Review Category: Movie

DUCHESS

It is lazy critique to label Neil Marshall’s new film simply styled on the cool gangster cliché so prevalent in Guy Ritchie’s most successful output, but it’s also largely accurate. That the conversation even exists is a testament to the cultural impact those movies have and continue to make. As such, any film shouldn’t be judged by comparison but whether it delivers on what it sets out to.

And Duchess, from Neil Marshall and Charlotte Kirk, is a perfectly passable, largely entertaining entry into this very English subgenre.

After meeting the man of her dreams, Scarlett (Kirk) is quickly absorbed into the diamond smuggling world and immediately considers herself one of them – pun intended. When the inevitable happens to her beau – a sadly uncharismatic Philip Winchester – Scarlett, now going by the moniker of Duchess, sets out for revenge.

Channelling themes from Coralie Fargeat’s excellent Revenge from 2007, Duchess pretty much does deliver exactly what you expect. Yes, many of the characters are constructed entirely from scraping the lower reaches of the cliché barrel. Yes, some of the dialogue is a little on the nose. And yes, the chemistry between Kirk and Winchester is tepid. But Marshall is a good director and fits all the pieces together well.

For Kirk’s part, this is the best we’ve seen her, convincing as the revenge-fuelled whirlwind she quickly becomes. Marshall regular Sean Pertwee is always worth watching, while support from Colm Meaney and Stephanie Beacham – pretty much stealing the entire film as a foul-mouthed crime boss – adds depth and credibility.

Duchess isn’t perfect, yet it’s likely the exact film Marshall and Kirk intended it to be.

STING

It’s not been a good year of film for arachnophobes. We’ve had Adam Sandler engaging in philosophical debate with a giant talking spider in Netflix’s Spaceman, and we’ve recently had hordes of spiders swarming through a dilapidated housing complex in Paris in Shudder’s Infested. Now we have Sting, in which an extra-terrestrial eight-legs swells up to enormous proportions and causes chaos in a New York apartment block. Spiders; they’re the new sharks.

Charlotte (Alyla Browne) is a precocious 12-year-old living in a crumbling apartment building with her mother, Heather (Penelope Mitchell), and her stepdad Ethan (Ryan Corr). One day, she discovers a tiny spider in a glowing object that has fallen to Earth nearby. She decides it’s the ideal pet – foolish girl, it’s clearly the worst – and she names it Sting after the lead singer/bass guitarist of her favourite 1980s faux reggae pop band (not really – she’s probably never even heard of Stewart Copeland). Inevitably, as it’s a spider from outer space, Sting starts to grow and despite Charlotte’s best efforts to keep the damned thing under wraps, it escapes and starts to rampage about the building, causing residents to disappear into ventilation shafts and quickly becoming spider-fodder. As the death toll mounts and the spider strikes closer to home, Charlotte discovers a weapon she can use against it – mothball juice (seriously) – and she sets out to find a way to track the thing down (it’s the size of a small car by now), save her family and destroy the monster. Bloody spiders.

Written and directed by Kiah Roache-Turner, Sting is an unpretentious and unstuffy creature feature in the old-school style, favouring practical effects (the big beast is a proper working manipulated prop) over CGI, and it’s all the better (and creepier) for it. There are a number of genuinely flesh-crawling moments – many scenes of people covered in webs – and Alyla Browne rises to the challenge of becoming a junior Sarah Connor as she tools up to rid the world of another awful arachnid with ideas above its station. The final scene inevitably teases a sequel, which might be fun, but surely we’ve had enough (for now) of rampaging, chittering, slaughtering spiders who really should know their place and stay away from decent human beings. But for now, Sting is a win.

STING is out now on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital

ALIEN: ROMULUS

When Alien launched in 1979, the world of sci-fi horror completely changed; the claustrophobic feel of the Nostromo, combined with the heroic and legendary story of Ellen Ripley, captured the attention of anyone who dared to survive its runtime. It was unique and nothing short of groundbreaking. Unsurprisingly, the movie spawned a huge franchise and six movies through Xenomorph and David 8-filled carnage later; the saga is back to provide more nightmares.

Wedged right between Alien and Aliens, Romulus immediately throws us into the gritty life of Jackson Star, a sunless mining colony that hosts our main characters. Rain Carradine (Cailee Spaeny), and her android counterpart Andy (David Jonsson) attempt to leave a dead end career by heading into deep space, but to do so, they’ll need to salvage cryo pods from a nostalgic station called The Renaissance. Right from the get-go, director/writer Fede Álvarez, alongside Rodo Sayagues, emulates a stunning sense of world-building because Jackson Star feels real.

Maybe Fede did his homework, or maybe his love for the franchise is just naturally in his DNA, because Romulus is filled with homage and countless nods to the previous instalments. For any eagle-eyed fan, you’ll love the number of Easter eggs that make an appearance, and you will not forget the shots and sequences that instantly hark right back to classic Ripley moments. For fans of Alien: Isolation (arguably one of the best Alien video games ever made), which is also set between Alien and Aliens, you’ll feel its incredible atmosphere right here.

Every single Alien output is known for its back and forth between a small group of regular people, who unwillingly become heroes through the dire, claustrophobic circumstance that they’re in, and that feeling has been captured once more so effortlessly here. The acting chemistry between the core cast is spot on, with the dynamic between Rain and Andy being a particular highlight, which is important, as androids were so very crucial to Ridley Scott’s initial vision.

The use of practical effects within Romulus is constant. Whether it’s face-huggers flying at the screen or the iconic Xenomorph suit itself, Fede has really respected what makes an Alien movie last a lifetime. Not forgetting to mention that he recruited effects legends Alec Gillis and Shane Mahan to really latch into that scarily realistic feel that fans know so well. Every single minute of the movie has been put under a creative microscope.

On top of tipping the hat to its predecessors, Romulus makes a confident point of proving that new scenarios can be done within this familiar setting, and this might be one of the most important positives about the movie. Homage is good, and nostalgia sells cinema tickets, however, the audience also wants something new, they want a future for their favourite story. With refreshingly slick fight sequences, exciting characters, and an ambitious third act, Fede has achieved that huge responsibility.

Alien: Romulus will launch you out of your seat and give you no chance to catch your breath. It is a gory celebration of every Alien movie that has come before it, and it proves there is still so much life left in this terrifying yet highly intriguing world.

ALIEN: ROMULUS is in cinemas now.

DOGMAN TERRITORY: WEREWOLVES IN THE LAND BETWEEN THE LAKES

Initially, there is much to enjoy about this investigation into numerous unexplained sightings, events, and missing person reports in a rural recreational area on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee. Aaron Deese and Shannon Legro are engaging hosts, albeit somewhat easy on their interviewees. And those interviewees are largely credible, right up to the point where some are not, when theories lean into speculation more akin to the plot of a Marvel movie than a serious quest for the truth.

At the heart of the mystery is an apparent attack on a family out camping in 1982, and our hosts are delving into these reports to prove one way or another if there are dogmen (or werewolves if you prefer, although it seems the former have pointier ears so…dogmen) prowling the area. They even have a supposed survivor of the attack on the telephone at one point who reveals…nothing. He doesn’t like to talk about it, you see.

Undeterred, Aaron and Shannon head out to the park with different local experts to hear tales of sightings and mysterious events, of secret tunnels and supposed dens, and yet they do not visit either. Instead, there is a lot of standing around in the dark, observing very little at all. And then we step over into truly strange territory when one ‘expert’ extolls his theory on portals and different dimensions. And we’re out.

Dogman Territory begins well, has good intentions, and is concerned about a subject most may not have heard much about. But there is little real evidence to support any theory, fantastical or otherwise, and the resulting film is just too bland.

VIDEO SHOP TALES OF TERROR

The crème of UK independent talent comes together with this anthology throwback to the glory (and gory) days of VHS rentals and low-budget thrills.

The wraparound story takes place at Video Dungeon, a remote relic of the eighties, where Clara (Hannah Paterson) has arrived to work off her late fees with the Proprietor (Martin W. Payne, unrecognisable under layers of old-age makeup and with his pants on). As they await a personal appearance from cult movie star Paula Valentine (the gloriously pneumatic Dani Thompson, who also hosts proceedings Elvira-style and appears in all but one story), we’re treated to various movies from the shelves of the store.

The first tale, MJ Dixon’s Egghead, is pure schlock, focusing on a rivalry between two plastic surgeons that culminates with one being permanently deformed. Naturally, Eggbert is back for revenge. It’s rough and ready and thus sets the tone perfectly. Sam Mason Bell’s The Red Lipped Moon is a noir-esque entry in which a drug-addled detective investigates a murder. There’s some nun fun in Andrew Elias’ Fleurs du Mal in which a man envisages video tape back in 1894. Alexander Churchyard and Max Davenport’s Mary Whitehouse, You’re a Cunt, which parodies The Evil Dead while putting the late moral guardian and enemy of video fans front and centre. A sleazy film producer who’s definitely not based on a real person (ahem) and a dejected director are the subjects of Tom Lee Rutter’s These Burnt Children, which is more on-the-nose in places than it has any right to be. Closing things is Vergessen, Michael Fausti’s homage to Nazisploitation, with three female operatives attempting to get secrets from German soldiers. It’s reminiscent of the film within a film in Der Todesking and is handled more seriously than the other stories.

Interspersed throughout are some spot-on spoof trailers that depict the type of fare we could expect in the golden age of video stores, including a wince-inducing but spot-on one from Tony Mardon, Don’t Sit on His Face and the adventures of a saucy video repairman. Laurence R. Harvey is hilarious as a pretentious thespian whose biggest role was Chode the Toad.

This won’t be for you if you have a low tolerance for indie, no-budget filmmaking. If, however, you’re open to the absurd, you can do worse than grab a hot dog and purchase your membership for this store.

VIDEO SHOP TALES OF TERROR is available on digital platforms and the last few limited edition Blu-ray copies can be bought here.

TRAP

M. Night Shyamalan movies are, to borrow from Forrest Gump, like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re going to get. If you’re lucky, you’ll get something chewy, sweet and enjoyable (The Sixth Sense, Signs, Knock at the Cabin), but if you’re unlucky, you’ll get the hazelnut whirl or that horrible one that looks like shards of glass covered in a thin layer of chocolate that makes you wish you’d gone for some fruit instead (Old, The Happening, Lady in the Water). Shyamalan’s latest, Trap, is a bit like the coffee crème – not necessarily the one you hoped for, but tasty enough in its own way.

The problem with Trap is that it’s a really good idea in search of a really good story. If you’ve seen the trailer (which gives away perhaps a little bit too much) then you’ll have a decent grasp on Shyamalan’s central idea. Philadelphia firefighter Cooper Adams (Josh Hartnett) takes his excitable teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a special afternoon concert by the latest pop sensation Lady Raven (Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka – who said nepotism was dead in Hollywood?) Cooper is intrigued to notice a massive and unsubtle police presence at the arena; the Police are literally everywhere. Cooper discovers from an indiscrete T-shirt vendor that the concert is a trap for the notorious local serial killer ‘The Butcher’ – the police have received intel that he’ll be somewhere amongst the crowd. But of course, Cooper is The Butcher, hiding in plain sight, and he starts to work his way around the arena, trying to find a safe escape route for himself and his daughter despite the armed police at every doorway and even up on the roof.

Trap is a prime piece of Shyamalan misdirection that does at least play its hand quite early, but it doesn’t have the courage of its convictions. Shyamalan is clearly unfamiliar with arena concert etiquette – Cooper is constantly slipping away from his daughter and the crowd to case the joint, and despite the fact that the star turn is on stage, the corridors are thronged with concert-goers, and Riley repeatedly joins him, urging him to return to the crowd in time for ‘the next song’. Any tension in the arena – where nothing much really happens except a lot of surreptitious creeping around and Cooper setting off a couple of diversions – runs out after an hour, and Shyamalan moves his dramatis personae into an entirely different location where the increasingly fanciful story becomes even more outlandish as it hurtles towards its thundering climax.

But despite all its faults – you could drive a London bus through the plot holes, and Cooper, in particular, makes one stupid decision obviously designed to give the film a bit more staying power – Trap is shamefully enjoyable. It’s good to see the underrated Hartnett back on screen, Donoghue captures the fizzing excitement of a hormonal teenager at a pop concert, and Saleka Night Shyamalan is surprisingly competent as Lady Raven, the Arianna Grande/Dua Lipa-like purveyor of modern soft pop R’n’B who finds herself out of her stage comfort zone as the film wears on. Veteran Hayley Mills adds some gravitas as the steely police profiler Josephine Grant; we may be overthinking things, but in 1961, she starred in the minor Disney family classic The Parent Trap, so surely her casting in a film where she is literally responsible for trapping a parent can’t be a coincidence.

Trap is high-class hokum, and Shyamalan (who cameos here as Lady Raven’s proud uncle) does not quite deliver on the potential tension inherent in the film’s central idea. However, if your powers of disbelief-suspension are developed enough and you can just sit back and ignore the random illogicality of it all, you may well find that it is, after all, a caramel crème from the top layer – irresistible and enjoyable but probably a bit of a guilty pleasure.

TRAP is on general release now.

COLD BLOWS THE WIND

Cold Blows the Wind is a timely and welcome reminder that you don’t need huge budgets, globe-trotting locations or even a superstar cast to craft a gripping, well-rounded, creepy and atmospheric thriller. Director Eric Williford’s film is very much a chamber piece – most of the action takes place in the remote country lodge where leads Dean (Danell Leyva) and Tasha (Victoria Vertuga) are enjoying a break and celebrating Tasha’s birthday. We discover that when driving home from their celebrations, they hit and injured a jogger – but the couple fears the consequences when it emerges that Tasha was drunk driving. Tasha is keen to get the injured jogger to hospital, but Dean takes a reckless and bloody course of action to protect Tasha and stabs the jogger to death. They bury his body in the nearby misty woods. Then, a mysterious woman named Blair (Jamie Bernadette) turns up at their door seeking sanctuary from a man who’s pursuing her… and she reveals that she saw the pair bury the jogger’s body. She also utters the eerie warning that in the forest, “dead things tend not to stay dead.”

At this point, the film quickly transforms from what initially appears to be a fairly traditional murder thriller into something much more supernatural and, at times, quite unnerving. There’s clearly more to Blair than meets the eye, and when Dean heads back to the forest to check on their handiwork, it becomes evident that Blair isn’t quite who – or what – she appears to be. The scenes between Blair and Tasha crackling with tension and menace and by the time Dean returns from the woods the situation has spiralled out of control, there’s another body to dispose of and Tasha clearly isn’t quite the woman she was.

Cold Blows the Wind benefits not only from a script that dances at the edge of blackly humorous but also from game performances from its cast (particularly the pneumatic Vertuga), who are clearly relishing the crisp, no-nonsense dialogue and the opportunity to take things to the next level when the story demands it. Williford’s direction is accomplished and stylish in a film that belies its doubtless tiny budget and, even when it drifts into more traditional horror territory in the final reels, it never betrays its indie roots yet manages to show better-funded studio horror a clean and bloody pair of heels. A chilling treat.

COLD BLOWS THE WIND is available on digital platforms in the US.

LORE

Four friends take part in a horror-themed excursion to Scotland, settling down by the campfire to share scary stories. Overseen by creepy guide Darwin (Richard Brake), the pals tell tales of invisible monsters, malicious demons and…uh, Rufus Hound.

The British comedian plays skeeve Steve in one of this anthology movie’s more memorable entries – a particularly gory take on folk horror tropes. Elsewhere, a young ne’er do well (Andrew Lee Potts) takes shelter from gangsters in a shadowy warehouse. Then, annoying cinemagoers are stalked to their death by a disgruntled employee. There are other constituent parts to this portmanteau film, some more ridiculous than others, none of them dull.

It’s to genre mainstay Richard Brake’s credit that he manages to keep a straight face throughout all of this. The Rob Zombie favourite is typically menacing as the kind-of Crypt Keeper figure, even if he isn’t particularly well served by the quality of the stories being told. Indeed, there’s a huge distance between Brake’s solemn speechifying, which follows every tale’s end and the absurd twenty minutes preceding. Lore doesn’t deserve him, but he’s here anyway and is far and away its strongest asset.

Still, the direction by James Bushe, Patrick Michael Ryder, and Greig Johnson is competent, and the film maintains a sense of coherency through its short stories and bookends. ‘Mixed bag’ is a cliché in itself, used to describe many an anthology horror film; a mixed bag it may be, but its contents are far from cliché.

LORE will be available on ICON Film Channel from August 26th.

TWISTERS

This spiritual (and belated) sequel to Jan de Bont’s 1996 hit Twisters is a bright and breezy affair (pardon the pun) that harkens back to a slightly more innocent age of disaster movie filmmaking. Twisters feels very much like a film made two years after the original, not 28 years. It’s an exciting, family-friendly movie – there’s no hardcore cussing and no sloppy kissing to irritate the nippers – and it avoids the one thing that made Twister such a frustrating experience. In the original film, it was hard to really care about the characters (the film starred Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, and offered an early role for Philip Seymour Hoffman) because they were constantly putting themselves in danger by throwing themselves into the eye of the storm – often quite literally – when really they should have just turned around and gone home. They were very much the architects of their own considerable misfortune. Mark L. Smith’s screenplay for Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung, papers over this particular narrative crack quite smartly; our protagonists are chasing tornados because they want to ‘tame’ them and bring an end to the death and destruction they cause – and one or two quite poignant scenes set in the aftermath of a twister landing demonstrate just what power these terrifying phenomena are able to unleash.

Twisters is a very human film punctuated by some spectacular visual effects sequences. The increasingly impressive Daisy Edgar Jones plays Kate Cooper, whose college experiments with technology designed to diminish the power of tornados led to a terrible tragedy. Five years later, she’s lured back into the fray by her friend Javi (Anthony Ramos), who’s road-testing new military-designed storm-tracking equipment, but they’re immediately thrown into conflict with swaggering social media storm-chaser Tyler Owens (Glen Powell) and, conveniently, a series of devastating storm systems converge on Oklahoma, the two teams find themselves fighting to stay alive whilst working on a way to control the forces of Nature itself.

Hearty action adventure in the old-school tradition, Twisters doesn’t rewrite the disaster movie rule book, but it does redefine it a bit by giving us characters we can genuinely invest in. Even when it drifts into cliché now and again, it’s bound to bring a smile to your face with its sheer chutzpah and breathless energy. Great fun.

LONGLEGS

Daddies are killing their wives and daughters, and the elusive ‘Longlegs’ (Nicolas Cage) is somehow responsible. Slightly psychic FBI rookie Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is on the case, decoding Longlegs’ letters and her own past to find a killer who’s managed to do so without ever setting foot in his victims’ homes.

The comparisons to The Silence of the Lambs are inevitable but not baseless – largely personified by Monroe’s vulnerable yet competent FBI agent and the horrific crimes she investigates. Visually, it’s part Fincher, part Kubrick, with a baked-in supernatural element which gives the whole thing the feeling of a particularly unsettling X-Files episode.

What Longlegs has that others can only dream of is Nicolas Cage. Our man of constant reinvention, the star has become something of an indie darling during his most recent phase, turning in works of legitimate arthouse horror such as Mandy and Color out of Space. As the Manson-esque figure hiding at the film’s dark heart, Cage digs into his bag of tricks and delivers the precise kind of Nicolas Cage appropriate for the situation – and the film’s best jump scare too.

Director Osgood Perkins keeps his monster obscured just long enough to not turn the whole thing into The Nicolas Cage Show, cranking up the tension in anticipation of Longlegs’ brief but effective screen time. Meanwhile, Monroe compels as the young FBI agent, puncturing the the relentless bleakness of the subject matter with a surprising pinch of awkward humour. Alicia Witt and Kiernan Shipka bolster the uncanny atmosphere as Harker’s mother and a Longlegs survivor, respectively.

The killer’s own ties to Harker ensure she doesn’t have to work too hard for answers, but the film is more interested in building a pervasive sense of dread than in all the procedural footwork anyway. The scares are as surface-level as the 1990s setting and Cage’s caked-on makeup, but they’re certainly there, buried in a sustained, skin-crawling nightmare.

LONGLEGS is out in UK cinemas now.