Review Category: VOD

DIRECTOR: JESSICA HAUSNER | SCREENPLAY: JESSICA HAUSNER, GÉRALDINE BAJARD | STARRING: EMILY BEECHAM, BEN WHISHAW, KERRY FOX, KIT CONNOR | RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 21ST

Alice is a plant breeder working on a new strain of manufactured flowers designed to create a sense of happiness and well-being in the owner if the plant is properly cared for, spoken to, and nurtured. Under pressure to have it ready for an important event, she bypasses some of the safety requirements in the plant’s genetics, and even takes one home as a gift for her son, calling the plant Little Joe in her boy’s honour. When a co-worker with a history of mental illness tries to persuade Alice that those who inhale the plant’s pollen change, becoming a kind of ‘Little Joe protection army’, Alice dismisses the claims. But she soon starts to notice subtle differences in her son’s behaviour and that of some colleagues. Has her creation mutated into something else or is it all in her mind?

In a modern take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, replacing alien invasion with themes around mental health, antidepressants, and well-being, writer-director Jessica Hausner has created a film so formally mannered in its execution and so relentlessly understated that you do at times feel you might have had an unofficial scratch and sniff of Joe’s pollen yourself just by watching it.

Long takes within sterile sets, often monotone delivery, a pace which rarely shifts, if at all – Little Joe proves that there’s a fine line between hypnotic and somnambulant. It just, and only just, stays upon the hypnotic side but you do sometimes wish that the film, in exploring its themes, allowed a little more of the explosive chaos that the plant is designed to combat into its narrative.

Only a few scenes with the ever wonderful Kerry Fox hint at that, her character’s history of mental illness cleverly used as the harbinger of doom, the apparently unstable one being the sanest person around. Elsewhere the cast do a fine job, Ben Wishaw is dependable as ever and Emily Beecham doing fine work in the lead, although her Best Actress win at Cannes is a little curious. (Perhaps the Jury had been sent some Little Joe’s of their own before they watched the film.)

So, while it’s an interesting, never boring film, its style and relentless refusal to change tone keeps you at an emotional distance throughout, making it difficult to care. You long for something explosive to happen and it doesn’t, which is surely part of the point that Hausner is making, but Little Joe is at times the cinematic equivalent of taking some heavy mood stabilisers.

DIRECTOR: BRIAN SLAGLE / SCREENPLAY: BRIAN SLAGLE, ROBERT THOMPSON / STARRING: VIVICA A. FOX, DANIEL BALDWIN, STINK FISHER, DEVANNY PINN, VERNON WELLS / RELEASE DATE: VOD OUT NOW

A squad of ex-“oorah” marines are sent by the President of the New United States of America on a suicide mission to retrieve an alien bio-weapon in the lacklustre and sluggish Crossbreed.

Sci-Fi Military films can be brilliant – they can expertly merge true to life stories with the fantastical in order to create vast worlds and rich, interesting characters, or they can be an excuse to have blockhead pieces of meat run around with guns talking about how big their dicks are – and in the case of this particular film, it is most certainly the latter.

Adam (Fisher) has retired from military service and now runs a bar in honour of his deceased wife and daughter before he recruited back to take on this dangerous mission by the President (Fox) in return for a large cash sum which will help his struggling business venture. He also gets to put together his own squad of muscle which presents us with an eye-rolling montage introducing us to these weak and boring characters meaning we as an audience can’t wait for the bloodshed to begin.

In terms of character development, Adam (also known as “Boss”) and his close friend Rey (or “Slaughterhouse”) are the only two who even possess a personality – the others who, quite frankly are incredibly forgettable, are just there to be violently pulled apart by the “Crossbreed” that the title of the film eludes too. Now, this alien creature is arguably the only memorable aspect of the film as actress Devanny Pinn was put in prosthetics for the role and the creature design was visually appealing as she stalks the marines and evolves throughout the film.

Ultimately, this wayward and, in terms of dialogue, cringy attempt at a sci-fi action film is wooden, noisy and very forgettable.

DIRECTOR: MARTIN GOOCH / SCREENPLAY: MARTIN GOOCH / STARRING: KRISTA DEMILLE, ANDREA SWEENEY BLANCO, JESUS LLOVERAS, WILLIAM MARK MCCULLOUGH, RON ROGGE / RELEASE DATE: TBC

After the world is plunged into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, one family must fight for survival in Atomic Apocalypse.

Post-apocalyptic films are a powerhouse of a sub-genre on their own – with the likes of Mad Max and 28 Days Later being some key prime examples of phenomenal films – however, in the case of this particular effort, a strong start quickly loses its steam with lacklustre dialogue and a distinct absence of a clear path to its conclusion.

Kate (DeMille), her husband Sam (Rogge) and daughter Suzy (Blanco) have survived the wasteland for over 600 days before they meet Joe (Lloveras) who might not be the nice guy he pretends to be. Along their journey of finding supplies, they encounter a whole host of wacky characters (which one might expect in these kinds of stories) that in any other post-apocalyptic tale would probably fit in but in terms of Atomic Apocalypse which starts off fairly serious in tone, these characters just feel too cartoony.

The two main aspects that this film can be praised is its ability on a low budget to present sets that feel like abandoned buildings (probably because they are) and Kate DeMille’s solid performance as a normal mother who has to adapt to this new world in order to keep her family safe.

However, those two points alone couldn’t save the film ultimately being poorly paced and wayward as, on the other end of the spectrum, ridiculous character choices and a sudden bemusing ending that didn’t fit the tone of the beginning of the film (which kind of felt like a “happily ever after” setpiece) fails to engage the audience in this world or trepidations that these characters are experiencing.

DIRECTOR: TIAGO MESQUITA / SCREENPLAY: MARK MORGAN / STARRING: LINDSAY LOHAN, CHARLOTTE BECKETT, GIANNI CAPALDI, JOHN FLANDERS / RELEASE DATE: VOD OUT NOW

In 2022, the European Union has disbanded and a new European Federation has risen. A Private Investigator must solve the mystery of her uncle’s murder during the election – also there are werewolves… and vampires… oh, and Lindsay Lohan as the First Lady.

Among the Shadows is a Horror Political Drama – with no Drama, very little logical and understandable Politics and no horror (except for how horrifically bad it is). From the opening text monologue (that even includes the word ‘FREXIT’ describing France’s exit from the EU), it’s an utter mess – abysmal writing and dialogue, nauseating editing meaning the “action” scenes are an agonising assault on the eyes which could lead to migraines unlike anyone has ever experienced and the most wooden acting you’ve ever seen.

Even Lindsay Lohan was unable to save this monstrosity – we even think she knew how bad this project was as it’s obviously apart that 99% of her scenes in the film when she is acting across from her fellow cast members, she isn’t in the same room and is in fact in front of green screen, halfway across the world, in a room with terrible acoustics.

The Director clearly had zero idea on how to pace the movie or how to move the plot along as between almost every scene we are bombarded with generic, stock footage aerial shots of major cities before it turns into guerilla filmmaking with actors walking through real scenarios without any of the background people knowing what was going on.

On top of all that, the “special effects” are far from that – the werewolves were just comprised of fake nashers and glowing eyes lazily tacked on giving them no menace or tenacity and quite frankly the entire film was overall simply offensive to anyone that enjoys the medium of film.

COLOR OUT OF SPACE | CERT: 15 | DIRECTOR: RICHARD STANLEY | SCREENPLAY: SCARLETT AMARIS | STARRING: NICOLAS CAGE, Q’ORIANKA KILCHER, JOELY RICHARDSON | RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 28TH

When it was announced that Nicolas Cage was teaming up with Richard Stanley to adapt a story by H.P. Lovecraft, a certain subset of pop-culture geekdom lost its collective mind.

Cage’s fans know the drill by now. Whereas Samuel L. Jackson famously takes a ‘one for you, one for me’ approach towards picking projects – attempting to find a healthy balance between artistic endeavour and paying the bills – Nicolas Cage takes more of a ‘nine for you, one for me’ approach, whereby he churns out a huge number of movies each year and we, the audience, are left to pan for gold and figure out which movie is the one he actually cared about that year. In 2017, it was Mom and Dad, last year, it was Mandy and, in 2019, it seems like it was Color Out of Space. This film is the Cagiest that Cage has been in years – and that’s, very much, a good thing.

Stanley’s fans, on the other hand, don’t really know the drill by now. Color Out of Space marks the first scripted feature from him since his infamous firing from cinematic disasterpiece The Island of Dr. Moreau, over 20 years ago. Digital aesthetic aside, there’s little to set this film apart from the body of work Stanley was producing back then. It fits right in.

Lovecraft fans, on the proverbial third hand, thought they knew the drill by now, but it turns out they were trying to use a masonry bit instead of a flat-spade bit to bore a hole into a piece of plywood (in other words: they didn’t know the drill at all). Lovecraft’s work is known for being difficult to adapt to screen and most attempts to do so are known for being failures.

Now, however, between the likes of this film, the H.P.-inspired angst of The Lighthouse and Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah’s plans to create an entire Lovecraft cinematic universe, perhaps the tide is turning. Perhaps we’re on the cusp on a wave of filmmakers suddenly understanding what makes Lovecraft stories work as movies, just as has happened to Stephen King over the last few years.

Color Out of Space is a strange film in that you always feel somewhat disconnected from it. The plot – a meteorite crashes close to a family home and begins to infect the life around it in strange, alien ways – offers nothing you haven’t seen before (and, frankly, nothing you haven’t seen done better) elsewhere. There’s an argument to be made that there’s no real justification for this film to exist in the same world as John Carpenter’s The Thing.

That said, the film taps into a truly dreamlike quality – sliding from transient and eerily peaceful to utterly nightmarish at the drop of a hat. It’s genuinely disturbing in some places and, when combined with its sly sense of humour and ample amounts of Nicolas Cage action (at one point, he has a tantrum that involves shouting “slam dunk” while throwing vegetables in the bin), you get a very satisfying film that leaves you excited to see what else the production company, SpectreVision, has in store.