Review Category: Movie

by Rich Cross

Comedian Joe Lo Truglio (best known for his role as Charles Boyle in Brooklyn Nine-Nine) makes his debut as writer-director with the new indie-thriller Outpost. There’s lots to recommend in this cautionary tale of paranoia and disconnection, especially in the way that cinematographer Frank Barrera frames the film’s breathtaking real-life locations. But much of Barrera’s good work is undermined by the uncertainties of Lo Truglio’s uneven script.

Having escaped the horrors of domestic abuse, fortysomething Kate is desperate to rediscover her mental equilibrium. In the hope of finding solace, she volunteers to take on a secondment as a fire watcher deep in the mountains of northern Idaho. It’s a solitary posting, living and working on the watchtower’s viewing platform. The responsibilities of the job and the long, slow days begin to weigh heavily, and Kate experiences not a renewed sense of tranquillity but vivid hallucinations and a loosening of her grip on reality. This culminates in a series of shockingly bad choices and Kate’s descent into madness and violence.

Outpost is a great-looking film. The vast Idaho landscape offers fantastic on-screen vistas, while the walkways, staircases, and cramped interiors of the watchtower provide an effective contrast. This juxtaposition between openness and enclosure is used to illustrate Kate’s growing mental instability as she flips between the grounded and the delusional. Beth Dover invests Kate with the right mix of resilience and fragility. Yet the plot, which sets her character out on a path towards recovery, heads off somewhere altogether darker. It’s a destination that requires the viewer to abandon any sense of empathy with Kate – something that feels uncomfortably close to making her a victim once again.

OUTPOST is available now from streaming platforms, including Prime Video.

by Martin Unsworth

Obnoxious horror auteur Alfred Costella (Vinny Curran) plans his comeback film, which will also be his last, so he hires a film crew to document the making of his gory masterpiece, Everybody Dies by the End. Calvin (writer/co-director Ian Tripp) and his soundman, Mark (Joshua Wyble), witness the filmmaker at his worst as he pushes and humiliates his actors before things head into the inevitable shocking climax.

Opening the film is a vintage interview in which Costella shows his demented side when quizzed by the laid-back, sardonic chat show host Willy Wilson (Bill Oberst, Jr). Going completely off the rails, this is the moment that put a nail in the coffin of Costella’s career, and it’s an excellent sequence that replicates the arty, high-and-mighty film shows of the ‘80s perfectly. It’s an exaggeration of those goading chats with famous people who storm off when their egos are not massaged enough.

The rest of the movie is shot through the documentarian’s lens and shows the nasty side of filmmaking. He’s an aggressive, egotistical director who has surrounded himself with sycophants who he’ll butter up and smack down in equal measure. Co-directed by Tripp and Ryan Schafer, it’s an uncomfortable satire of a toxic workplace that’s packed with pitch-black comedy. While it doesn’t always land its target, it’s an entertaining, if predictable, look at the nastier side of Hollywood. With a director on the precipice of a murderous, nihilistic breakdown, fuelled by his sense of self-importance and talent, the film is a damning indictment of bad behaviour in the workplace, and although it’s awkward to experience in places, it keeps things watchable.

Everybody Dies at the End is released on digital platforms in the US on September 22nd.

There are always perils when it comes to dating. Meeting on Tinder could bring some big issues, as happens when Sigrid (Katrine Lovise Øpstad Fredriksen) meets the shy and charming Christian (Gard Løkke). Sigrid’s self-deprecating profile shows that she’s prepared to accept anything, but she doesn’t expect Christian’s four-legged friend to be a man in a costume. She’s convinced to give Christian another shot. However, when she finds out that he’s a multi-millionaire and even begins to accept Frank, the dog, as man’s best friend, she agrees to go away for the weekend at a remote cabin, but she finds out something much more disturbing is afoot …

Far from a shaggy dog tale, Good Boy opens up interesting questions of identity, trust, and compliance. Although Sigrid is almost a walkover when she first meets Christian (they sleep together on the first date), her reaction to seeing Frank for the first time is genuine, and it’s only the lure of his money and the chance of an ‘easy life’ that brings her back into his arms.

The first half of Good Boy is presented as if it were an awkward romance, but things soon take a turn for the sinister as Sigrid learns more about the enigmatic Christian. Director Viljar Bøe builds some great tension with the pair’s relationship, and then Sigrid’s flirtation with Frank brings things into a whole other realm, and not exactly where you’d expect. It’s a film that benefits from going in as blindly as possible for maximum enjoyment.

GOOD BOY had its UK premiere at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on August 28th and will be on digital platforms from September 8th in US and 11th in the UK.

by Joel Harley

The latest thriller from writer/director Neil LaBute (The Wicker Man, Lakeview Terrace)sees a bachelorette party invaded by a gang of gun-toting men on a violent treasure hunt. Luckily, war veteran Tess (Maggie Q) is on hand to hold the front line, giving Bart (James Carpinello) and his thugs far more than they had bargained for.

Q headlines this hybrid of action film and home invasion thriller, ably supported by Kat Foster as her more outspoken, less able sister, Beth. Between them, they manage to rise above the rote characterisation and predictable plot twists, largely thanks to Foster’s chops and Q’s action poise. There are others there too (including Highdee Kuan, as their other sister, and bride-to-be, Rose), but no one gets to shine here.

Certainly not the villains – a paper-thin gang of white trash ruffians with no sense of menace nor charisma between them. As a vehicle for Maggie Q stomping misogynist hillbillies into the ground, it’s aggressively fine (not that the choreography or special effects is particularly exciting either), but suffers in comparison to the vastly superior – and similar – You’re Next and Becky.

Offering little beyond pedestrian action sequences and surface-level observations on female empowerment, Fear the Night is a sad, limp disappointment.

Fear the Night is out now on demand in the US and will be released digitally in the UK on September 25th.

A mix of serial killer, backwoods slasher, and survivalist horror, Ryan Hendrick’s Mercy Falls is an often tense, if routine, thriller that delivers some impressive gore and stunning landscapes.

A group of friends meet up for a hiking trip in order to find a cabin left to Rhona (Lauren Lyle) by her father. She has mixed memories about the area (not least of the day that she saw her dad (Gilly Gilchrist) put a trapped horse out of its misery) and only a vague idea of where they’re going. Her best friend, Heather (Layla Kirk) has fixed Rhona up with the hunky Donnie (Joe Rising) while she’s there with her fella Scott (James Watterson). Unfortunately, Donnie brings along his laddish buddy Andy (Eoin Sweeney), who, larking about on their night at a hikers’ lodge, sees Heather have a drink poured over her white top. Trying to dry it off, she’s helped in the loos by Carla (Nicolette McKeown), who they’d previously ignored while hitchhiking. Heather invites Carla to join the group, much to Rhona’s annoyance. It’s clear when they set off the next day, however, that Carla might have the skills lacking in the others when it comes to being out in the open. When there’s an accident involving one the them, Carla’s instinct takes over, leaving the badly injured lad dead. |They are all naturally horrified, but Carla convinces the rest that they are complicit and they should get rid of the body and carry on their hike. What the team don’t yet realise is that Carla is military trained, and this is not her first rodeo.

Co-writer (alongside Meliá Grasska) and director Hendrick have crafted an impressive, if flawed, brooding tale of survival that’s well-acted by the opposing characters of Rhona and Carla. Both Lyle and McKeown are fantastic in their roles. Lyle, in particular, exudes a vulnerable performance that demands sympathy for Rhona, which is a world apart from the other, more oversexed members of the hiking group.

Where Mercy Falls comes up lacking is in some of the more contrived dialogue and heavily laid on menace of Carla. It’s clear from the moment we see her hitch-hiking, particularly with the talk in the car of not picking her up because she’d probably kill them all, we know she’s going to be the antagonist. There’s no sly twist to pull the rug, and that’s where the film suffers. There are moments where the story could go in different directions. There are atmospheric tales of sirens recited by Homer-loving Scott, and had the group not discovered Carla’s secret after the ‘mercy killing’, she wouldn’t have had to go on a murder spree.

The film is helped incredibly by John Rhodes’ cinematography, which really makes the most of the beautiful locations and Stephen Wright’s atmospheric but unobtrusive score. While Mercy Falls doesn’t quite knock it out of the park, it’s an entertaining survival horror that delivers when it needs to.

Mercy Falls is in cinemas now and arrives on digital on November 6th, 2023.

by Rich Cross

Do you remember that old-school party game Consequences? Each player takes a turn to write down a fragment of a story before folding over the paper and passing it to the next person to continue the narrative with no knowledge of what’s gone before. Watching The Hanged Girl (previously titled The Haunting at Saint Joseph’s), it feels like the production company might have adopted the same scripting technique. From a humdrum but explicable starting point, the film lurches through a series of bizarre, arbitrary plot flips which stretch any connection to its original premise beyond breaking point.

A group of friends and family head into the great outdoors for a pre-nuptials weekend break. Their destination is an old chapel, refurbished into a high-end holiday let but implicated in rumours about the building’s macabre past involving stories of human sacrifice. As the group tries to relax, latent tensions and awkward secrets surface. This culminates in lots of shouty arguments and, in the risible final act, multiple bloody deaths – none of which have any link to the ancient curse.

The production values on The Hanged Girl are reasonable enough, and while there’s no tension or atmosphere, and nothing exciting about the way the film is shot, it’s competently made. It’s simply that the filmmakers seem to have no idea what story they’re trying to tell. No one’s character journey makes sense, and none of the script’s wider themes is developed, so they end up being left (in an oddly fitting way) hanging. After the chaotic final twenty minutes, the film ends so abruptly that you’re left wondering if the rental company turned up on set to collect the cameras.

THE HANGED GIRL is released on streaming platforms and on DVD in the US on September 5th.