mark in evoking a bland yet imposing Midwestern setting, imbued with all the texture and grain of 1980s filmmaking. Stars John Fleck and Sterling Macer Jr. inhabit their roles well as the kidnapper and his victim – a portrait of male loneliness and obsession that’s as empathetic toward its characters as it is disturbing. You’ll never look at a tub of Neapolitan ice cream in quite the same way again.

While the rest of the film never surpasses its truly surprising opening first act, it never loosens its grip either, drawing viewers into a weird world of amateur detectives, chicken teriyaki (which does look quite nice) and strange men. It’s Fargo by way of Misery, and those who enjoyed the visual element of Longlegs should find much to like here too, even if it favours absurdism over scares.

Were it the true story it purports to be, Netflix would have had a smash-hit true crime documentary on their hands. As it is, Dead Mail is an offbeat work of precise vision, vividly captured.

DEAD MAIL premiered at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 24th, 2024, and is available to stream now on Shudder.

The gritty British crime thriller is at its grittiest in this revenge story from director Jonathan Zaurin. When her father is brutally murdered, Abigail (Suzanne Fulton) is on the warpath. At the same time (and also before, as the narrative shifts back and forth to and from the aftermath of the crime), a young man (Matt, played by Michael Coombes) struggles with the return of his older brother, Ewan (Pete Bird). As Abigail struggles to let go of her loss, the pair are set on a violent collision course.

‘Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves,’ goes the old Confucius maxim. Rarely before has the hopelessness of vengeance been so hammered home as it is here, in a journey which proves to be an utterly miserable pursuit for Abigail. In a grounded twist on the formula, the film’s female protagonist is no superwoman, nor even particularly competent – she’s just angry and looking for someone to hurt. It’s a powerful performance from Fulton, cutting a striking figure amid the bleakly shot British cityscape.

Coombes, too, impresses as young Matt, a sensitive figure caught up in a terrible situation that quickly spirals out of his control. As the film switches between (desaturated) colour and grainy black-and-white, it lives in the morally grey; its main characters conflicted and messy.

Derelict is a bleak, nihilistic version of the revenge thriller, eschewing the subgenre’s more triumphalist beats in favour of something far more difficult and upsetting.

DERELICT premiered at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 25th, 2024.