Review Category: VOD

A ROUGH DRAFT / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: SERGEY MOKRITSKIY / SCREENPLAY: MAKSIM BUDARIN, DENIS KURYSHEV, SERGEY MOKRITSKIY, OLGA SOBENINA / STARRING: NIKITA VOLKOV, SEVERIJA JANUSAUSKAITE, OLGA BOROVSKAYA, YEVGENY TKACHUK / RELEASE DATE: TBC

A Rough Draft begins as a Kafkaesque mystery where the life of video games designer Kirill becomes gradually erased. A mysterious woman has taken over his flat, while his colleagues, neighbours, friends and even parents and dog have no idea who he is, leaving him with no life other than that offered by the interloper. He has been chosen, for reasons never established, to become the custodian of an abandoned tower that acts as a portal between parallel worlds, damned to an administrative purgatory for the remainder of his now-immortal existence.

The film is based on the novel of the same name by Russian author Sergei Lukyanenko, the creator of Night Watch and its sequels. However, while that saga of a supernatural Cold War playing out on the streets of modern day Moscow fully embraced its utterly bonkers premise from minute one, this attempts to be something far more subdued, to the utter detriment of anything vaguely coherent.

Too much time is spent merely expressing ideas without much in the way of properly developing the characters or building a story, so much so that it’s well over an hour into the film before anything resembling an actual plot is threatened with emergence, and even then it’s something only mentioned so it will actually have some significance when revisited for the climax. Of the characters who do feature, their motives are largely impenetrable due to the story’s disjointed structure that flits about in chronology without making any effort to link its segments into a flowing narrative. They act differently towards one another at various points with nothing in the interim to suggest what might have happened to cause the change, giving the impression that the important events that lend the story lucidity have taken place off screen during the multiple time skips.

Various worlds are representative of aspects of Russian past and national identity, such as a Romanoff-era steampunk world of airships and wintery beauty and a dystopian gulag where dissidents are put to arbitrary labour for nebulous purpose. A whole mythology of transdimensional travel is suggested, but it largely goes unexplored and is only brought up for the odd expository infodump or disjointed set piece.

It isn’t even until late on that the title is even alluded to, making little sense in relation to what has so far been seen. The film doesn’t even have the decency to be a complete story, but ends things with a significant plot thread unresolved, suggesting it will be the focus of adventures to follow. Instead of anticipation for a sequel, the only feeling the incomprehensible mess leaves you with is one that perhaps might have been most appropriate at an unintended meta level.

EVER AFTER (ENDZEIT) / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: CAROLINA HELLSGÅRD / SCREENPLAY: OLIVIA VIEWEG / CAST: GRO SWANTJE KOHLHOF, MAJA LEHRER, TRINE DYRHOLM, BARBARA PHILIPP / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The thoughtful and reflective German zombie flick. That’s a sub-genre with more life in it than many of the numerous undead cinematic spawn with which it jostles for attention. Ever After opens two years on from a zombie apocalypse that has overwhelmed the planet. It seems that only two isolated and well-guarded cities have escaped the calamity. The enclave of Weimar survives by imposing an immediate death sentence on anyone who becomes infected, while its more humanist neighbour Jena continues to hunt for a cure that might yet be the world’s salvation.

The film explores this terrible new environment through the eyes of two female protagonists. Vivi is a fragile and grieving teenager, punishing herself with guilt at her failure to protect her sibling when the plague hit. She finds her fate is entwined with that of Eva, an unapologetic kickass young woman willing to do whatever it takes to survive. As both women wrestle with their personal demons, the pair find themselves adrift in the open country between the two cities.

Ever After is, without doubt, an unusual, inventive and surprising film that tries to do something different with what is becoming one of the most overused screen horror tropes. But a determination to try for originality is no guarantee that filmmakers will deliver something truly compelling. And in reality, Ever After is more intriguing than it is arresting.

The film is at its strongest in its quietest moments. As the pair wander through an empty and desolate pastoral landscape, the melancholic atmosphere which permeates everything they encounter draws the viewer in. There’s also a great sense of trepidation as the two drifters approach each new apparently abandoned hamlet, unsure of what they’ll find.

There’s a very deliberate fairy tale ambience (albeit a “grotesque fantasy” one) running throughout the story which works well. It helps to frame the parable elements of the story which explore (without getting too hippy-trippy about it) nature’s determination to rebalance the ‘yin and yang’ of competing pressures when the world slides out of kilter.

The animated corpses pursuing the two women are the frenetic killer zombies of 28 Days Later and not the shuffling human husks of The Walking Dead. This means that the movie’s action sequences are genuinely explosive when they do arrive. But that’s the film’s key problem: trying to meld its own ‘yin and yang.’ There are just too many slow-paced philosophical reflections to keep zombie bloodhounds entertained, and too many of the ravenous undead – and too much gory flesh munching – to keep the art-house indie crowd fully on-side.

You won’t have seen a zombie movie quite like EndZeit. Its existential musings on the nature of the human condition are not the stock-in-trade of grindhouse horror fare, and it’ll keep you off-guard until the low-key finale. But while it’s an interesting experiment in extending the zombie template, it’s not entirely successful and its appeal is likely to remain niche.

THE GALLOWS ACT II / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: TRAVIS CLUFF, CHRIS LOFING / STARRING: EMA HORVATH, CHRIS MILLIGAN, BRITTANY FALARDEAU / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The sequel no-one asked for to the film few people liked… The Gallows’ story of a cursed stage play and those tormented by it was hardly up there with Blumhouse’s Get Out, Sinister, Happy Death Day or even the roundly terrible Truth or Dare. Financially though, the original Gallows was a success and so the business model demands a sequel. This greatly-delayed second act (dumped unceremoniously onto VOD after spending years in a vault) reeks of obligation and embarrassment.

The events of this sequel are barely connected to 2015’s predecessor, save for its mythology. When drama student Auna (Ema Horvath) happens across the stage play ‘The Gallows’ (thanks to the intervention of a mysterious YouTube commenter), she is immediately taken by it and performs a monologue from its script for her drama class. No surer than if she’d watched the VHS from The Ring or whatever the ridiculous threat was in Truth or Dare, she unleashes a dreadful curse upon herself and her school chums.

As rote and unimaginative as VOD horror sequels get, Act II is a by-the-numbers rehash of its predecessor’s concept, adding little of value or interest along the way. 2015’s found footage gimmick is, at least, gone, but the film remains ugly and incoherent. Its preposterous twist attempts to sweep over the film’s gaps in logic, but ultimately only makes things worse. Following this misfire, The Gallows is unlikely to see a third act, but as no-one asked for this one either, we should be careful not to speak too soon.