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Reviews
Feardotcom (2002)
Incoherence: The Movie
There is so much wrong with Feardotcom that it's hard to know where to start, but the most cardinal of sins that it commits is that it fails on pretty much every level to be even remotely scary or, indeed, horrific.
Seasoned gore-hounds will find the sub-Event Horizon body horror blink-and-you'll-miss-it bondage gear montages laughably tame, whilst the completely incoherent script rob the film of any sort of atmosphere that could possibly rescue it from the celluloid scrap heap; really, the script is quite staggeringly bad - characters seem to communicate primarily through non-sequiturs, with the two leads seemingly falling in love (? - like so much in this picture, this is never particularly clear) via the single utterance "please don't go look at that site" only for the very next scene to be Stephen Dorff's cardboard cutout of Brad Pitt in Se7en doing exactly that.
The site, so the story tells us, is something akin to the tape in The Ring; a cursed url that brings the unsuspecting viewer into contact with the spirit of a victim of Stephen Dorff's imaginatively-named serial killer, "The Doctor", given unlife by the collective energies of the internet (bear with me, this gets even less coherent) in order to exact revenge for her livestreamed torture-death by... killing anyone who watches it in 48 hours. Why this ghost, manifesting most often as a decidedly unfrightening little girl with ludicrous hair, is intent on murdering random people instead of the actual man who killed her is never adequately explained.
Said victim, by the way, was a haemophiliac with a fear of knives, whose mother inexplicably alllowed her to play at an abandoned steel mill (which, you guessed it, is where "The Doctor" has taken his latest victim, a terminally stupid cinema usher who decided to go to a creepy abandoned theater because said creepy serial killer said he would cast her in a movie upon first interacting with her, with predictable results), and thus her method of supernatural murder is to kill people via their worst fears, causing them to stroke out and bleed profusely from the eyes.
So we get Udo Kier hurling himself in front of a subway train for no apparent reason, a forensic programmer swarmed by poor CGI bugs hurling herself out of a window, a character introduced randomly then inexplicably translocated to the abandoned steel mill so that the ghost can spiritually drive his car into a wall, and lingering shots of a german student's corpses nipples after she apparently thought she was drowing in a bath tub. None of this is handled in any way scarily; we don't care about any of these characters, we are given no reason to care about them when the ghost unceremoniously offs them, and their deaths are so poorly-handled we care nothing for them afterwards.
Anyway, back to the plot! Natasha McElhone's CDC investigator rushes to the psych ward where Stephen Dorff's detective has been - without explanation - committed, screams randomly at a nonplussed receptionist, is directed to his room, where he is in the throes of a fit that no doctors are present administering to. She recieves a phone call from the ghost, for some reason. I can't actually remember if this is before or after she herself visits the eponymous website for no apparent reason.
She then goes to the abandoned steel mill in order to encounter the spoooooky blind old woman (who takes no further part in the plot in any way and is just hanging out in a run down industrial complex to be spooky to Natasha McElhone for some reason) and finds the corpse of the victim-cum-murder ghost. Yay! The haunting's over! ...Nope. Despite the movie outright yelling at us that this would end the haunting, it doesn't. Why? I don't know.
Anyway, despite being the absolute worst detectives in the world, Dorff and McElhone finally track down "The Doctor" and rescue his latest victim, in the process Dorff gets offed and "The Doctor" gets Top Dollar from The Crow'd to death by the internet ghost.
We end on McElhone, alone again, recieving a phone call. Is it Dorff? The Doctor? The Ghostly Victim Girl apologising for murdering the shit out of a bunch of random people?
No! It's just the sound of static! What a fittingly stupid end to a 'horror' film in which the second most shocking thing present is the exposed nipples of a murder victim, and the first most shocking is the absolutely incomprehensibly bad script. Watch only if drunk and with friends, for some MST3K action, otherwise find something more productive and horrifying to do with your time like clip your toenails or grout the bathroom. Oh, and Jeffrey Coombs (the rather excellent Weyoun from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) is entirely wasted as Dorff's asshole partner who communicates almost solely through orphaned sentences that have no relevance to anything going on around him.
An absolute stinker, and legtimately one of the worst horror films I've ever seen. I'd rather watch Manos: The Hands of Fate twice back-to-back than subject myself to this cinematic turd again.
Don't Kill It (2016)
Goofy as hell
Supremely silly splattercore horror with Dolph Lundgren as a grizzled Demon Hunter tracking a malignant body hopper that switches host every time it's killed to the person who did the killing (a la 1998's much more cerebral and serious 'Fallen'). The gore effects are hilarious, the dialogue is loaded with more cheese than the average cheese shop and, despite a rather uneven tone at times, it's mostly trashy fun.
Don't go in expecting a masterpiece, and be careful - the demon itself constantly shrieks, loudly, so watch your ears if you're wearing headphones.
Doesn't do anything even remotely new, but doesn't try to, and is content just to leave you with a big, dumb smile at the end of it all.
The Colony (2013)
It's... OK
This movie feels a lot like wasted potential; the setting is good, the set design is better (which elevates this to the upper end of average), but everything feels too rushed and the characters aren't given any time to breathe to its detriment. It's hard to care about the fate of colonists who've had little to no character development over the course of the movie, and therefore the action sequences lack weight after Laurence Fishbourne's Briggs exits the stage around the midway point.
In particular, I have absolutely no idea why anyone would follow Mason's (Bill Paxton, in an unusually poor performance) orders especially when they became increasingly hardline and dictatorial for no apparent reason.
I'm of the opinion that any genre piece in the realms of sci-fi is worth a watch if it has a couple of good ideas in it, and The Colony does, so if you're a fan of post-apocalyptic sci-fi it's not a bad investment for your time. Still, it feels like a solid setting left largely unexplored, which is ultimately a bit of a shame.
Hereditary (2018)
Probably the best horror film of the last ten years
Really, only 'Get Out' and 'The Invitation' have come close for me. Hereditary's basic plot isn't actually all that innovative, but everything is done so incrediblly well it'll keep you on the edge of your seat throughout. I want to say so much more about this film, but doing so would ruin the experience for anyone who hasn't yet seen it.
You should absolutely go and see it as soon as possible.
Dead Man's Shoes (2004)
Stunning, simply stunning...
I saw this film for the first time before 'This is England', Shane Meadows' more widely-known and critically-lauded film was released. A friend of mine recommended it to me, and I have to admit I was skeptical; the DVD packaging made me think it'd be a straight-up revenge movie - one guy against a gang, killing them one by one.
Sure, that single sentence applies, but 'Dead Man's Shoes' is so much more than that. It's a powerful and affecting story, and beautifully done at that.
Paddy Considine as Richard, a squaddie living rough with his handicapped brother Anthony (Tony Kebbel) are so perfectly portrayed you cannot look away when either is on screen. Every character (like in 'This is England') is undoubtedly human; there are no caricatures here. Of particular note is Richard and Anthony sat back-to-back on a tractor tyre, talking about a football match. The dialogue, and the delivery, really shows the depth of human emotion present (as does Richard's last speech of the film; I freely admit that I cried, as did two of my three brothers, and my mother when I showed them the film).
Considine plays Richard as disciplined, yet full of a seething rage at his brother's tormentors - the sadistic Sonny and his motley crew of drug dealers and petty thugs.
The violence, whilst brutal, is never gratuitous (we see only three actual deaths in the film, the others occurring off-camera or out-of-shot) and totally fitting Richard's (seemingly disproportionate) loathing of Sonny, Tuff, Herbie and co.
There are genuine moments of humour, too - when three of the gang are 'spiked', their dialogue is hilarious and totally true-to-life for the substances they have been given, whilst some of the dialogue is so deft and genuine it raises more than the odd chuckle; for example, the gang telling Herbie "don't mention the elephant!" repeatedly, and him promptly doing so...
And as for the final act... no words I can write here can convey how powerful it is, without giving it away. You'll have to take my word for it.
All in all, if you like films that will affect you - watch this. If you like films that not only seem plausible, but require no real suspension of disbelief - watch this. If you like 'This Is England' and want to see another Shane Meadows gem - watch this (though I suspect you already have).
Dead Man's Shoes rightfully deserves to be installed as a masterpiece of modern cinema. Shane Meadows deserves to be recognised as a master storyteller.
One of the few films I've ever seen where I would change absolutely nothing about it - and no higher accolade can I give it.
WATCH IT!
The Descent (2005)
A nasty little film... for all the right reasons
It ticks all the boxes for me in a horror film;
-->It's tense -->It relies on atmosphere (to an extent) over shock value -->When shock value is used, it's used inventively and unexpectedly (Sarah's partner and child's death at the beginning made me jump like you wouldn't believe - a rarity for me!) -->The score enhances, rather than detracts, from the on-screen action -->You genuinely care about the fates of the characters -->And hell - it's British! :)
Without giving too much away, The Descent is a remorseless horror (like Aja's remake of The Hills Have Eyes) that takes you on a nightmarish - and largely plausible - trip into a cave network in the Appalachian Mountains.
This, along with the directors earlier work 'Dog Soldiers' and '28 Days Later' are spearheading a charge by young(ish) British directors into the world of Horror, injecting fresh life into a genre previously dominated by a stagnant Hollywood content to make Slashers/remakes of far superior Asian films. And that can be only a good thing.
It's magnificently paced, superbly lit and well-acted. What more needs to be said? Go watch it!
Silent Hill (2006)
Underwhelmingly plotted, visually good
I have to say, I was reluctant to watch this, being a massive fan of the games. A friend convinced me, and I must say that visually the film is excellent. However, there is a sense that the visuals are the 'meat' of the film - something I despise.
Plotwise, the film apes the first game - with the difference that the principal character has been gender-switched (something I found almost entirely unnecessary and actually somewhat counter-productive).
Sybil the motorbike cop is made less ambiguous than she was in the first game, and gone are all references to Metatron as some form of celestial being pulling the strings.
Alessa wasn't used or exposed on enough. Her tale is a tragic one; and in the first game you really grow to feel genuine sympathy for her. In the film, she's depth-less. The whole witchcraft thing is appallingly boneheaded, and totally out of keeping with the 'spirit' of the games.
My biggest bone, in fact, is that Christophe Gans chose to play with the mythos of Silent Hill - whilst an 'official' explanation has never been given, it is the consensus that Silent Hill exists differently depending on the person experiencing it, and that the creatures and so forth (whilst sticking to some repeating motifs) are personal anxieties and fears given form. Which leads me to both a big problem I had with Silent Hill; Pyramid Head.
Make no mistake, Pyramid Head - whilst gorgeously and provocatively rendered - is a stinking abortion in this film. Pyramid Head in Silent Hill 2 (indeed, he has zero connection with Alessa in 'true' Silent Hill mythology) was James Sullivan's sense of guilt and self-persecution at his euthanasia murder of his wife Mary, and the subsequent creation of Maria, a sexier and more idealised version of her (who becomes 'real' in the dark town). In Silent Hill the movie, he's Jason Voorhes - a one-dimensional killer with no substance beyond 'walk towards screaming woman with big knife and kill her'. That Pyramid Head subsequently disappears without explanation is bemusing also. Gans has really fired a blank here; Pyramid Head is potentially a mountainous horror icon that could be the first to break the 'based-on-the-computer-game' barrier. Here, he's flat and - dare I say it - dull. For that, I can't forgive him. Even more perplexingly, the final raft of Alessa-based killing is done gratuitously with barbed wire in a way very reminiscent to the WWI horror 'Deathwatch'. That Alessa was burned to death, tied to a ladder seems to have no relation to her supernatural abilities. Which, frankly, irritated me too.
Plot - 2/10 (I enjoyed Sean Bean's character, looking for his wife, and never finding her even when they were in the same room. That's the only bit of the plot I liked.) Visuals - 7/10 (very good, if more fan-service than anything else. And the barbed wire, as mentioned, was a ripoff)
P.S: What they should've done was made Silent Hill 2's plot into the basis for the films plot. It would've been creepier, more unsettling and more human than this hackneyed pseudo-nonsense about 'witches' and 'faith'.
Arpointeu (2004)
Ethereal, sometimes confusing, but with some genuine chills...
I really enjoyed R-Point, actually. The Korean War really worked as a setting for a horror film and the locations were just the right side of spooky, even in full sunlight.
I won't go into too much detail, but there are some moments that did unnerve me a little. I don't spook easily, but when the lagging soldier takes the wrong fork in the trail and comes up behind 'his' platoon, I was far more chilled by the lack of anything really happening than some hackneyed 'boo' moment. Like Ringu, The Eye or several other Eastern horror films, R-Point relied more on creating an atmosphere than on gore or 'jumpy' bits.
Acting was very good, and each soldier was believable in their own right - no stupid caricatures here, as are found in many films that place a bunch of squaddies somewhere they don't want to be (often aping, yet never bettering the 'Predator' lineup).
The last section of the film was a little muddled, although there were plenty of things I did like there too. The Americans, for example (again, I won't spoil it).
Really, the only reason this film doesn't score an 8 or a 9 from me is the culture clash prevalent in many Far East films when watched by a Western viewer; some of the plotting/exposition made little sense to me, not having been immersed in the culture at any point in reality.
Well worth a watch, particularly if you like films with atmosphere and a healthy 'creep-factor'.