ASTRONAUT

astronaut

CERT: PG / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: SHELAGH MCLEOD / STARRING: RICHARD DREYFUSS, LYRIQ BENT, KRISTA BRIDGES, RICHIE LAWRENCE, COLM FEORE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Denied a theatrical release in the wake of the global shutdown, Shelagh Mcleod’s Astronaut will surely benefit from being viewed in the safety and security of your own home. In the cinema, it would almost certainly have been met with a shoulder shrug as it’s very much a small, intimate story that would have been a little lost and out of place on the big screen amongst the capes, cowls, and crashes and bangs of the spring blockbuster season. In its way, it’s as fanciful and far-fetched as any superhero or sci-fi flick, though. Still, despite its plot contrivances and implausibilities it tells a sweet, wistful – some might say slightly mawkish – tale of unfulfilled dreams, burning ambition, and one man raging against the dying of the light.

Richard Dreyfuss plays Angus Stewart, a retired seventy-something civil engineer who finds himself living with his daughter Molly (Bridges), his son-in-law Jim (Bent), and his adoring grandson Barney (Lawrence). Unceremoniously dumped into a care home that he seems entirely unsuited for, Angus sees a televised appeal from an Elon Musk-like philanthropist planning the world’s first commercial space flight offering seats for a dozen lucky entrants into a special lottery. Frustrated by his new circumstances and feeling that life may yet have a final adventure to offer, Angus decides to enter the lottery. This is about the point that will require a suspension of disbelief that might be a step too far for many viewers as Angus is selected from the draw and has to undergo an interview process to ascertain his suitability for the rigours of light space flight. This, remember, is a man in poor health in his seventies. Needless to say, things don’t quite go to plan, but Angus realises that the flight is doomed to failure due to an avoidable technical fault. Can he persuade the flight’s bigwigs that he knows what he’s talking about and isn’t just a slightly-doddery old man with crushed dreams?

Astronaut is a light and inconsequential little film, and yet its heart is very clearly in the right place. Setting aside the fact that a man in his seventies is never going to be selected from a lottery for a spaceflight (Angus lies about his age as the upper limit for entrants is 65, and yet he manages to fool the authorities with a fake ID provided by his grandson), there is much to enjoy in this slight and undeniably sentimental story which, refreshingly, is about people and not spectacle (you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that the budget is clearly stretched by a couple of more ambitious scenes towards the end of the film) and Dreyfuss’ sensitive, believable, and often quite touching portrayal of a man staring obsolescence in the face papers over the cracks in a space story that would otherwise be unlikely to get off the ground never mind into orbit.

THE WRETCHED

wretched

CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: BRETT PIERCE, DREW T PIERCE / STARRING: JOHN-PAUL HOWARD, PIPER CURDA, ZARAH MAHLER, AZIE TESFAI / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (VOD), JUNE 29TH (DVD)

Generic and unhelpful title aside, The Wretched (originally titled Hag, which is possibly marginally worse) is a decent slab of low budget, low-fi horror that manages to generate an acceptable degree of tension and as well as delivering a few subtle shivers. In a cast refreshingly free of ‘oh, look, it’s him/her from…’ faces, Jean-Paul Howard plays Ben, a troubled teenager with his arm in a cast, who goes to stay with his divorced father living with his new girlfriend in a coastal resort. Ben reluctantly agrees to take on the job at the local marina arranged for him by his father. Still, he soon finds himself distracted by his growing attraction to co-worker Mallory (Curda) and the strange behaviour of the family next door, especially mom Abbie (Mahler), who is behaving more than a little oddly.

The Wretched wears its influences quite proudly on its sleeve. There’s a bit of Invasion of the Body Snatchers here (a creepy witch able to inhabit the bodies of its victims) and a bit of Hitchcock there (Ben uses binoculars to spy on the activities of his neighbours) and even a bit of Spielberg in the general family dynamics. But the Pierce Brothers have taken these familiar tropes and ingredients (it’s hard to criticise them for being influenced by the best) to concoct an efficient, occasionally-dark and nasty little horror story that works hard to overcome the limitations imposed by its budget. The focus on practical if sparingly-used visual effects is refreshing and The Wretched generally relies on dark shadows and shapes moving through the night alongside clever if convenient plot twists (victims are ‘forgotten’ by their families once they have been consumed) to keep its story rolling. Ben discovers a gnarly old tree out in the nearby woods and discovers that a malevolent ancient force in the shape of a ghastly wizened witch-creature, has taken to emerge from the labyrinth of tunnels underneath the tree and captures and devours local children. In best Body Snatchers fashion, no one will believe his fanciful theories and his father plans to send him home to get medical help and eventually he is forced to confront the creature in its lair if he is to save the lives of the terrified child next door (already forgotten by his father) and Mallory’s little sister.

The Wretched won’t rewrite the horror rule book, but it’s a taut, punchy little film that plays effectively with half-remembered childhood tales of wicked witches carrying children off into dark, spooky woods. Strong visuals and some decent scares – the witch is a wild, nasty-looking creation – and the film’s commendably retro sensibilities work to create something rather refreshing from the familiar. Worthwhile and certainly not wretched.

THE SHED

shed

CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: FRANK SABATELLA / STARRING: JAY JAY WARREN, CODY KOSTRO, SOFIA HAPPONEN, FRANK WHALEY, TIMOTHY BOTTOMS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Writer/director Frank Sabatella’s The Shed is very reminiscent of J.F. Dubeau’s 2017 novel A God in the Shed. It’s a very tenuous connection, but they certainly have several elements in common: small town setting, teenagers, and a creature in a shed, which is used by some characters for vengeance. However, whereas that book had a near-total sense of impending doom and horror, The Shed never manages to decide what tone it wants to take on.

At times, Sabatella’s movie really wants to be an eighties vampire flick à la Fright Night – if Evil Ed was the protagonist – with just a hint of The Monster Squad. There’s a pair of put-upon leads, with Stan (Warren) and Dommer (Kostro) being bullied by a trio of high school ne’er-do-wells in a Firebird, with the added bonus of Stan getting constantly run down by his grandfather, Ellis (Bottoms), who took him in after something happened to Stan’s parents.

There’s a lot there for something, especially after Stan discovers his recently-turned neighbour, Bane (Whaley) in the backyard shed. Sadly, it’s just kind of dumb. If it were a little more one way or the other toward nasty or silly, it’d be fun, but its tone is uneven almost all the way throughout, constantly hamstringing itself by making drastic tonal shifts, which keep the movie from ever finding its footing.

On the silly side, there’s a backyard running scene obviously meant to homage Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but it falls flat, thanks to a total lack of the tension achieved through John Hughes’ choice of music and use of constant cuts. Yes, John Hughes achieved more tension than a horror movie. There’s also a goofy sheriff, played by Siobhan Fallon Hogan, who is pretty much wasted in the role.

It’s just never fun, though. It could’ve so much fun if it just leaned into the tragicomic aspects of everything, but it wants to be so very serious that these moments of levity only come across as poor directorial choices, rather than attempts to make the movie into something with a potential for splatstick joy.

For instance, when the bully, Marble (Chris Petrovski) gets forced into the shed, there’s ample opportunity for a really great parody of Se7en‘s “what’s in the box?” scene, but it’s just a bunch of teenagers yelling. Then, on the more tragic side of things, if The Shed leaned toward Deadgirl and how supernatural forces and too much power can destroy a teenage friendship, that would have also been fantastic, but no, it’s just yelling and screaming from a bunch of teenagers.

The end is interminable, lacking any tension whatsoever and just generally boring the viewer near to death. The entire point of the finale is to show how Stan goes from being meek and picked on to an avenging, take-charge badass, but it’s completely unearned, because he’s a total pushover literally up until the very end, making his transformation come out of nowhere.

Also, the door to the shed keeps slamming shut on its own for the better part of the first third of the movie, and it makes absolutely no sense. There’s no better analogy for The Shed as a whole than that: something which keeps happening for no reason, with no explanation whatsoever.

THE LODGE

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THE LODGE / CERT:TBC / DIRECTORS: VERONIKA FRANK, SEVERIN FIALA / SCREENPLAY: SEVERIN FIALA, SERGIO CASCI / STARRING: RILEY KEOUGH, JAEDEN MARTELL, LIA MCHUGH, RICHARD ARMINIUTAGE, ALICIA SILVERSTONE / RELEASE DATE: TBC

You’re probably dead inside – or at least a bit rotten – if the sight of the name ‘Hammer’ on the credits of a feature film doesn’t elicit a little tingle in the nether regions. We’re a long way from the glory days of the Studio That Dripped Blood in the 1960s, and we try not to think too often of its sad decline into TV sitcom spin-off hell in the 1970s (although Holiday on the Buses does have its admirers at STARBURST HQ). But, despite a six-year absence since the last film to display the familiar evocative Hammer logo (2014’s insipid The Woman in Black sequel Angel of Death) it’s genuinely heartening to see the name live on in The Lodge, a bleak and claustrophobic psychological horror film perfectly suited for these difficult lockdown times.

The Lodge is, in fact, possibly a bit too bleak for its own good, a stifling chamber piece full of unrelentingly troubled characters trapped in their own very personal Hells even as they find themselves trapped and isolated and cut off from civilization. Richard Armitage plays Richard Hall, an investigative writer who takes his new girlfriend Grace (Keough), the sole survivor of a Christian cult mass suicide, and his two young children Aiden (Martell) and Mia (McHugh), from his failed first marriage to a remote country lodge to celebrate Christmas. Here he hopes that the children will start to forge a bond with Grace but when he is called away on business Grace, and the kids find themselves alone in the lodge trying to make the best of things. A ferocious snowstorm leaves them cut off and isolated. Suddenly, Grace’s medication, all their food supplies and even Grace’s pet dog go missing. Grace begins a slow descent into confusion and despair tumbling into a complete breakdown when all the clocks in the house advance to January 9th and the kids find newspaper cuttings chronicling their apparent deaths from monoxide poisoning. Is Grace mad, or is something a little more sinister going on in the cold and forbidding lodge?

A barrel of laughs this ain’t. The film signposts its intention to unsettle us in its first few minutes in one genuine jump-in-your-seat moment (the rest of the film delivers far subtler chills, though). As Richard tries to gently build bridges and ease his new family forward, we’re waiting for things to start heading south and take a turn for the worse. But this is no cheap supernatural shlock; what’s happening in the Lodge is deeply psychological, cruel and unpleasant and for a while, we’re not sure where our sympathies should lie or even where they are being directed. By the time the truth is revealed the situation has become too horrible and too irrevocable and the film’s last ten minutes are probably the darkest and most nihilistic we’ve seen since The Mist way back in 2007. If you like a bit of hope and optimism in your movies, then you’ll need to look elsewhere.

Too dark and downbeat for many tastes, The Lodge will be nothing if not an acquired taste, and it’ll be best appreciated by those who prefer their horror films a little less predictable and a bit more dark-hearted.

BARBIE AND KENDRA SAVE THE TIGER KING

barbie and kendra

CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: CHARLES BAND / SCREENPLAY: WILLIAM BUTLER, KENT ROUDEBUSH / STARRING: ROBIN SYDNEY, CODY RENEE CAMERON,
JOHN REINKE / RELEASE DATE: VOD OUT NOW

Over at STARBURST we do like our niche movies, and we do like it when we see a film that caters to new trends and ideas. Though the results can be a bit odd. Barbie and Kendra Save the Tiger King is a movie that has been produced very quickly in order to exploit interest in the hit Netflix documentary Tiger King. It has been brought to us by the folks at Full Moon Features, who are best known for fantastic flicks such as The Gingerdead Man, Evil Bong 3D: The Wrath of Bong, and the Puppet Master series.

This has, of course, been filmed during the Covid-19 Pandemic, so shortcuts have been made, mostly with the plot. We open with Barbie trying to escape the corona zombies from her previous movie, Corona Zombies. This piece of green-screening is swiftly resolved and they’re on their next mission, to save Joe Exotic, all whilst socially distancing responsibly.

Of course, first they need to know more about him so they tune into the Big Pussy Network to watch a documentary. But it’s not the one you think, instead it’s a thing called The Great Catsby: The Joe Exotic Story. Though in reality, this is the 1968 flick Terror in the Jungle dubbed with new, comedy dialogue. With the odd aside from Barbie and Kendra cut in, as well as bits of archive footage of Joe Exotic himself, this makes the bulk of the movie.

Featuring a very silly (and quite short) interview with former Joe Exotic employee John Reinke and some rather pointed gags, Barbie and Kendra Save the Tiger King is an interesting cultural artefact and probably the first example of Carole Baskin’s name being used as a verb. The movie is also not very long, which is something to be thankful for. This is a feature that is best enjoyed with company and alcohol. It’s perfect for your next Zoom party and some light mockery; it’s been produced with tongues firmly in cheek. Full Moon has, of course, made much better movies in the past but as quickly cobbled together distraction, this does the job quite well.

CODE 8

NETFLIX ORIGINAL | DIRECTOR: JEFF CHAN | SCREENPLAY: JEFF CHAN, CHRIS PARE | STARRING ROBBIE AMELL, STEPHEN AMELL, SUNG KANG, ALEX MALLARI JNR | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Code 8 – a low-budget sci-fi passion project for cousins Robbie and Stephen Amell, expanded from a 2016 short film of the same name – would probably have passed largely unnoticed if not for the curious lockdown circumstances that have forced people to dig deeper into the dark corners of Netflix than they might normally have done. Consequently, the film is currently enjoying a healthy profile on the streaming service as ravenous audiences clamour for more and more original content. ‘Original’ isn’t, however, a word we’d necessarily associate with Code 8 as it takes some well-worn clichés – here it’s the idea of the trials and tribulations faced by a small percentage of the population who are born with ‘supernatural’ abilities and the fear and suspicion they arouse in a hostile society that forces them to live in poverty and squalor. Code 8 is unashamedly low-budget stuff – the film was largely crowd-funded – and yet it manages to turn its lack of cash to its advantage by delivering a few impressive money shots and spending its time developing its world and its characters.

Connor Reed (Robbie Amell) is a ‘Power’ with electro-kinetic abilities, eking out a living from manual labour jobs and trying to support his sick mother who is suffering from brain cancer. He is enlisted by telekinetic mobster Garret Kelton (Stephen Amell) who recruits him in a series of heists and robberies which will provide Connor with the money he needs to pay for his mother’s treatment as well as making up the shortfall in the profits from a drug business run by Garret’s sleazy boss. Garret tries to help Connor master his own abilities and encourages him to become more assertive in a world determined to grind him and his like into the ground. But the pair’s partnership and, particularly, Garret’s associations, lead the pair into dangerous territory and Connor is forced to make difficult decisions about his own future as his mother’s condition deteriorates and time begins to run  out.

It would be easy to dismiss Code 8 as just a cheap and lazy X-Men rip-off but the film’s strength lies in its thoughtful characterisation, its well-realised vaguely-dystopian world, and a script that gives its characters room to breathe and develop as it explores its themes of a society where people aren’t just good or bad but capable of great moral ambiguity for all sorts of reasons. Lincoln City, the faceless metropolis where the action takes place, is patrolled by huge flying drone aircraft which disgorge RoboCop-like android ’Guardians’, and these sequences are where the money has been spent, resulting in a couple of impressive action scenes in which the drones sweep across the city and the Guardians indulge in combat with Garret’s gang and assorted undesirables. Elsewhere, many of the effects – electric bolts and various bangs and flashes – are very much the stuff of a modestly-funded TV series – but we’re constantly reminded that they’re really not the point of the film or the story; the point is we’re getting involved in these people and we’re genuinely invested in their world and the uncomfortable predicaments and moral dilemmas it throws up.

Code 8 isn’t perfect, of course – it’s a bit too relentlessly dour and humourless – but it does a remarkable job in bringing a believable alternative world to the screen on the sort of resources that would barely pay for the credit sequence in an X-Men movie, and yet it handles similar themes and ideas with considerably more intelligence and thoughtfulness than the last few desperate entries into the enduring Marvel mutant saga. There’s enough potential here, in fact, for what’s been described as a ‘short-form’ spin-off series for pointless short-attention-span streaming service Quibi, but we’ll believe that when we see it.

EDGE OF EXTINCTION

edge extinction

EDGE OF EXTINCTION / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: ANDREW GILBERT / STARRING: LUKE HOBSON, GEORGIE SMIBERT, CHRIS KAYE, BRYN HODGEN / RELEASE DATE: MAY 18TH (VOD), JULY 13TH (DVD)

The end of the world isn’t far from peoples’ minds at the moment, but writer/director Andrew Gilbert’s film takes us to a post-apocalypse that has been caused by war, just like in the fears of the old days.

The nuclear winter is over, and a young man (Hobson) is struggling to survive out of the way of people, hidden in a storage locker. Going out only to find water and hunt for supplies, he comes across someone else. It’s a girl who claims to be alone and wants to join him. Being a nice guy, he lets her and is duly screwed over. That’s the least of his worries, however, as the roaming gang of cannibals have him – and, particularly, the girl – in their sight.

The post-apocalypse subgenre might old hat these days with the likes of The Road and The Walking Dead doing such a fantastic job of showing how bad things could get, but Edge of Extinction manages to make a decent fist of creating a believable, terrifying future. Although lacking the budget of the aforementioned properties, Gilbert has crafted a grounded, captivating vision of how life could be. Major recognition should go to whoever found the location, as they are perfect. It’s rare to get a low budget film run over two hours, and going in, we were worried that the running time here would stretch things to tedium. We’re delighted to say that’s not the case, as this is genuinely enthralling and it’s easy to root for the lead, and as his story plays out (we see the origin of his solitude and the start of the end of the world as we know it in flashback), he becomes an unlikely hero.

As we’ve come to expect with the subgenre, there are monsters in this apocalyptic vision. Here, they come in human form; no one can fully be trusted, but the band of cannibals are archetypal foes. Devolved from humanity, they epitomise evil. Having such an uncompromising enemy makes a rescue mission that’s attempted during the film and subsequent seize incredibly suspenseful and exciting.

With some amazing locations and great cinematography, Edge of Extinction is highly recommended.

THE MANDALORIAN

REVIEWED: SEASON 1 (ALL EPISODES) | WHERE TO WATCH: DISNEY+

A long time in the making, the Star Wars galaxy’s first foray into live action TV is finally here. Created by Iron Man director Jon Favreau – obviously a fan of men in metal suits – The Mandalorian follows a member of the armour-clad warrior culture first introduced to us in the form of Boba Fett.

Set five years after Return of the Jedi, when the Empire has fallen but the New Republic has not yet established peace and order, on the frontier planets far-flung from the cities of Coruscant, this is Star Wars as we saw it in the first act of A New Hope – a Western-esque world of scum and villainy.

The influence of Western and samurai movies is embodied in the eponymous hero; seemingly nameless and faceless, this Mandalorian merc travels from planet to planet, working for hire and collecting bounties. As the season begins, he’s hired by an Imperial remnant faction to collect a mysterious asset – a child. You’ve seen the memes, you know who it is.

It’s also no big spoiler that our Mando builds up a bond with Baby Yoda – sorry, ‘The Child’ – and that the Imperials can’t entirely be trusted. Mando and Child end up travelling the galaxy together, him taking on jobs while trying to protect and learn more about his adorable companion, the Imperials never far from their trail. The structure works brilliantly; whereas many modern series drag one story out over a long run of episodes, this takes the more traditional approach of giving us a full Star Wars adventure every week – the Mandalorian will land on a planet, encounter a problem, shoot stuff, and leave.

While these adventures, understandably, don’t have the epic battles you’d expect from a big-screen Star Wars movie, each episode is a fast and action-packed slice of TV, with highlights including the Mando defending a fishing village from a gang of raiders and an encounter with a feisty band of Jawas. Various allies join along the way, including Nick Nolte’s Ugnaught Kuill and Gina Carano’s ex-rebel Cara Dune, all building up to a Seven Samurai-esque standoff between this ragtag group and the Imperial faction led by Werner Herzog (yes, really) and Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito.

With directors including Favreau, Taika Waititi, and Bryce Dallas Howard, the show looks gorgeous, quickly establishing its own style – Waititi even gets some of his trademark deadpan humour into his episode – while feeling a definite part of the Star Wars universe; there are stunning planetary landscapes, those iconic wipes, and, while not an overbearing amount of continuity, plenty of recognisable aliens and droids.

What ties the whole series together is the developing lone-wolf-and-cub relationship between Mando and Child; as well as the cute puppetry, the performance of Pedro Pascal really sells this – we may not see his face under the helmet, but his growing affection for the Child, and the inner conflict of a man from an honourable society being made to do dirty jobs, are visible in the way he carries himself and his heavy armour.

The Mandalorian is a classic Western series with modern production values, set in the galaxy far, far away. Every episode is a Star Wars movie in half an hour, and a delight. And Baby Yoda is really, really cute.

THE HAUNTED

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THE HAUNTED / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: DAVID HOLROYD / SCREENPLAY: DAVID HOLROYD / STARRING: SOPHIE STEVENS, NICK BAYLY, KIRSTIE STEELE / RELEASE: OUT NOW

What’s immediately impressive about new spooky video-on-demand release The Haunted is its makers’ commitment to the old-school fundamentals of the haunted house flick. It’s an enthusiasm that holds good throughout the piece, which delivers a pleasing combination of unease, mounting tension and jump-shocks. All this good stuff unfolds around a strong (if not exactly unique) premise.

Emily is a young woman far from at ease with herself. Weighed down by some serious personal baggage, she’s taken a low paid job she hopes can give her the kind of no fuss, solitary lifestyle in which she might find some solace. She’s dropped off at the house of the elderly dementia sufferer she’s the overnight care for, deep in the English countryside; her abrupt boss barking out instructions but little encouragement. As the day shift departs, Emily’s left alone in this rambling house, with only the near-comatose Arthur for company. With just a few rooms on the ground floor in use, the rest of the residence has been mothballed.

With the set-up of The Haunted established in minutes, it’s down to the character of Emily to carry the rest of the film. Sophie Stevens puts in a terrific, uninhibited performance as the unfortunate carer. She’s helped in the task by the fact that writer-director David Holroyd gifts Emily with making credible, emotionally intelligent responses to her worsening predicament. She has to balance her disbelief and rising terror against her instincts not to abandon Arthur to some terrible fate at ghostly hands. Which means she’s stuck in the four walls of his horribly haunted home.

Both the sound design and the cinematography of The Haunted play things straight. The house is framed as an endless maze of doors, corridors, stairwells, and antechambers, through which Emily must pick her way. She’s alarmed by knocks, clangs, bangs, and clumping footsteps. As she creeps past the shadows and dustsheets, she finds items misplaced and things flitting past in her peripheral vision. And then something leaps out of the darkness.

As the tension ratchets up, familiar devices, including CCTV and a Ouija board, play small roles in moving the plot forward, But most of the action comes from the eerie chill of Emily being trapped alone in the lair of something that seems to resent her presence. That won’t be enough for viewers wanting ‘more’ than claustrophobic unease and boo-shocks, but The Haunted is aiming for the psychological and not the horror jugular.

It’s not without its flaws. Sometimes the camera provides a third-person vantage point that anticipates Emily’s arrival in a cellar or attic space, undermining the tension that comes from being at her side as she inches forward into the darkness. And while the 75-minute runtime keeps things tightly focused, the closing revelations would have more impact if they didn’t feel so rushed. That aside, The Haunted succeeds as a taut, engaging chiller. And right now, it’s not hard to empathise with the plight of someone who finds themselves stuck in the house under lockdown, with only caring responsibilities to distract them.

DREAMLAND

dreamland

DREAMLAND / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: BRUCE MCDONALD / SCREENPLAY: TONY BURGESS, PATRICK WHISTLER / STARRING: STEPHEN MCHATTIE, HENRY ROLLINS, JULIETTE LEWIS, LISA HOULE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

As Canadian genre movies go, the Bruce McDonald-Stephen McHattie paring is akin to Scorsese and De Niro. Both reached career highs over a decade ago with Pontypool, a zombie film in which the perfunctory infection is carried by language. This surrealistic streak appears throughout most of McDonald’s career, for better or for worse. A competent storyteller, his movies are always watchable, but the filmmaker often fails to balance his freak flag with most conventional narrative elements. It’s the same story with Dreamland.

Much like Jack Nicholson in Mars Attacks!, Stephen McHattie pulls double duty for no good reason. He is Johnny, a hired gun for a two-bit mobster named Hercules (Rollins), the manager of the filthiest club in all town, the Al Qaeda. Hercules’ decision to start catering to wealthy paedophiles doesn’t sit well with Johnny, who turns on his employer. McHattie also plays a trumpet player addicted to smack, hired to play at the wedding of a vampire and his child bride (hey, a gig is a gig). Inevitably, the stories intersect – the musician runs afoul of Hercules – leading to burst of violence, random philosophical arguments and very amusing comic banter between Hercules and the bloodsucker.

A noir film at heart (there’s no older tale than the criminal gunning for salvation), Dreamland packs enough weirdness to be different, but not enough to cross to David Lynch territory. The weathered, stupendous McHattie is excellent in both roles: The actor invests each character with a different kind of pathos and even delivers a touching version of Annie Lennox’s I Saved the World Today. Henry Rollins, who has been playing the heavy for a couple of decades now, gives his morally compromised character a vulnerability and sense of humour that prevents audiences from hating him.

The main problem with Dreamland is that all these elements ­- the quirky characters, the grade school goons, Juliette Lewis – add up to nothing. The story is not all that substantial, and the political commentary is too broad to take seriously. Luckily, at ninety minutes, the parade of oddities and weirdness is intriguing enough to carry the viewer to the end.