Film Reviews by NP

I really enjoyed this low budget independent Irish horror. After a gory establishing scene which packs a good twist in its brief pre-credits time, we get to know the group of four young people (Keith, Jen, Jay, and Katie) taking a trip to a music festival. They’re a mischievous bunch – coarse, good humoured and genuinely likeable. Because of this, when they stop in a remote pub and are intimidated by the subtly sinister locals, we are concerned they will come to harm – or gang-raped, as one of their number quips.

This is writer/director Anthony White’s debut full-length film and it’s a good one. Much is made of the verdant scenery and remoteness. The dialogue and acting are persuasive, and even the inevitable sex chat has an amusing edge to it. Nothing hugely new is attempted here, we have ghost stories around the camp-fire to set the scene, slow burning horror atmospherics and a gradual cloud of doom sweeping over the small cast of characters. This is not a criticism – what this film it does, it does very well.

The music by Paul Scott is very raw and effective and helps sell the mood of this rural nightmare, and it is true to say, the brutality and horror is piled up nicely toward the end. Recommended.

Candyman’s Tony Todd growls his way through the role of Ruber, caretaker to the infamous Jericho Manor. Todd gleefully hams his way through his scenes, but manages never to send up the subject matter.

Two policemen observe footage left behind by a group of internet documentary makers. They have been locked in the Manor overnight and the policemen, Detectives Anderson and Jenkins (Joseph Milson and Gary Mavers) are determined to find out what happened to them. Paul (the essential unsubtle idiot of the group), Jason, Anne-Marie, Sheila (the clairvoyant) and Amanda the hostess with ideas above her station. The cast are enthusiastic but not always convincing, which is a common trait with low budget projects like this. The characters have their flaws of course, but are never as needlessly unlikable as several other groups portrayed in ‘teen’ horror films.

It might be easy to dismiss this as ‘Blair Witch in a haunted building’ – and there is a scene in which Amanda (Cicely Tennant), having been brought down to size by her experiences, records a goodbye message to her parents much like Heather did in the 1999 film – but here the protagonist is not quite spectral. Furthermore, this is not quite a found footage film. It is a film about two Detectives looking at found footage – with that in mind, the addition of jump scares and an incidental score is somewhat explained. And the reactions of Jenkins are very effective.

The twist at the end also really impressed me. The reveal of the killer is very well handled, as is his habit of gently kissing his victims before they die. Good fun.

There is a pre-credits sequence involving something unpleasant involving evil children. You might well be forgiven for wondering what on earth is going on by the time that opening title sequence rolls. Embrace that wonderment, because during the course of the next 93 minutes, it will become a good friend.

The usual constraints of a low-budget production happen here – some unpolished acting (which improves as the horror sets in) and a musical score that occasionally squashes the dialogue. That is something I readily ignore if the film is engaging. Sadly, writer/directors Maurizio and Roberto del Piccolo do everything they can to ensure ‘Evil Souls’ is not engaging a lot of the time.

There is a hugely over-the-top performance from Peter Cosgrove as Valentine, a devotee of The Marquis De Sade. He dresses in period costume and face mask and indulges in some eccentric Shakespearian dialogue. I end up quite liking him, although I’m not sure I’m supposed to. He specialises in kidnapping single mums, it seems, and ends up with old school friends Jess (Holli Dillon) and Susan (Paola Masciadri).

There are also some foul-mouthed prostitutes (including Valentine’s sister Maddie, played by Lisa Holsappel-Marrs. Lisa also plays Maddie’s mother, giving probably the film’s best performance; she also co-produces this) and a priest (Julian Boote). There are moments of briefly glimpsed gore. The Italian locations look very impressive, and there is a well conveyed mood-scape of bleakness and gloom, which makes the film as good as it is. And yet the story-line is simply impenetrable. Sometimes a confusing narrative can be successfully disorientating inducing an almost hallucinogenic effect on the viewer. Perhaps that is what is being attempted here.

Torture porn, rape, demonic possession that seems to tie-in with historical figures (apart from De Sade, Hitler gets a nod, and others too), revenge, gore and mild nudity: it’s all here. The result is often enjoyable despite (or possibly because of) the induced confusion, and things definitely build up towards the end. It’s just a shame these elements couldn’t have been brought together with a little more cohesion.

A group of teen friends meet up on a sport’s field. The two girls sit on the bench talking about sex, while the guys play sports. But enough of the character development.

“No sh*t I got sh*t,” says one later as they play cards in the basement. The girls remain bored throughout. The group aren’t as detestable as teens often are in these films, but they do their best. Scratchy voiced, horny and, whilst their wild parents are partying above, they decide to take out a Ouija board. They summon Jonah (Cesar Pereira), who was murdered before his time. We see him clambering out of a grave, looking like a fairly convincing Freddy Krueger – but rather than immediately go after whoever it was that killed him, he sets about tracking down the six teens instead.

The acting is mainly what you might expect from a very low-budget production, although the performances become more persuasive once Jonah appears. This applies to the girls especially. Jocelyn Padilla (as Barbara) is good at reacting to the devastation around her, and Nicole LaSala ensures that Lydia journeys from being by far the most annoying group member to the most interesting, via a bizarre change in character. The character of Zora is played by prolific scream queen Brinke Stevens. At first I thought her character was given such prominence because of the actress’s notoriety, but the character has her own story, revealed towards the film’s close …

Russell Estrela’s terrifically chunky electronic score is my favourite thing about this. His incidentals help cultivate the notion that this is in some way an ‘appreciation’ of 1980s slasher films. First-time director Luis Carvalho who also writes, co-produces and edits this (as well as appearing as one of the swingers) should be commended for following his dream and creating a horror film. It isn’t terribly good – many of the kills take place off-screen, and the idea that a group of young people can be slaughtered in a basement whilst their parents party upstairs is a little ridiculous (or delightfully silly, whichever way you want to look at it) – but I have seen worse. Problematically, apart from these questionable decisions, ‘Jonah Lives’ is often a rather dull experience, enlivened by a commendable upswing in pace towards the end.

Michael Shannon, who starred recently in the terrific ‘Can’t Come Out to Play (2013)’ plays Richard Strickland, gammy-handed Colonel in charge of studying ‘the asset’, a lone fish-creature held in captivity by the US government. Sally Hawkins plays Elisa, a mute woman who, alongside Zelda (Octavia Spencer) works as a cleaner for the project. Her next door neighbour is Giles, struggling homosexual artist (Richard Jenkins, Chicory from 2015’s ‘Bone Tomahawk’). I mention his sexuality, because alongside Elisa and African-American Zelda, these people are somewhat outcast in Baltimore, 1962, where this film is set. All except Strickland, of course, who is fully accepted and acceptable, a respectable military man – cruel, arrogant and ‘decent’: apart from his injured hand, of course.

Strickland was bitten by the humanoid amphibian creature known as ‘the asset’, in this acclaimed Guillermo del Toro directed (and co-written) partial reimagining of ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon.’ It is hugely cinematic, beautifully shot, exquisitely acted and in places, strangely moving in the way that monster/human love affairs have occasionally been over the decades. Unfortunately, the sentimentality goes overboard on a number of occasions and squashes the appeal of the fragile relationship between the unappreciated mute girl and the abused creature.

Satisfyingly though, there is no doubt that the ‘system’, the ‘establishment’ is entirely corrupt and that the higher up the proverbial ladder, the more brazenly deceitful the officials have become. As in the best traditions of horror, the unsightly creature is the one we all route for, whilst those who have given themselves the responsibility of hierarchy are, to quote Doctor Who, decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core. And how do our heroes attempt to thwart the nastiness around them? They escape, they run away. Ah, would that we could all do that …

This is a terrific and typical del Torro fairytale, child-like and affecting, with only the occasional sex-scene or moment of graphic horror violence to make the children audience members wince. It’s a long ‘un at just over two hours, but such is the spectacle, it never outstays its welcome. Lovely.

Ireland, early 1920s. Twins Rachael (Charlotte Vega) and Edward (Bill Milner) are twins cursed to live their lives alone in a magnificently gothic mansion, lest they break the rules set by a mysterious presence from generations past. This presence insists that no-one else may enter the dwelling, and that they must be in their beds by midnight. And something mysterious exists beneath the trapdoor.

The twins are unfortunately rather defined by their current characteristics – Rachel is headstrong and sensible, and Edward is weird and more subservient to the presence. Apart from that, there’s not a great deal in the script or dialogue that allows us to get close to them.

The arrival of one-legged Sean (Eugene Simon), a World War 1 veteran who has returned to a village that now spurns him, finds himself attracted to Rachel, and that the feeling is mutual causes an imbalance in her ordered life. David Bradley makes a welcome appearance as solicitor Bermingham, reluctantly on hand to deliver bad news about the twins’ financial state.

That hoary old cliché ‘style over substance’ may well apply to ‘The Lodgers’. Filmed in one of Ireland's most haunted houses, Loftus Hall, the story takes its time – which is something I have no problem with – but the mansion, village and surrounding locations look breath-taking. Director Brian O'Malley ensures that everything is a scenic as it can possibly be, and that the surroundings strike that perfect balance between beauty and gothic horror. A closed society, living in a resplendent land.

Whilst the atmospherics, and Edward’s strangeness – as well as Rachael’s longing to leave – are handled very effectively, actual scares are thin on the ground. When they do occur, however, they are very well handled. All in all, I really enjoyed this. An elegant, strangely tragic horror excursion.

Lina Romay looks stunning in this, possibly more so than in any Franco film I’ve yet seen. Here, she lends her not inconsiderable acting talents to play Shirley Fields, whom we first meet as she kills her thief boyfriend before being sentenced to six year’s imprisonment. Once incarcerated, the prison snitch Martine (Martine Stedil) is given the job of getting close to her and trying to find out about the diamonds missing in the latest robbery.

Martine and Shirley spend most of their time swapping cigarettes and smoking them whilst naked. Jess himself makes one of his regular appearances as thug overlord Bill. Ronald Weiss is another cast-member of note, playing the seedy Carlo de Bries. There’s a moment of prison sex when Martine and Shirley suddenly become lesbians. It takes a special skill to make lesbian love scenes between these two beautiful women entirely un-erotic, but ‘Women Behind Bars’ manages it. As far as torture – something Women In Prison dramas pride themselves in – there is some whipping, and some particularly invasive punishment for our Shirley.

The downside of the production is, unsurprisingly, the dubbing, with lines being spat out staccato style, and often two characters will talk over each other. Daniel White, musician veteran of so many Franco films, turns in a lacklustre score here. Shades of lounge/jazz music, often sounding as if it comes from a single keyboard. The story itself is fairly thin and, although this is only Franco third ‘Women in Prison’ film, his directorship seems only occasionally inspired this time round.

The upside is that Romay carries the film well. Shirley is required to suffer a lot throughout, seemingly at the hands of whomever she meets. It could only be discreetly suggested that she enjoys it. And in a SPOILER, it works out for her in the end, giving the ‘heroine’ (if that is what she is) a refreshingly happy ending. Whilst the ‘prison’ looks a little too much like a hotel, the darkened tunnel leading to and fro (possibly filmed somewhere else entirely) looks suitably drab and austere. More of a crime caper than the more standard WIP piece, this emerges as enjoyable, but pretty mild Franco fare.

As found footage films go, this begins with one of the most persuasive scene settings I’ve seen for some time. Whilst testing his camera equipment, Jake (Josh Stewart, who also wrote and directed) is enjoying a laugh with his tiny children, who in turn are screaming with delight at the images on the camera. They don’t know they’re part of a horror film, they’re just having fun; as an audience member, I’m instantly thinking that surely such an appealing family unit isn’t going to be wrecked by anything ‘orrible.

With little further build-up, Jake and Stevie (Ronnie Gene Blevins), are deep in the forests of West Virginia. They meet the quietly threatening Tony (Skipp Sudduth) who lives in the forest, and his daughter Jessie (Jessi Blue Gormezano). As the two friends hunting monsters, not a huge amount happens. This is a slow burner, despite wasting no time in setting up the premise. But if you’re happy with that – and I am – this is worth your time.

The acting is very naturalistic. You really believe these two are good friends. So when their footage appears to be tampered with, and the Blair-Witchy-woodlands behave strangely, it is effective. Most potent, however, is the child-like screaming of whatever is ‘out there’.

Whilst the ending is disappointing, I enjoyed this for the most part. It is strange to once more glance at reviews and see the marks given for ‘Dark Forest’ 10 out of 10 and plenty of praise, or 1 out of 10 for the obligatory ‘worst film I have ever seen’ nonsense. The truth as I see it, is about halfway between the two.

A period piece Italian giallo from the mid-1970s, featuring some wonderful rain-swept locations and some mild sexual moments – all of this sounds like a guarantee of success. Somewhere along the way, however, dullness overtakes proceedings. The dubbing must take some of the blame for this. Although I’ve seen worse, some of the voice actors sound incredibly bored. Whoever voiced the magnificently – almost unnaturally - coiffured, twinkling Count Richard Marnack (played by prolific actor Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) reduces the character to a monosyllabic sneerer instead of the suave charmer of a certain age he is supposed to be. Krista Nell was due to play the starring role, but due to health reasons, played the secondary Cora. Sadly, this was her last film – she died the same year. Patrizia De Rossi plays Evelyn, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Count Marnack’s wife. And they all they all have one thing in common: they all hate Samuel (Leo Valeriano). So when various characters begin dying in graphic circumstances, I drew my own conclusions. I might have been wrong.

The ending is quite abrupt, as often things are with films such as this. It is also not entirely satisfying, with a very effective revelation not quite answering all the questions regarding the previous 86 minutes. Whilst far from the best giallo film I have seen – in fact, it is only loosely a giallo – it has a certain appealing strangeness about it.

Several sexy scenes were inserted into this for its French release, where it was known as ‘L'insatiable Samantha (1977)’.

I have always found it difficult to enjoy Roger Corman films, which surprises me. I like low-budget productions, and Corman always assembles very impressive casts. And yet, his projects appear to strive to create a staginess, a campy theatricality that I find difficult to become immersed in

Vincent Price was originally slated to play Guy Carrell, but the part went to Ray Milland. Milland has always been a very impressive actor in my view, able to transcend even average productions and emerge with dignity intact. Ten years later, he would exert his excellence on the notorious ‘The Thing with Two Heads’, where he somehow managed even there to inject his role as the titular creature with humour and above all, gravitas. He does the same here, as does Hazel Court, who plays Emily, his wife. Richard Ney plays family friend Miles and all characters are fairly staid and unengaging, lifted hugely by the playing.

Perhaps Price would have injected Carrell with a bit of a twinkle, which would at least have lightened this humourless piece. What we have here is a very earnest reimagining of Edgar Allen Poe’s short story. There’s a certain inevitability Carrell’s fate once we learn of his dread of being buried alive, and certainly the atmosphere reaches impressive levels as a result of this, and what happens beyond.

I would have liked to enjoy this more, but often couldn’t get past the style of the piece, which for the most part, looks like it has the production values of a television continuing serial, or soap. This is no slight on the budget or production team, it just fails to convince me, or to inject proceedings with any kind of eccentricity or outlandishness that offsets the limitations.

Incredibly prolific director Andrew Jones adds his own spin on the wealth of ‘parody’ films that have been popular over the past few years. Sometimes known as ‘mockbusters’, these are low-budget projects with titles mimicking those of high profile productions, often at around the same time as their release, in the cheeky hope of catching some of that bigger movie’s notoriety. Examples are ‘Transmorphers (2007) and ‘Paranormal Entity (2009)’.

Lee Bane, who co-produces and co-directs, and without whom few Jones films would be complete, once more plays a hard man, Hawkins, a dangerous ex-soldier sent on a mission to locate a wayward escaped Tyrannosaurus Rex in and around the woodlands of Devil’s Creek. He hand-picks a group of men to aid him, including musician/nutcase Rankin, played by another Andrew Jones (semi) regular Lee Mark Jones. Rankin is a musician, as is Lee Mark Jones, and his band ‘The Mescalito Vampires’ provide much of the excellent music here.

This is great fun, one of the most enjoyable of Andrew Jones’ vast catalogue. It makes something of a virtue of it’s low-budget trappings – indeed, a bunch of cash-strapped film-makers are amongst the creature’s victims – and I must admit, I was intrigued to see how something as ambitious as a ‘fully grown’ dinosaur would be visualised here. The creature actually looks pretty decent. No hint of CGI of course, the T-Rex is filmed from below and features only fleetingly.

The acting is also pretty good throughout, although in a handful of key-scenes, the dialogue is drowned out by the music, which lets things down a bit. There are some genuinely funny moments, but one of the most poignant scenes is played dead straight. Reminiscing about a fallen colleague, Bane gives, I think, the best performance of his career so far.

According to IMDB, The film became the top selling Direct-to-Video title in the national UK DVD chart on its first week of release, opening at #22. Andrew Jones’ star continues to rise, and I am very pleased about that.

‘The Boy’ suffers from ‘how American writers think English people speak’, I’ll get that out of the way first. For example, the grocery boy Malcolm (Rupert Evans) says things like “I’m considered quite charming in this country.” Evans is encouraged to use a well-spoken but entirely region-free accent throughout. It’s not a huge issue, and UK films are not always accurate in their representation of US characters either. If you can get past that – and there are far worse examples out there – then there is much to enjoy with this.

Miss Greta Evans (Lauren Cohan), an American Nanny, travels to a gothic mansion to tend to the needs of an elderly couple’s young son Brahms. It is difficult to escape the central storyline in the publicity – the fact that Brahms is a doll initially filled me with reservations. Could such a realisation be taken seriously? Andrew Jones’ series of low-budget projects involving Robert the Doll is good, for example, but suffers a little when the prop figure is required to move.

There was little need to worry: this is a cracker: restrainedly directed by William Brent Bell at least initially, and written in the same way. Greta is just as incredulous as to the notion of a living doll as the most cynical audience member, and yet when she has reason to be convinced if the reality of its existence, we are too. Brahms is a ghostly looking, handsome doll, sometimes very life-like and often lifeless, as necessary.

Greta’s willingness to care for Brahms is reasoned by a miscarriage she suffered at the hands of an abusive relationship with a character called Cole (Ben Robson). Cole suddenly turns up at the house demanding Greta returns home with him. He is, of course, exactly the kind of overbearing bully we want him to be – and then we can begin the business of desperately wanting some punishment for him. This is when the pace moves from slow-burning build-up to pure horror. When the resultant manifestation of Brahms reveals itself, the fragile build-up takes a step back in favour of Jason/Michael Myers territory; whilst this doesn’t carry the same kind of emotional weight we’ve enjoyed so far, it is still effective. The finale explains things away and makes sense of it all, but there is a slight disappointment that the spell has been punctured with reality. As a whole, though ‘The Boy’ works beautifully, far better than I expected it to.

Michelle (Kaylee DeFer) is a somewhat petulant, tortured soul. She is pretty blonde, and in possession of a throaty, scratchy voice guaranteed to dissipate into an airy rasp should she be moved to scream in horror – and she has plenty of reason to here.

Told in sometimes confusing flashbacks, Michelle has been institutionalised because she caused an accident which killed three of her friends whilst under the influence of alcohol. She’s not particularly remorseful, showing scant regard for any rules or regulations at the rehab facility. Daniel (Tobias Segal), who seems well-meaning, and Rachel (Elisabeth Rohm), who is in authority, are revealed as having their own dark secrets, a revelation that attempts to vindicate Michelle’s earlier lack of respect for them – even though she cannot possibly have known of their out-of-hours activities.

They are religious extremists, steering their faith towards ‘purging’ inmates of their sins by torturing them at a secret location. And there you have the plot. We spend the rest of the time watching Michelle try to escape their clutches.

The low budget on display works in the film’s favour, with non-slick locations revelling in their enclosed dinginess and grainy imagery. We are expected to side with Michelle but given scant reason to, other than the fact that the other characters are more misguided than she is. It is unspectacular but solid, with good performances and a good atmosphere of hopelessness. It isn’t quite ‘torture porn’, but there are some nasty inferences all explained by a familiar perversion and the easy target of religious abuse. There are some nice moments of melancholy – flashbacks of innocent children playing contrasting well with the sporadic bouts of violence – but where ‘Darkroom’ falls down is that it isn’t terribly involving due to the unsympathetic, sketchy characters.

A group of students on a detention ‘break’: all twenty-somethings, suitably attractive and perfectly manicured. A nice-guy teacher, probably late-twenty-something, casually perfect. They’re travelling to a remote field, allegedly haunted, to dismantle the great scarecrow there and have it returned to the local town in time for a festival. Kristen (Lacey Chabert), whose parents own the land, turns up – stunning and immaculate also, her job is to fish uncertainly for compliments beneath dough-eyes, from teacher Aaron (Robert Dunne) who, it turns out, is her ex. Her current boyfriend also turns up. Guess what? He’s a lovely looking lad as well. All characters are equipped with the usual put-downs and quick prom-wit and, as written and played, are as blandly perfect, or as perfectly bland, as can be. All set? Alright then, let the loud noises and ‘weird happenings’ instantly reduce them into shrieking quiverers.

From this point, all previous patchy personalities, such as they are, are done away with and the group become as one: victims waiting to happen. Only ginger outcast Cal (Iain Belcher) retains his given nervous personality, which gets him a girl, if only for a short time. There are moments in between the crashes and panicking where some of the (alleged) teens get close to ‘making out’ with each other, but good grief - between the horror non-events and the scriptwriters’ take on ‘burgeoning relationships’ and scratchy voiced profundity, this is a film that refuses to affect me in any way whatsoever.

I shouldn’t perhaps be so grumpy: this is not for me, but it does seem to be a genre. ‘Teen-slasher’ will rarely go out of fashion, because it has rarely been in fashion. It has long since existed though, on the peripheries, secondary to its memorable Freddies and Jasons, feeding the spaces and silences on a first date, and not meant to be concentrated upon too much. Some listings mistakenly have ‘Scarecrow’s running time at 197 minutes, which would be truly terrifying. At its true length of 87 minutes, it provides nothing much, doesn’t really offend, and contains a fairly reasonable CGI scarecrow but not a lot in terms of actual shivers. The main man Aaron presents limited displays of shock and resourcefulness, making sure the pearly whites are on display.

Director Ingmar Bergman’s familiarly bleak and windswept isolated island (Baltrum) is the retreat of artist Johan Borg (Max von Sydow) who is recovering from an unspecified illness. His pregnant wife Alma (Liv Ullman) loyally and sensibly looks after him and oversees such necessities as finance and food, whilst Borg lapses into a dream-world where he sees ‘demons’ – strange people who resemble people he has known. Before long, Alma too sees someone, an old lady, who may or may not be real, who advises her to read Johan’s diary, which reveals one of his ‘demons’ is former lover, Veronica (Ingrid Thulin).

I found ‘Hour of the Wolf’ a little ponderous. Bergman’s films are often exercises in introspection, but this is too uneventful: we know Johan is facing some sort of breakdown, and yet events are merely there to prove it to us again and again. Only an incident at a party – seemingly attended by ‘demons’ – stands out amongst the surreal mirages painted on Bergman’s typically desolate canvas. The acting is never less than intense, with Von Sydow in particular tuning into the director’s wavelength. Ullman, too, is sympathetic as loving protector Alma, who has some dialogue midway about wanting to be with her husband for such a long time that she begins to think like him. In the final coda, she ponders that if she was *less* like him, perhaps she could have protected him better.

I wouldn’t say ‘Hour of the Wolf’ is less interesting than it thinks it is, rather that the situation and characters don’t have quite the resonance with me that those in some of Bergman’s other projects have.