Review Category: Movie

After desecrating your Facebook auntie’s favourite cartoon teddy bear with last year’s Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, director Rhys Frake-Waterfield returns to 100 Acre Wood to violate silly old Pooh afresh.

A scrappy, low-budget work of Poohsploitation, the original Blood and Honey was about as good as anyone had any right to expect: impressively brutal but marred by bad performances and distastefully misogynistic violence. This sequel feels like Frake-Waterfield’s attempt to re-do the things that didn’t work the first time – with the original Blood and Honey existing in-universe as a cinematic adaptation of events experienced by Christopher Robin (Scott Chambers).

Now reviled by a community who believe him responsible for Pooh’s killing spree, Christopher lives at home with his parents (Alec Newman and Nicola Wright) and little sister (Thea Evans). Attempting to come to terms with his trauma, Christopher’s therapy sessions begin to unearth a dark secret from his past… and one which may reveal the origins of Pooh, too.

Blood and Honey II is an improvement over its predecessor by every conceivable benchmark, from the surprisingly decent performances to the moody cinematography and creative violence. The film does away with the original Pooh’s more cartoonish features, re-imagining the beast as something leaner and far meaner than before. Pooh (Ryan Oliva) comes accompanied by chums Piglet, Owl, and Tigger, each given the same edgelord makeover. With Piglet the Leatherface to Pooh’s Victor Crowley, that leaves Owl as a Jeepers Creepers-esque figure of flying menace, and Tigger a fairly obvious Freddy Krueger stand-in (stripes; claws; says ‘bitch’ a lot). The villains are all fairly one-note, but the dynamic is a fresh one for slasher cinema, giving four monsters for the price of one.

Where its predecessor was content to coast on the novelty of Winnie-the-Pooh: horror monster, Blood and Honey II feels like an actual film, with surprising depth to its lore. Chugging along at a breezy 93 minutes, it nips from one gory set piece to the next, rarely pausing to deflate the inherent silliness. All that, and Simon Callow too, whose brief appearance lends the film a sense of legitimacy that the first one was sorely lacking.

Those same problems are there at its core – cynical pandering for the memes, a preponderance of misogynistic violence – but Blood and Honey II at least has the good grace and budget to have fun this time.

WINNIE-THE-POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY II is on limited release in UK cinemas now.

Based on A.M. Shine’s creepy folk horror novel The Watchers (which has its own sequel out later this year), The Watched  (as it’s been retitled for UK and Northern Ireland) is the debut feature from Ishana Night Shyamalan, daughter of the prodigious, but erratic, M. Night. It’s an intriguing choice of first project, certainly one that doesn’t betray the family preponderance for dark, twisty horror tales designed to second-guess the audience. The Watched doesn’t always hit the spot as it occasionally runs out of energy, but it’s an impressive calling card that allows the director to demonstrate that she’s as at home with building a sense of dread and creeping menace as she is at delivering strategic jump scares and images of stark, striking horror.

Shine’s novel was an occasionally sluggish, overwrought affair. Shyamalan (who also wrote the script) has stripped away a lot of the narrative flab and focused on the core story of Mina (Dakota Fanning), an American living in Ireland who is still coping with the trauma of causing the death of her mother when she was a child. She works in a pet shop and is tasked by her boss with delivering a valuable bird to a customer across the country. Her car breaks down in a supernaturally huge forest. The car seems to disappear, and she encounters Madeleine (Olwen Fouere), an old woman watching her from nearby. With night falling, Mina takes refuge in a bunker-like building called ’The Coop’ alongside Madeleine and two other occupants. They explain that they are trapped in the bunker, observed at night by nocturnal creatures called ‘Watchers.’ Mina soon finds out that that’s no way out of the forest and that the Watchers, who are afraid of the light, will kill anyone outside the Coop at night. Days, months and seasons pass, and the four remain trapped in the Coop, turning on one another and becoming increasingly suspicious of one another. But in time, they discover the secrets of both the Coop and the Watchers and work to find a way out of the forest forever,

Despite the chamber-piece nature of its central conceit, The Watched is an ambitious and unusual piece of storytelling. Shyamalan clearly revels in evoking a sense of claustrophobia both inside the Coop and outside in the endless forest, and the Watchers themselves, wisely kept off-screen for much of the film, are an ever-present, terrifying threat that is all the better for being kept in the shadows and the darkness. The balance of the film seems uneven as both tone and locale shift in the last act, but that’s as much an issue with the original novel as it is with Shyamalan’s screenplay, which manages to make the nature and origins of the Watchers clearer and more plausible than in the novel.

With its nimble running time (just 100 minutes), The Watched is long enough to do what it needs to do without testing the audience’s patience. It allows Shyamalan to build on the tricks she’s clearly learned from her father while suggesting that she has a pretty firm grasp on the genre and how to draw the best out of what is, here, a potentially tricky and uninvolving story. It also suggests that she has a very bright future in the world of the dark and mysterious.

THE WATCHED is in UK cinemas now

 

This Canadian-Pakistani co-production, which has been garnering a great deal of praise on the festival circuit, is as much a work of social commentary as it is a ghost-themed horror. In Flames explores the efforts of a mother and daughter to challenge the restricted life choices available to them as working-class women (albeit from different generations) living in modern-day Karachi.

Young medical student Miriam finds her home life turned upside down following the death of her grandfather – the paternal head of the family. Her mother, the widowed Fariha, is soon facing eviction from their flat after her uncle-in-law tricks her into signing over her inheritance. A frustrated Miriam finds comfort in the attention of Asad, a young man attracted to the strength and independence that she radiates. But when the pair’s secret motorcycle trip to the coast ends in calamity, Miriam is once again confronted by the ugly realities of her marginalised social status.

Writer-director Zarrar Kahn evokes the hectic, crowded life of the city and the emptiness of the countryside and coast with an unromantic sense of realism. The idea that Mariam is being haunted by threatening spectres from her past becomes more prominent only once the real-world predicament of the two women has been fully established. Some of the film’s domestic and familial scenes might feel inconsequential when viewed in isolation. But the absence of freedom of choice revealed in these moments cumulatively ratchets up the tension that’s eventually released in the film’s cathartic finale. The true horrors glimpsed in In Flames are not the vengeful spirits of the dead but the obstacles these women face in struggling to secure agency over their own lives.

IN FLAMES is on limited theatrical release in the UK

Like the beloved documentaries of David Attenborough, David and Nathan Zellner’s unmissable movie is constantly enthralling, profound, relatable, touching, and hilarious.

Over the course of a year, we follow a family of Bigfoot as they traverse the North American forests. As they learn how to survive and communicate, several dangers come to the fore as some very human traits in our mysterious hairy friends come to the fore.

While Steve Oram’s grunt-filled Aaaaaaaah! (2015) was a crass, experimental mess, the Zellners’ film uses the lack of recognisable language excellently. We easily learn the different nuances of the various characters and are drawn to actually caring about their plight since they are so relatable. Surprisingly, underneath the impressive makeup are a pair of big names, Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough, alongside Christophe Zajac-Denek and Nathan Zellner. With no discernible CGI, the actors brilliantly convey the simian-like Sasquatch’s emotions. Their voyage of discovery touches on such elements as procreation, interaction with other critters (occasionally with hilarious and sometimes deadly consequences), as well as the primitive etiquette amongst the group. Initially, we’re unsure in what age the journey takes. That is, until they come across evidence of humans. Firstly, they see a deserted tent and then they’re shocked and apparently distressed to see a road passing through the forest. As there’s no one to be seen, however, this could still be post-apocalyptic. It’s an enigma that’s largely irrelevant, as interaction with Homo sapiens would rob the film of some of its magical atmosphere.

Sasquatch Sunset is deftly directed by the Zellners. It’s a simple premise that rewards in spades. If this were an animated movie, it’d be on par with Watership Down in the empathy we feel for the mythical, missing-link characters. Words are not needed when the results are so impressive and powerful.

SASQUTCH SUNSET has its UK Premiere at Sundance Film Festival London June 8th-9th .  Book tickets: Sundance London website
Releasing in UK cinemas from June 14th, with Previews + Q&As from June 10th. Official website

 

Tying itself to what is unequivocally the best action film of the 21^st century – if not ever – was always going to prove incredibly challenging. And while Furiosa might not reach the dizzying highs of Fury Road, director and co-writer George Miller succeeds in delivering a gritty, mean, and wildly unhinged origin story for his world’s most fascinating character.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – Warner Bros’ prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road – broadens the known horizons of the franchise’s apocalyptic mythology, riding deeper into and away from Australia’s reddened wasteland. Places like Gas Town, the Bullet Farm, and the Green Place (back when it was still green and not the putrid bog portrayed in Fury Road) are rendered on screen for the first time but feel lived-in, while old characters are given new dimensions. And while Furiosa enacts a leaner, meaner, and in many ways more primal vision of this world than its predecessor, as a two-part story, the two chapters wind together seamlessly.

Played in Fury Road by Charlize Theron, her younger self is now played by a phenomenal Anya Taylor-Joy (and as a child by a well-cast Alyla Browne) whose inescapable gaze is a magnet for our undivided attention. Furiosa was just a child, born from a hidden community in a richly verdant oasis, when she was ripped away by Wasteland warriors and taken to the chariot-riding biker king Dementus, the strangely constructed villain played by Chris Hemsworth in a long beard and prosthetic nose. Furiosa then passes into the hands of a younger and more cautious Immortan Joe, now played by Lachy Hulme, as part of Dementus’ bid to take over Gas Town. She escapes a fate as one of Immortan Joe’s breeders by fleeing into the tar-smeared depths of the Citadel as a boy, eventually coming to assist Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke, with whom Taylor-Joy shares searing chemistry), a rig driver who quietly takes Furiosa under his wing.

It’s a story of survival and revenge, of cutting oneself up and rearranging the pieces into something harder to break, all while clinging to hope that the past might be returned to. Appropriate, then, that Furiosa is itself fragmented into five chapters, each an episodic glimpse at key points of transformation for the slave-turned-warrior. It’s both desolating and stirring, bleak and beautiful, and never does the fact that the audience already knows Furiosa’s fate lessen the journey’s gripping tension.

However, if you thought any of that meant that George Miller has fallen into a more reflective and quieter style of filmmaking, let us dispel any such notion. Furiosa is still deliciously, brutally, thrillingly action-packed with unbelievable (and, as always, practically rendered) set pieces. Though it lacks some of the comedic absurdity of Fury Road – no flame-throwing electric guitars in this one, sadly – the prequel still worships that same flavour of madness that makes this world so wretchedly engrossing.

Furiosa only falters with Hemsworth’s Dementus. While the imposing actor does infuse some interesting layers – like the spark of ill-expressed paternal care he feels for Browne’s young Furiosa – to his performance, Miller’ and co-writer Nico Lathouris’ characterisation is too erratic (and at times cartoonish) and makes his unpredictability more confusing than it is terrifying. Particularly when placed in opposition to Immortan Joe, it’s somewhat difficult to view Dementus as the real threat.

In the light of Taylor-Joy’s sensational performance, though, Dementus feels like a detail. With this dialogue-light role, the actress effortlessly affirms herself as an action heroine who’s as skilled in her stunt physicality as she is at flooding emotion into a lingering glance. Theron could not have wished for a more perfect predecessor (or is it successor?). Witness her.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is in cinemas from May 24th. Watch the trailer here.