Review Category: Movie

What does Jason Voorhees get up to when he’s not hacking horny teenagers into bloody ribbons? If he’s anything like the killer of In a Violent Nature, then it’s a lot of schlepping around the woods, slowly stomping from one victim to the next.

This Canadian slasher film by Chris Nash is unique in that it follows the silent killer (Ry Barrett) from his perspective, opening with his rude awakening in the woods. When idiot teenagers inadvertently raise the rotting monster from his grave, he won’t rest until he’s murdered everything around him into a gory slop.

Billed as an ‘ambient slasher film,’ this experimental take on the subgenre features no score, no soundtrack and minimal dialogue, except for that which is encountered by Johnny on his commute. A crisply-shot Ontarian wilderness ensures that Johnny’s hike never feels like a slog – even if the man does shuffle about like an overburdened Fallout character. The sound design, too, sings, from the chirruping, chittering woodlands to the bone-crunching, squelchy harmonies of Johnny’s violence.

Over fifty years of slasher history will tell us who his victims are and what their conversations are like, so when Johnny catches up with them, the story does so without missing a beat. Would-be final girl Kris (Andrea Pavlovic) makes a lot of minimal screen time, somehow feeling like a fully rounded character despite the fact she’s barely in the thing. Well, it’s hard not to root for the girl when Johnny is out here pulping her friends into bits.

As for Johnny, he’s a Jason analogue with mommy issues of his own and a compelling mythology (mostly Friday the 13th with a little bit of Hatchet, and a snifter of My Bloody Valentine). The antique fireman’s mask and dragging hooks help him to come into his own, while the sheer brutality of the kills set him apart from the rest of his kin.

In a Violent Nature starts slowly; an off-screen slaughter here and a head bisection there, finally peaking in one of the most unique, gratuitous, and mean-spirited kills ever seen in a horror film. It’s not funny, but the extreme violence builds to a point of absurdity, one horrific punchline after the next. It’s the greatest Friday the 13th film never made.

What it doesn’t have, however, is the patience to fully commit to its slow cinema aspirations, cheating by snipping around Johnny’s movements and suddenly giving up on the conceit altogether during the final act. Such compromises ensure narrative structure and keep things flowing, but it’s a disappointing betrayal of the premise.

In a Violent Nature isn’t a reinvention of slasher cinema – but nor does it claim to be. Instead, Nash uses the audience’s familiarity with its tropes to poke fun at horror franchisedom, offering a lesser-seen perspective on the ensuing carnage.

IN A VIOLENT NATURE is in cinemas from July 12th.

“I will not accept a life I do not deserve,” proclaims the inimitable Maxine (fuckin’) Minx as the third entry in Ti West’s horror trilogy begins. Set in 1985, years after her exxxperience in X and decades after Technicolor prequel Pearl, this Hollywood thriller follows the star (Mia Goth) in her anything-goes quest for fame.

This takes her to the set of the horror sequel The Puritan II, directed by Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki). Scoring the lead role, Maxine is convinced that the stardom she so deserves is, at last, at her fingertips. However, there’s the small matter of a serial murderer on the loose – a copycat killer imitating the style (and Satanic branding) of the Night Stalker. And, if Maxine’s dead friends and co-workers are anything to go by, he has it in for Miss Minx. So too, does grubby private dick John Labat (Kevin Bacon) – a disturbing reminder of sins and traumas past.

Like X and Pearl before it, MaXXXine is a pitch-perfect genre pastiche – in this case, aping the maxxximalist style of Brian De Palma and Dario Argento in its tone and seedy visuals. From the sticking plaster on Labat’s nose (how very Chinatown) to a visit to Bates Motel, the film is a love letter to the Hollywood of yesteryear, often to its own detriment.

The visuals are on point, and West’s version of ’80s Los Angeles is a compelling one (once upon another time in Hollywood), but Maxine herself is lost in the stew – the least interesting thing about her own movie. Goth gives a strong performance as Maxine, but she’s outshone by the more vibrant characters – Bacon’s repellent detective; Giancarlo Esposito, playing against type; Debicki’s chilly horror director – and underserved by the writing. There’s little tension to the story itself – it’s hard to play cat-and-mouse when the killer knows where Maxine is at all times, and she’s directly handed his address during the first half hour of the film.

For a woman so fiercely determined to claim what she is owed, Maxine feels less in control of her own destiny than ever – almost declawed as she wanders timidly into the messy, incongruously daft finale.

This is a colourful but uneven closer to the series, impressing with ball-busting gore and slick storytelling but not quite sticking the landing. Maxine Minx deserved better.

MaXXXine is out in UK cinemas now.

Let’s get this out of the way early: writer/director Ti West’s trilogy-capping MaXXXine is no Pearl. The bones of greatness are certainly there, though, and with a firmer handle on what it wants to be, West’s latest could’ve been an all-timer. ’80s Hollywood revived through B-movie gore and era-faithful styling? Mia Goth blowing minds (again)? Kevin Bacon as an amoral PI who becomes tougher and tougher to look at as the story progresses? Giancarlo Esposito cheesin’ it up as a shady talent agent? Colour us invested! Unfortunately, the ghost of a better film hangs over the whole picture, making its actual contents all the more fascinating and frustrating.

On its barest bones, the plot goes a little like this, six years after the events of X, porn actress Maxine Minx vies for fame in Los Angeles. She’s hungry for ‘real’ acting roles, running herself ragged until a dream gig presents itself, the lead in Elizabeth Bender’s (Elizabeth Debicki) horror flick The Puritan II. Jeopardising her flourishing stardom, however, are the Night Stalker killings, which overlap with a more personal threat hell-bent on retribution. Final product aside, this is some of West’s best plotting to date. It’s a shame he doesn’t quite nail down what he wants to achieve here.

MaXXXine‘s prevailing themes – humanity’s desire for fame, how media influences and changes human interaction – feel diluted; there’s too much happening for any of it to make a lasting impression. Making real-life Night Stalker murders the backdrop for an ’80s-set horror flick could’ve gone far conceptually. In fact, for certain writers, that story might’ve told itself. But West isn’t interested in taking that avenue. The utility of the Night Stalker’s narrative starts and stops at its placement as a distraction. The 14-month killing spree doesn’t ever seize the spotlight, but it garners enough attention to interfere with MaXXXine‘s better elements. Taking inventory of everything West packs into the script, you’ve got two serial killer subplots, a family drama, and overspill from the bloodbath on Pearl’s farm. It’s a little too much to wrangle in 104 minutes.

Here’s the thing, though: The Night Stalker is misdirection. The true villain here is one moustache twirl (and moustache) away from feeding Maxine to the foot-board of a train. This cartoonish ostentation works, too, especially as a mirror of Maxine’s thirst for fame. But while vanity, faith, rage, and liberally applied makeup may have ironed this killer into a creaseless vessel for deadly hypocrisy, his presence doesn’t hold a candle to Bacon’s goofy – yet somehow still sinister – PI, John Labat. From the get-go, the character is unquestionably, unabashedly a slimeball. His matted hair, salt-and-pepper grin, and casual creepiness render him simultaneously repulsive and mesmerising, and Bacon seems to have a ball playing up the guy’s seediness.

Then we have Goth, who again flits between relentless longing and ferocious entitlement with disarming ease. She’s quiet, driven, and the X trilogy is the perfect showcase for her. While Maxine Minx isn’t the showstopper Pearl is, both roles benefit from Goth’s uncanny ability to elicit pity, fear, and revulsion almost simultaneously. This has been and will always be the Mia Goth show, and we won’t soon forget it!

MAXXXINE is in cinemas from July 5th

Fears that John Krasinski’s gripping, nail-biting sci-fi/horror series might “do a Cloverfield” in the third entry into what has become an unlikely franchise are mercifully unfounded in A Quiet Place: Day One. Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski (with Krasinski exec producing and sharing a story credit), Day One is as tense and unnerving as the previous two films in the series, but its emphasis on character over spectacle – although there’s plenty of spectacle for action-hounds – makes for a slightly subtler and more intimate piece.

As the title suggests, we’re right back at the start of the chaos as New York is attacked by hordes of vicious, vaguely arachnid aliens that hunt by sound. As in the previous films, the slightest sound – a footstep, the crack of something underfoot, a human cry of sheer terror – spells instant death. But in the hours before the arrival of the creature, we meet Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), suffering from terminal cancer and living with her service cat Frodo (the star of the show in so many ways) in a hospice outside the city. She reluctantly agrees to join a group of fellow patients on a bus trip to the theatre, understanding that there’ll be pizza from her favourite childhood pizza parlour on the way home. But from the outset, it’s clear that something’s not right; jet planes scream overhead, sirens blare in the distance, and there’s a palpable sense of dread and unease building because we, at least, know what’s coming. When it comes, it’s carnage. Meteors, presumably bearing the aliens, bombard the city, and all hell breaks loose.

The city falls silent almost immediately, and Sam meets up with fellow survivor Eric (Joseph Quinn), a shell-shocked English law student. She tries to shake him off and send him toward evacuation boats leaving from the other side of the city, but they stick together and soon form a bond of trust forged from a mutual instinct for survival. Their friendship is gentle and sweet-natured and never descends into mawkishness and sentimentality – Sarnoski sensibly avoids drawing them into a cliched romantic relationship.

There are a number of hugely exciting action sequences and moments of extreme peril for the pair (and Frodo), and despite its relatively small budget of just under $70 million, the film creates a real sense of scale and scenes of New York under attack and its bridges blown up in an attempt to contain the alien threat, are hugely impressive because there’s a sense of torn-from-the-headlines realism to them. We’re familiar with the threat now from the previous films but taking the story back to the very beginning (whilst sharing some connective tissue to the previous films via an appearance from Djimon Hounsou from Part Two) and placing it a recognisable modern urban setting makes them even more implacable and terrifying than ever before.

Scary, suspenseful and driven by two well-developed characters we genuinely care about despite the fact that, by the very nature of the film, they barely speak to one another, A Quiet Place: Day One is another assured and mature entry in possibly the most reliable genre film series of the 21st century.

A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE is in cinemas in the UK and around the world now