Review Category: Movie

by Martin Unsworth

Everyone interested in film has that spark lit by something. For some, it becomes an awareness; for others, it develops into an obsession. One person whose passion overwhelmed him is director/writer Patrick Read Johnson. 5-25-77 is the personal story of how a visit to the cinema changed his life.

After seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey at an early age, young Pat (John Francis Daley, screenwriter of the recent Dungeons & Dragons blockbuster) becomes obsessed with the film and, in particular, the special effects. He uses his father’s Super 8 camera and starts making his mini-movies, being increasingly inventive with his visuals. However, his excitement boils over when he finds out about a new little film hitting cinemas called Star Wars.

Johnson’s passion and enthusiasm are infectious, making viewers who have likely had a similar mindset feel warmth and nostalgia. We’ve all had that feeling of being an outsider or ‘odd’ because of whatever genre we love. It also perfectly hits on young love, family strife, and general growing pains. While 5-25-77 is over two hours long, it doesn’t feel like it as we’re swept along with young Johnson’s plans and life outside the silver screen. His relationship with a girl he spots reading the 2001 novel is significant. While it moves the narrative into the more conventional coming-of-age drama territory, there’s still a large foot in geekdom.

It’s a film that’s been a long time coming, having been in development for around 20 years. The enthusiasm seen on screen is a testament to the effort and perseverance of Johnson. You don’t necessarily have to be a massive Star Wars fan to love this, or indeed, have to remember that first time seeing the start of George Lucas’ saga, but it helps. As for Pat Johnson, he went on to live his dream (his first film was the 1990 VHS cult favourite Spaced Invaders). The strong take home here is to follow that passion and dream.

5-25-77 is available on digital from May 1st.

By Martin Unsworth

Candy (Paula Brasca) is a late-night DJ who specialises in hosting listeners’ chilling tales. She’s quite acerbic, not afraid to call out when she thinks the stories are BS. One caller puts her on edge, though, as her night is set to become even more terrifying.

A follow-up to 2019’s A Night of Horror: Nightmare Radio, this is more of the same – a DJ wraparound story to hang a selection of short films. While the stories are entertaining on varying levels, the fact that they are just imported from an archive of festival-run films and not specifically created for this anthology stands out. There’s no correlation between the stories and what’s going on in Candy’s world other than a sense of dread and isolation. That’s not to say they don’t work; it’s just the contrast of styles and quality is jarring.

Of the shorts that are showcased, the strongest is Lorcan Finnegan’s Foxes (also the oldest of the tales, coming from 2011). Here, a young couple is at risk of drifting apart after moving to a rather uncanny housing estate (the shots of the identical buildings disappearing in the distance are genuinely haunting and a precursor to Yonder in the director’s later Vivarium). The wife becomes obsessed with a pack of local foxes, and her descent into a feral state begins. Some are shorter than others, but at under 80 minutes, none of them overstays their welcome or risk bogging down the portmanteau. The final vignette, David M. Night Maire’s Chateau Sauvignon, is the most peculiarly placed since it comes at the height of the action in the main story.

This lack of cohesion between the segments is a little disappointing, with the majority of the menace coming from a supernatural source rather than a stalker or other threat, as in the main story. Something building up the solitude would work better. However, if you can accept that, this is a decent low-budget effort that highlights some shorts you may have missed over the past few years. The wraparound is a decent showcase for Brasca, who manages to keep things interesting.

The patchwork nature of the film isn’t a massive problem in general, it works more often than not, but the curator needs to make sure they gel a little better. Still entertaining despite everything.

Nightmare Radio: The Night Stalker is available on digital platforms. 

BY RICH CROSS

The zom-rom-com is a tough genre to pull off. So it’s particularly impressive to watch a first-time writer, producer, and director manage it with such style. It’s a film that invites inevitable comparisons with Shaun of the Dead, but Follow the Dead has a distinctive heartbeat all its own.

In the Irish county of Offaly, four underachieving millennials (a brother and sister and their two cousins) are suspicious of alarming news emerging from Dublin of a zombie outbreak. Once they realise that the crisis is real, the ill-equipped and unprepared foursome are forced to fight for their lives as the undead multiply. Their plight is complicated by the appearance of masked vigilantes who seek to profit from the ensuing chaos, by would-be revolutionaries, and by the hopes of the elder brother in the group to reconcile with his estranged wife, who’s now a local Garda officer.

Although there’s a decent amount of undead action throughout, Follow the Dead is most concerned with the impact the disaster has on the bonds of family, home and community. In different ways, these hapless loafers are searching for validation in lives that have not worked out as they had hoped. You couldn’t call the comedy subtle, but there are plenty of decent jokes in the mix and some surprising emotional punches, too – as key relationships come under strain. The dialogue is sharp, the cultural observations (about priests, politicians and social media) are witty, and the performances strong. Luke Corcoran is excellent as Robbie, the self-absorbed slacker who comes good, while Tadhg Devery steals every scene that he’s in as the clueless stoner Chi. It’s not flawless, but it’s a terrifically entertaining debut.

FOLLOW THE DEAD is available to stream on Prime Video in the UK.

by Vicky Lawrence

Craving is a low-budget crime thriller/monster movie that has an interesting insight into drug addiction. The patrons of a rural bar are barricaded inside by a group of addicts who are hiding a secret that has caused them to be hunted down: a monster is hiding amongst them. While we learn about the lives of the group of addicts and how they found themselves protecting a monster, we also see why this monster is being hunted down. Namely, the destruction it’s caused to a multitude of families.

The clock has been ticking for the entirety of their duration in the bar; their efforts sadly don’t find a solution to keep the monster from transforming from its host into its horrific final form. This ultimately leads to the bloodbath promised to us from the start. When we think all is lost and there’s no way to stop this creature on its mission to consume as much blood as psychically possible, our handy barmaid, Shiloh, becomes our trusty ‘Final Girl’. The group hunting down this monster comes to investigate, only to find Shiloh covered in the blood of her friends – they believe that she is the last one standing and that the monster has been destroyed. Little do they know, there is no end to this bloodshed.

Craving is for fans of extremely low-budget horror films that have an interesting creature design and very cheap but good SFX. For what the acting lacks, the gore/kills make up for it. It has some incredibly interesting kills for such a low-budget film, but it really does pull everything together. While having such an interesting storyline about addiction but not with the typical addiction tropes, we normally see drugs creating monsters and turning people evil. However, that is not the case with Craving. It plays on familiar values of family being chosen and the lengths they will go through to protect one of their own.

Craving boasts a decent backup cast, including the likes of Al Gomez (Cloak and Dagger) and Kevin Caliber (Future Man); it also has a small cameo from the great Felissa Rose of Sleepaway Camp. This film’s not to be missed, it’s cheesy at times and can be confusing, but it has a great story that doesn’t play on the same sort of monster/drug tropes that some other films do while also having a different take on the final girl trope. Worth checking out if you can find comfort in the beauty of a good story and good gore, despite not having the best acting in the world.

Craving is available to stream on Prime Video.

by Paul Mount

Dexter Fletcher directs this likeable, action-packed rom-com/thriller starring Chris Evans as an unwilling accomplice to the globetrotting exploits of an undercover agent played by the vivacious Ana de Armas. Cole Turner (Evans)  meets up with Sadie Rhodes (de Armas) at a farmer’s market. He’s perplexed when, after a (very) successful first date, she doesn’t seem keen to acknowledge his texts or return his calls. She’s ghosting him, kids! He finds out that she’s in London (something to do with a tracking device on an inhaler?). However, his ill-advised (and not at all creepy) plan to drop in on her unannounced halfway across the world goes wrong when he’s immediately kidnapped by a terrorist group who mistake him for a spy called ‘Taxman’. A disgraced French intelligence agent named Leveque (Adrien Brody) is keen to get his hands on a lethal bioweapon called ‘Aztec’ but needs the passcode – which he believes the ‘Taxman’ possesses – to activate it. Cole is rescued by Sadie, and the pair embark on a breakneck race to keep one step ahead of Leveque, which involves some spectacular action set pieces, punch-ups aplenty and an exhilarating chase sequence through the Khyber Pass.

It’s all hugely entertaining Saturday night fluff, enlivened by the chemistry between Evans (clearly enjoying playing the everyman rather than the superhero) and de Armas (cast as a last-minute replacement for Scarlett Johansson). It’s undemanding stuff, of course, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s a film that encourages you to sit back and enjoy the familiarity of its set-up (think Mr and Mrs Jones and the underrated Tom Cruise flick Knight and Day) and revel in the unpretentiousness of a film that only exists to entertain for a couple of hours. MCU fans will enjoy the cheeky cameos by Evans’ former Marvel co-stars Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan as hapless bounty hunters. Good fun.

Ghosted is streaming now on Apple TV+