TRANS-SCRIBE

Thursday, 4 June 2020

Prince Of Darkness (1987) – Cinema From The Year I Was Born

Originally published on Set The Tape

If you ask people to name some of their favourite John Carpenter films they’ll usually give you some of the bigger names, like Halloween, The Thing, or Escape From New York. These are all great films, and ones that I love, but one that it seems that people often forget about is not only one of my favourites, but also from the year I was born: 1987’s Prince of Darkness.

Prince of Darkness follows an unnamed priest played by Donald Pleasance, who requests that quantum physicist Professor Birack (Victor Wong) and his students join him to investigate at a church in downtown Los Angeles. The church was home to the mysterious sect known as ‘The Brotherhood of Sleep’, which is all but gone. The priest needs assistance in investigating a mysterious cylinder in the church basement, filled with swirling green liquid, and a strange, ancient text.

The team of young scientists begin their investigation, discovering that the text claims the liquid is the corporeal embodiment of Satan. The liquid seems to defy all scientific logic, and the scientists begin to believe it may have otherworldly origins.

I’ve got to be honest, the combination of logic and the supernatural, of science and religion presented in Prince of Darkness is one of the things that I love most about this film. It takes the standard horror trope of otherworldly forces and tries to give it a grounding in our understanding of the modern world, presenting it as perhaps a science that we just don’t understand yet. The idea that Satan might be the son of an Anti-God, a being who presides in the anti-matter universe, is so crazy it’s actually kind of brilliant and something that could only come from a mind as creative and skilled as John Carpenter.

Despite some kind of new ideas about the science of the devil the film is very traditional horror fare, with a group of people trapped in a location they don’t want to be in as they’re slowly picked off one at a time. In this case it’s because the church gets surrounded by a group of homeless people under the influence of the supernatural forces, who will kill anyone trying to leave the building. The fact that these homeless killers are led by Alice Cooper makes these scenes kind of brilliant too, especially when Cooper breaks out his famous impaling bike trick from his live shows and uses it on one of the poor scientists.

Much of the action in Prince of Darkness is like this, sudden and violent, with some very gruesome and disturbing moments. Whilst the film doesn’t splash gore around it does show enough to leave you feeling very uncomfortable during these moments, and it’s more the abject fear that the characters go through that makes these deaths intense over blood and guts.

Thankfully, Carpenter seems to bring back a lot of the stuff that made Halloween such a good horror for this film, and relies on the slow build of tension during the early stages of the movie to keep viewers on edge. You spend time getting to know the characters, and begin to care about them to the point where some deaths will leave you crying out in disappointment as they’re people you wanted to see survive.

As with many of his films, Carpenter also provides the music for the film, and it immediately adds to the atmosphere. He knows how to produce tension through slow camera shots and creepy music in scenes that would otherwise be fairly stale and boring with other directors. There’s practically no scene in the film that doesn’t feel slightly wrong or creepy, even those before anything really happens, because of how Carpenter directs the camera and deploys the soundtrack in the right way.

Prince of Darkness might be one of the John Carpenter films that gets overshadowed by the director’s bigger hits, but is a film that should certainly not be forgotten about. Whether you’ve never seen it before, or just not seen it in a while, it’s definitely worth checking out for its amazing cast, bold ideas, and the ability to send chills down the spine every time.

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Monday, 1 June 2020

The Woman / Offspring – Film Review

Originally published on Set The Tape

We take a look at popular 2011 horror film The Woman and its lesser known 2009 predecessor Offspring, as Arrow Films brings them together on Blu-ray for the first time, in a new Limited Edition set. Warning: contains spoilers.

The Woman is a film that I’d heard of long before I’d watched it, and was one that I’d seen a lot of horror fans discussing when it first came out; usually talking about how disturbing it is. It centres of the Cleek family, who live in a large farmhouse on the edge of the woods. When the father Chris (Sean Bridgers) discovers a feral woman (Pollyanna McIntosh) living in the woods he decides to capture her, chain her up in his barn, and civilise her.

Whilst the woman is supposed to be a cannibalistic killer, which is seen a lot more in Offspring, I can’t say that I can really class her as the villain of The Woman. This isn’t a film about a family who end up having to try and survive a feral killer, but a story about one twisted man’s hatred of women, and desire to abuse people.

Chris Cleek rules his family with an iron fist. His wife is a quiet and meek woman, who gets beaten, he berates his son for not doing well enough, whilst seemingly grooming to become an abuser himself, and his eldest daughter is hiding a pregnancy that the film indicates he’s responsible for. Chris is the very real monster in this film, and that helps to make it all the more disturbing. Having a feral cannibal woman chained up in your barn might not be an experience many can identify with, but being stuck in an abusive home certainly is.

The film doesn’t tip its hand though, it very slowly draws you in by making you think this is a normal family and that Chris is a nice guy. Before you know it though it’s clear he’s a violent abuser, but by then it’s too late. Like being in an abusive relationship the film shows you a nice front before it hits you the brutal reality.

Things do take a more open, horror turn by the gory end, but by then it feels more like a relief, because it breaks the mounting tension that has built within the Cleek home. Whilst the abusers of the film do get their comeuppance it doesn’t feel like a victory, and it left me feeling depressed by the time the credits rolled. It wasn’t a bad film because of this, but it’s not a fun type of horror film; it’s a film that you need to be in the right mood for because of the constant sense of oppression and sadness that seems to permeate its entirety.

Offspring, by contrast, feels a lot more like what you’d expect from a cannibal horror movie. The film is less oppressive, and there are very clear distinctions between the heroes and villains. There are good people who fall victim to the woman’s feral family, and you root for them to survive. The cops are there to try and save the women and children, and the douche-bag ex-husband is a dick and gets what he deserves before the end.

It’s what I would expect from a film like this, it ticked all the boxes and didn’t really try to do anything different or special, so didn’t stand out to me as particularly great. That’s a note that falls much more on the shoulders of The Woman.

The set offered by Arrow Films is an interesting one, as it’s got a fairly standard, almost forgettable movie, and one that’s going to affect you a lot more and stick with you for longer. It certainly makes for an interesting study in how the series changed from one film to the next though, and makes for an engaging comparison between the two.

The Blu-ray also comes with a host of extras for each film, including multiple commentaries for each film, including newly recorded ones, cast and crew interviews, behind the scenes making-of’s, webisodes, and deleted scenes. Sadly, I was only provided with a screener for the movies, so didn’t get a chance to see these extras, but I’d definitely be interested to learn more about the films and their making, and think that the extras on offer here sound like they’d definitely scratch that itch.

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Tuesday, 19 May 2020

Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse - Film Review and Analysis

This article is the expanded version of my review that appeared on Set The Tape

Hagazussa: A Heathen's Curse was the directorial debut of Lucas Feigelfield, who also wrote the film. Initially released in 2018 in Germany, it's now receiving a wider home release.

Hagazussa follows the life of Albrun, a girl living in a remote cabin with her mother. The two of them are outcasts from the local community, and shunned as witches. When Albrun's mother gets sick she eventually passes away, leaving the child alone to fend for herself. The film then jumps forward to Albrun as a young woman, with a baby of her own. Still living in her mothers remote cabin, she begins to experience increasingly strange and disturbing events.

In all honesty, I don't really know how to start talking about Hagazussa. I'd heard a little about the film before I had the chance to see it, and one of those things was that a lot of people felt it was similar in many regards to The Witch by Robert Egger. I can see why this parallel is made; both films centre on people in very isolated, wooded locations in times past who are struggling with supposed supernatural forces. Both films are slow burns that rely as much on lingering camera shots and the sounds to build tension as anything else in the story. They're also both open to interpretation as to what actually happens, whether events are influenced by the paranormal, or if they're stories of young women abused to breaking point.

Whilst I enjoyed The Witch and found it to be an interesting film, it didn't engage me or disturb me in the same way that Hagazussa did. I say engage, but that's not really accurate. I found it a little hard to stay with the film at times. The story is very slow, and one could argue that a good portion of the movie could be cut down and tightened to give it a better pace, but then I think it would lose a lot of what makes it a creepy experience. The fact that I had to work to stay in the movie, that I had to make myself stay invested did, in retrospect, add something to the experience.

Hagazussa is a story that you don't want to experience. It's designed to be off putting and disturbing. You want to turn it off and leave it alone because it gets under your skin. And whilst you have the power to do that, you can just stop, Albrun can't run away from what's happening to her. She's stuck in these experiences, and you feel like you have to stay there with her. The film made me want to run away from it, yet I also wanted to see what would happen to its lead next, a kind of morbid curiosity. I'm not even sure if this could be down to feeling sorry for the character and wanting to see it through to the end to see if things went well for her, because the film never gave the sense that there would be a happy ending.

The very first scenes in the film show Albrun's childhood, her isolated upbringing with her mother. These scenes are probably the most easily understood and interpreted part of the film, as events seem to play out how they appear. We learn through these scenes that the two women are pretty much hated by others in the local community, and we see the impact this has on Albrun. After her mother's death things become worse for Albrun, and could be considered one of the leading events in her awful adulthood.

When we next see Albrun as an adult she's still at her mothers cabin, having carried on alone from her childhood. She doesn't interact well with the people in town, and is openly mocked and ridiculed by the local children. You begin to get a sense that Albrun has never really learned to talk to people, and that she's as sheltered and naive as when she herself was a child. You begin to question how she has a child because of this, how she could have had a romantic relationship if she's so hated by those around her and appears incapable of even talking to people. A possible explanation for this is given by one of the local women, who makes a comment about heathens who attack lone women in the mountains, raping them and making them pregnant. A possible rape would add to Albrun's difficulties with people, and explain why she refuses to answer questions about her child's father.

Over the course of the film we see Albrun try to make strives towards making an actual friendship with one of the local women, Swinda, but this attempt ends in a brutal scene where Swinda holds Albrun down to be raped by one of the local men. Following this moment Albrun finds that her goats have all been stolen, save one who's left as a slaughtered warning. Enraged by these events Albrun takes revenge on the town by throwing a dead rat in their water supply, and peeing in it; which results in a disease sweeping through them.

After seeing that she's caused the deaths of innocents, Albrun goes deep into the woods and eats a mushroom that sends her on a hallucinogenic trip that results in her drowning her baby. When she comes out of her trip she sees what she has done puts her baby's body into her cooking pot, where she stews and eventually eats it.

This is without a doubt one of the most disturbing and affecting moments of the film. The events themselves are enough to make you feel uncomfortable, but the long lingering takes on Albrun as she's overwhelmed by her actions are awful enough, but the shots of what she does afterwards are even worse. It could have been shot in a way that implied what she did, or even begin to show the audience before cutting away, but instead the camera lingers as she brings the meat to her mouth and begins to eat her own daughter. Following this, she leaves her home and waits for the dawn on top the mountain, where the sunlight causes her to burst into flames.

The reason that I've gone into the story so deeply here, that I've spoken openly about spoilers, is because you need to know what happens in order for me to talk about how open to interpretation the events are.

Taken literally, Albrun poisoned the town with her waste and a dead rat, causing disease, before she went on a trip and accidentally killed her baby. Then she tries to dispose of the evidence by eating her. This makes some kind of sense, and is probably what some people would take from the film, but fails to explain the final scenes of her bursting into flames.

Another possibility is that Albrun actually used magic to curse the town. This comes more into play thanks to what happens afterwards, as the consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms and eating of babies are heavily connected to witchcraft lore. Mushrooms such as the redcap Fly Agaric appear in many old drawings and pictures of witches, and some believed their hallucinogenic properties were used to create experiences such as flying, or changing into other creatures. The presence of some hallucinogens are also used to explain why some areas broke out into witch hysteria, such as the possibility of ergot being baked into bread being behind the Salem witch trials. The eating of babies was also said to be one of their practices, and baby fat was said to be used in potions and ointments.

By eating the mushrooms and the cooking and devouring of her own baby Albrun is giving in to her witch heritage, performing the practices that her mother taught her as a child. This could explain why she bursts into flames at the end. Perhaps it's because she is now a witch and the suns light physically harms her, or it could be symbolic of her own self and her old life burning away as she embraces who she really is and becomes a witch.

There's also a possibility that Albrun is being haunted by the spirit of her mother, who she keeps hearing during the course of the film, before finally seeing in the climactic moments. If her mother was a witch, or even if not and the supernatural exists within this world there's a possibility that this spirit has been with her for her years alone on the mountain, slowly poisoning her daughters mind and twisting her into something else. Albrun's mother was left to die by the village, after years of being tormented by them, so why not use her daughter to get revenge against them from beyond the grave.

Another, and very real interpretation, and one that immediately jumped out at me, was that Albrun was just a women broken by years of loneliness and abuse, that all of the awful things she's done have slowly worn her down and led to the awful events that she experiences. She had to grow up isolated with her mother, who the locals scorned and hated. She was sexually assaulted by her sick mother, who then died and left her to grow up alone. She is raped at least once as we see in the film, but could have been raped before this. She is betrayed by the one friend she thinks she has. She causes the deaths of innocent people in a moment of rage. Her livelihood is stolen away from her. She accidentally kills her own child. All of this would be more than enough to cause a psychological break within the poor woman, and her burning on the mountain top could easily represent the destruction of her sanity.

I've also seen the possibility floated online that her baby may already be dead before the scene where Albrun appears to drown her, and that her discovering the body is really her coming to the realisation that her daughter was already long dead. This does fit too, as there are a few times where scenes make a different kind of sense see through this lens, such as her daughter refusing to drink from her breast. It could also explain why Albrun seems to leave her daughter alone for long stretches, and why she doesn't let anyone see her. Her child even seems smaller and more decomposed than she should when Albrun discovers her body, hinting that she's been dead for a long time.

I honestly don't know which of these ideas I like the most, or even which one fits with the film I saw. I don't know if there were dark forces at work. I don't know if Albrun was a witch, or just a woman with a broken mind. I'm not even sure if everything that I saw was real or figments of her mind. I find myself questioning so much of the film beyond just the ending. Part of me wants to go back and watch it again, to try and see if I can make a decision or find more hints that could help me reach a conclusion, but I also feel like I don't ever want to watch the film again.

The events depicted in Hagasuzza are disturbing and unsettling. The director uses shots and music that adds to those feelings and compounds them. The result is one of the most unsettling pieces of film I think I've ever seen.

I don't think I could watch the film again, and I'm not even sure if I could recommend it to others; and if I did it would only be because I know this is the kind of film that they would like. It's not for everyone, and probably not even for every horror fan, but it is a film worth seeing if you can stand it.

I was originally thinking this would be a film I'd probably give a three out of five. It was good, but I struggled with it, and wasn't sure how to take it. But then I started to think about the film more, and realised that just in talking about those feelings and thoughts I'd written more than two thousand words on it. Surely that means the film has had an impact on me. It might not have been an experience that I loved, or one that I'll ever want to have again, but it's one that's had an effect. And isn't that the real goal of horror, to get under your skin, to make you feel awful? If so, then Hagazussa has more than done what it's set out to do, and is a film I'm sure I'll think about for a long while to come.

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Wednesday, 13 May 2020

A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010) – 10 Years On

Originally published on Set The Tape

Horror films, and more specifically their villains, have the ability to become some of the most iconic things in not just film but pop culture in general. Even if they’ve never seen the films, most people would be able to identify Jason Vorhees or Leatherface because of their distinctive looks.

Even where there are different killers in each film, like Ghostface from the Scream movies, people know it’s the scream killer. The beauty of these iconic masks is that not only are they instantly recognisable, but that anyone can play that role, and quite often several actors and stunt performers will play these bad guys over the course of a franchise. The biggest exception to this for horror films has to be Freddy Krueger.

Freddy is as iconic as his mask-wearing brethren, with his green and red striped jumper, hat, razor glove, and burnt face. But it’s not just his clothing and appearance that makes him stand out, but the performance of Robert Englund. Englund played Krueger a staggering eight times across different films, and it’s the energy, mannerisms, and voice of Englund that helped to make Freddy an icon that came back time and time again.

Getting over this, and recapturing that magic, would prove to be the biggest hurdle for the 2010 remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street. The decision to remake the film came about in part thanks to the success of the Friday the 13th remake the year before, a film that was a critical and commercial success. Platinum Dunes, the production company that owned both franchises, thought that they could bring the same level of success to A Nightmare On Elm Street.

The new film looked good, with great cinematography from Jeff Cutter, the script was true to the spirit of the original yet managed to do enough of its own thing thanks to good writing from Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer, and director Samuel Bayer executed a slick and entertaining film. Despite this, the remake is never given the amount of respect and love by Elm Street fans as the original film. Unfortunately, this is down to the performance of Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy.

Fresh off the success of playing Rorschach in the 2009 Watchmen adaptation, Haley was something of a hot commodity, with filmmakers wanting to get him into one of their projects as soon as possible. And that’s a fair thing: he’s a very good actor, and his performance as a deranged and unstable lunatic was probably the best thing from Watchmen,was so why not get him to play another deranged lunatic? It should have worked.

What seems to have happened, however, was that for whatever reason Haley was still playing Rorschach. His Freddy was slow, he hid in the shadows, and he grumble mumbled his way through most of his dialogue. Whilst not inherently bad creative decisions when you compare them to Englund, which moviegoers were always going to do, it comes across as a flat and dull version of the character. The energy and fun that Freddy adopted over the course of the franchise was gone. Instead we had a gloomy and nasty killer who didn’t actually seem to be having much fun in what he was doing.

Freddy was always a killer that loved killing. He revelled in not just the kill, but the hunt too. He liked that he was able to mess with his victims in their dreams, and would often perform elaborate torture and means of death in large part because he found it funny. Many of the films in the franchise could probably be classed as somewhat comedic at times because of this. Taking out these moments of dark comedy might sound like the right decision – after all, you’re making a horror. But it turns out that doing so leaves a film that feels like a pale imitation of the original, one that fails to please fans, and is often forgotten.

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Wednesday, 6 May 2020

Scream 3 – 20 Years Later

Originally published on Set The Tape

It’s a pretty universal fact that horror franchises don’t do sequels well. There are certainly exceptions where sequels are genuinely good, like Aliens, or so bad they’re good like Jason X, but for the most part as a horror series goes on you tend to get diminishing returns. This is especially true with 2000’s Scream 3.

Whilst Scream and Scream 2 are both good films, thanks in large part to some clever writing by Kevin Williamson and great directing from legend Wes Craven, Scream 3 struggled to recapture a lot of that magic. This was in part due to the loss of Williamson, the original creator of the franchise; his outline for the third film was mostly thrown out by new writer Ehren Kruger. The film went from focusing on the lead Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her struggles against the ghostface killer, first in high-school then college, and instead made it about the latest fictional Stab movie, and put a bunch of new characters into the spotlight.

The change from identifiable and relatable locations and people to something far removed from what most know made a big difference. These were no longer teenagers who were like people we knew being stalked and killed, they were spoilt Hollywood starlets, and sleazy executives. No one really cared much about the characters. Whilst the film did bring back series staples such as Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, and David Arquette, they had limited screen time and failed to bring back a lot of what made the first two films great.

The film tried to make use of its new Hollywood setting, however, by throwing in some celebrity cameos. Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith appear as Jay and Silent Bob touring the film studio, for some bizarre reason, and really throws you out of the movie for a moment thanks to how jarring it is. However, the best part of the movie might actually be the cameo from the late, great Carrie Fisher, who plays a records clerk who is mistaken for Carrie Fisher; the small scene where she laments missing out on getting to play Princess Leia because Carrie Fisher slept with George Lucas is so steeped in Carrie’s trademark humour that you can’t help but love this moment of genuine comedy in a film that has none of its own.

Scream 3 tried to be a good sequel. It tried to tie things back to the first film by introducing a long-lost half brother for Sydney out of nowhere, who apparently set off the chain of events that caused the entire franchise. But it comes off as feeling cheap, a last minute alteration to the mythology that could have happened, but just comes across as a lazy rewrite because they realised their killer didn’t really make much sense.

The Scream franchise isn’t as bad as some horror series. It has some great moments spread across the four films, and has a central cast of great actors. It’s a shame that the series failed to be consistently good across all instalments, but sadly it seems that the only one where Kevin Williamson didn’t write it is the one to let the franchise down.

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Wednesday, 29 April 2020

We Summon The Darkness – Film Review

Originally published on Set The Tape

There seems to be a slew of media set during the 1980s right now. Things like IT or Stranger Things being prominent examples. Whilst a lot of this stems from nostalgia, especially as those who grew up in or were born in the 80s are taking over film and television production, sometimes it can feel like thing are being made in that era just so movie makers can cram the backgrounds full of things from their childhood. We Summon The Darkness, on the other hand, actually seems to have a good reason to be set during the 80s, and doesn’t just cram 80s references down people’s throats.

The United States was being swept by a moral panic during the 80s, one that would go on to be known as the ‘Satanic Panic’, where some conservative and religious people blamed the moral decay of the youth on the influence of heavy metal music. This was the time when music had hidden messages that turned teenagers into worshippers of Satan, especially if you played their records backwards, if the claims of the morally outraged were to be believed. We Summon The Darkness not only uses this as a backdrop for its story, but makes it the heart of everything that happens.

Three teenage girls, Alexis (Alexandra Daddario), Val (Maddie Hasson), and Bev (Amy Forsyth) begin the film driving to a heavy metal concert, and we get some time at the beginning of the film getting to know them. They seem like pretty normal girls, excited to go and see one of their favourite bands live. Along the way they meet a group of guys, and the six teens seem to hit it off; so much so that the girls take the guys back to Alexis’ parents house after the concert.

This is where the film takes something of a shift, however, and the girls that you were probably expecting to be the victims of the piece turn into coldblooded killers. The shift is actually quite scary, and the moment that Alexis and Val switch off their nice girl act is very creepy. They were so convincing as nice, fun-loving young women that their change to villains becomes such a dramatic moment. It really shows off the acting ability of both Daddario and Hasson, as they play two completely different people in the latter half of the film.

The girls plan to murder the three boys and make it look like a ritual killing, in order to draw more people to God and the church, should be fairly simple on the surface, yet seems to go wrong at every point. There’s almost an element of farce, as one problem happens after another to derail the scheme. Whilst these moments border on the ridiculous, the film never quite makes that step over the line into dark comedy; a move that I was expecting as Johnny Knoxville is a part of the cast.

I was expecting the film to become comedic at some point because of Knoxville, as everything I’d seen him involved in before had been humerus in some way. Both Knoxville and director Marc Meyers subverted this expectation quite nicely, and Knoxville was actually very good in a serious role.

We Summon The Darkness doesn’t really do a whole lot new with its plot, and wasn’t a film that set my world on fire, but it did have good production values, a well written script with some great dialogue and believable character interaction, and a cast that genuinely impressed. I can think of a lot worse ways to spend an hour and a half.

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Monday, 27 April 2020

Zu: Warriors From The Magic Mountain – Blu-ray Review

Originally published on Set The Tape

Zu: Warriors From The Magic Mountain was advertised as ‘the film that inspired John Carpenter’s Big Trouble In Little China‘ and on that sentence alone I was sold on watching it, knowing nothing else about it going in.

Luckily, the new Blu-ray release from Eureka Entertainment comes with a handy booklet that gives those who lack knowledge of the film some important background information on both the making of the movie, and the impact that it had on the Hong Kong film industry. Though not hugely in-depth, as there are are whole books written about the impact that Zu: Warriors From The Magic Mountain had, it does make you aware of just how groundbreaking the film was, and how what could otherwise be overlooked as a fun and over-the-top fantasy movie changed an entire industry.

Zu: Warriors From The Magic Mountain was released in 1983, and is a supernatural wuxia fantasy film. Wuxia roughly translates to martial heroes, and is a genre of Chinese fiction centred around martial artists, usually in ancient China. Whilst Hong Kong cinema was producing plenty of martial arts movies at the time, which were finding a lot of popularity in the west, the use of the supernatural was almost unheard of, something that helped Zu: Warriors From The Magic Mountain immediately stand out from the rest of the crowd. The film was something of a revival of a genre that hadn’t been used for decades, and it made other filmmakers take note and realise that they could embrace the ghosts, demons, and ancient gods that made up the world of Zu.

The film centres on a young soldier, Dik Ming Kei (Yuen Biao), who deserts his post amidst a war that’s immediately made clear to the viewers is pointless and somewhat stupid, where normal people are being turned against friends and neighbours. Dik Ming Kei seeks shelter in the mountain Zu, where he stumbles across a tomb inhabited by monstrous vampires. Luckily for him he is rescued from certain death by the mystical warrior Master Ding Yan (Adam Cheng).

Impressed by Ding Yan’s abilities, and wanting to stay away from the war, Dik Ming Kei follows after the mystical master, begging him to take him on as an apprentice. Deeper in the mountains the two of them stumble across a demon-hunting monk and his apprentice, Yat Jan (Mang Hoi). The four of them are soon set upon by a demon cult, who then summon an ancient blood devil to earth.

With their masters poisoned by the evil of the blood devil, and only a handful of days to find a pair of legendary swords that can banish it back to the underworld, Dik Ming Kei and Yat Jan set out in a journey that will take them to a Celestial Fort, the top of magical mountains, and into the very bowels of the underworld itself.

There’s not much more that I want to say about the plot of the film, or much about the journeys that the characters go on as it would spoil a lot of the surprises and fun that seems to often come out of nowhere. Plus, its a little hard to accurately describe everything that happens in the film as it feels a bit like a fever dream half the time. Characters suddenly appear, magic that you’ve never seen before happens, mystical beings help or hinder the heroes, and there’s almost never an explanation for any of it.

Admittedly, this is a big part of the charm of the film, and more than once I was struggling to know what was happening, but loving the experience. The special effects are very cheesy, the wire-work is super obvious as they don’t try to hide any of the equipment, and the action is so over-the-top it borders on comical; but this made the film so much fun.

The Blu-ray is also packed with special features, including an original trailer that will make you glad trailers aren’t made the same way anymore, and some interviews with some of the key cast members. The new release also comes with an in-depth interview with director Tsui Hark that was filmed in 2020 for this new release, which gives a lot of insight into the movie. One of the more interesting things included, however, is an alternate version of the film made for European cinemas, titled Zu: Time Warrior, which changes the character played by Yuen Biao into a modern-day college student who’s transported to ancient China.

Thanks to a dense and complex narrative, over-the-top action that you’ll want to watch again and show others, a host of special features including an alternate cut and full-length commentary, there’s a lot in the Zu: Warriors From The Magic Mountain release to keep you entertained for hours. Whether you’re an aficionado of the genre, or a relative newcomer, it’s something that you’re sure to be happy to have in your film collection.

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Tuesday, 21 April 2020

Pokémon: The First Movie – 20th Anniversary

Originally Published on Set The Tape

Pokémon: The First Movie had its original release in Japan on 18th July 1998. It opened in the UK on 14th April 2000.

When I saw that Pokémon: The First Movie was turning 20 I jumped at the chance to write a piece about it – then was immediately disturbed by the prospect that it was turning 20. There’s something about beloved franchises from your youth hitting big milestones that really hammer home how old you’re getting. The Pokémon franchise itself celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2017 and I had complicated feelings about it then too.

I can still remember Christmas morning in 1999, when I was still just 12 years old, and opening up a present that contained a brand new lime green Gameboy Colour and a copy of Pokémon Blue. The TV show had been airing in the UK for a few months and the trading card game was taking playgrounds by storm, so the anticipation for the game was huge. I’d even bought a walk-through guide months before and would page through it again and again learning everything I could about the game.

Fast forward a few months and the big event of 2000 happened: the first Pokémon movie hit UK cinemas. I vividly remember going to watch it more than once, getting different people to take me so that I could try and get as many of the free trading cards that came with the tickets as I could. Boy were those good days.

The film itself loosely fits into the animated series, something that the subsequent 18 or so films would do, and followed Ash (Veronica Taylor), Misty (Rachael Lillis), and Brock (Eric Stuart) as they receive a mysterious summons to attend a event on a mysterious island, where they can challenge the worlds greatest Pokémon trainer.

Arriving on the island along with several other strong trainers, and Team Rocket, they discover that this mysterious trainer is in fact Mewtwo, a powerful Pokémon created in a lab from the genetic material of the mythical Pokémon Mew. Mewtwo refuses to be a slave fighting for humans, however, and sets out to create a new world of powerful Pokémon cloned from the trainers’ originals. With the trainers’ Pokémon desperately battling their own, more powerful clones, Mew arrives on the island and the ultimate Pokémon battle begins.

The plot of the film is actually quite different from the original Japanese version, with Mewtwo’s motivations being changed quite drastically in the English dub. In the original he was trying to earn his place in the world, as he felt he did not have one due to his clone origins. In the western version Mewtwo is altered into a much more antagonistic figure, one that has almost villainous aims.

Whilst this change upset some, fans at the time found it to be very entertaining, and thanks to the first part of the film being dedicated to showing Mewtwo’s origins it felt like a believable motivation. You get to see him born in a lab, made by scientists who don’t care about his thoughts or feelings, even after learning that he’s a sentient being capable of complex thought and feelings. After this, he’s used by the leader of Team Rocket and made into a weapon used against their enemies, or to further their criminal goals. This part of the film even expanded upon some small scenes that featured in episodes of the animated series, where Mewtwo had be teased to build up excitement for the film.

Despite being a film about strange monsters and the people who use them to fight in competition with each other Pokémon: The First Movie is more a film that tells a story about destiny. Are you fated to a single path in life purely because of how you came into the world? A quote from the film that is often shared online, usually with people being shocked about where it came from thanks to the depth it shows, sums this up well: “The circumstances of one’s birth is irrelevant, it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are”.

The film even takes the bold move of sending the message that fighting is wrong (which seems to go against the entire core of the Pokémon franchise), and tries to foster a message of togetherness and peace:

“We do have a lot in common. The same Earth, the same air, the same sky. Maybe if we started looking at what’s the same instead of what’s different… well, who knows.” – Meowth

These deeper messages are something that stuck with the kids who watched the movie when it first came out, and the film’s attempt to be something more than just a bigger and longer episode of the show is why it’s the most successful Pokémon film. It briefly held the record for highest-grossing opening for an animated film in the US, and is still the most financially successful animé of all time outside of Japan.

Pokémon: The First Movie might not be a film that will set your world on fire, and if you’re not a fan of the franchise, or it’s not something from your childhood you might even get bored watching it. But if you grew up with Pokémon, if it was a part of your youth and meant something to you then it’ll mean something to you now too.

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Thursday, 3 October 2019

IT Chapter Two - Film Review

IT Chapter Two returns audiences to the small town of Derry, where the terrifying entity Pennywise has awakened from his decades of slumber ready to kill more children, and to get revenge against the Losers Club.

The choice to split IT into two films is probably the best thing that the filmmakers could have done. Whilst the shifting narrative settings within the book worked for that particular format (though I did have a few issues with it on occasion when reading it), it worked less so in film, as the 1990 miniseries showed. Here, the adult actors get their chance to shine without having to compete with the teenagers who played the younger versions of the characters. Even though there are some scenes in IT Chapter Two that return audiences to the 1980's, this is still very much about the adult cast, and these flashbacks play important parts in their journeys.

The adult cast are very good, and for a number of them it's almost eerie how much they look like the younger versions of the characters from the first film. Andy Bean who plays Stanley Uris is only in the film for a short amount of time, but I was immediately stunned by how much he looked like an older version of Wyatt Oleff; likewise, Nicholas Hamilton had a similar impact as an older Henry Bowers. And whilst Bill Hader did resemble Finn Wolfhard to a certain degree, it was his portrayal that really sold it being the same character.

I actually found him to be the most interesting member of the Losers Club in this film, and think that the new subplot about him being a closeted gay man was actually really interesting, and at times his performance was very moving.

The gay plots that happened in the film were handled well, especially the opening scene of the film that depicted the brutal homophobic attack of Adrian Melon. A scene that was cut from the 90's miniseries, it was used here to great effect. It took an incredibly disturbing and violent act, a very real kind of act, and used to it return Pennywise in a truly shocking way. For much of the scene you could be forgiven to forget that this is a film about an evil clown as we see that everyday people can be capable of such incredible evil themselves. Whilst some people complained about the tone and the violent nature of the scene it was an incredibly important scene from the book and I for one am very glad to see it included.

Unfortunately, the one area that I felt let this film down was that it just wasn't as scary as the first film. Perhaps this is because during the first film we were still discovering this version of Pennywise, and that slow unfolding of the threat was very scary. Maybe it's because I knew how the character acted now that I was somewhat prepared a second time round. Whatever the reason, he just didn't scare me as much. And I'm someone with coulrophobia, so this film should have really messed me up.

But this complaint is in no way a complaint about Bill Skarsgard, who is absolutely phenomenal in the role. I understand that a lot of people have a very real connection to Tim Curry as Pennywise, and whilst I do love Tim Curry he's nowhere near as good in the role as Skarsgard. He exudes menace whenever he's on screen, even when he's being sweet to children to lure them in. He's able to convey huge shifts with the tiniest facial expression, and can go from creepy to downright horrifying with the flip of a switch. So much of what makes Pennywise scary in these two films is down to his acting ability, not any kind of effects, and he should be lauded with praise for his work here.

In some ways it's sad that IT has come to a close, as it feels like there is a lot more to this story and this world left to tell. I know that there is supposed to be a 'super-cut' version of the film coming, and that Andy Muschietti wants to add in deleted scenes, and even film new pieces, so I have that to look forward to, but for now I feel a little down that it's done.

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Thursday, 8 August 2019

The Predator - Film Review

I don't want to immediately start complaining about The Predator, but even on a second viewing I'm finding it hard to find much in the film to actually like. Whilst the film looks pretty enough, and has a half decent cast the script just lets it down time and time again.

Now, this might not be completely fair for the film, as with a little look at the behind the scenes, or even the first trailer which had loads of scenes that weren't in the final film, it becomes clear that The Predator fell foul of constant re-writes, studio interference, and being unsure of what kind of story it wanted to tell.

In the final film a rogue Predator comes to earth, apparently to give the human race a piece of advanced alien technology to allow us to fight the 'evil' Predators. Okay, not too bad a premise, except that this 'good' Predator spends all his time attacking and killing humans, and makes no attempt to make any form of alliance with them or appear to wants to help them at all. In conflict with this Predator is the new Hybrid, who wants to kill the 'good' Predator and destroy his ship.

The plot feels incredibly clunky, and seems to develop in ways that feels unnatural. Character motivations change on a whim, the plot doesn't seem to match up with what's happening, and the titular monsters act completely out of character.

It turns out that a lot of this is due to the face that the whole second half of the film was completely changed during production. In the original film Quinn McKenna and the Loonies are recruited by a general who tells them that the Predator they have been in conflict with is a rogue who has been experimenting with combing Predator DNA with various species from Earth. The humans then team up with a pair of Ambassador Predators to take down the rogue. There are a number of scenes from this original story still in the first trailer, including the character of Nebraska riding on top of a tank, which would have been driven by a Predator.

This version of the film also included various Predator hybrid monsters for the team to fight. Unfortunately, a number of preview screenings came back with negative responses and the decision to completely change half the film at the last minute was made. As such, I can kind of forgive The Predator for ending up a complete mess, but I'd personally would have still preferred this original version as it would have given us something different from the other films.

The Predator became a victim of behind the scenes interference, and greatly suffers for it. It had a confident start, but didn't know how to end, which resulted in several alternate endings that included appearances by Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dutch, and even ones that had Ripley and Newt from the Alien franchise turning up. The ending they did choose, the Predator Killer suit, was so ridiculous that any good the film did have is ruined by a final scene that just felt ridiculous and badly thought through.

The film has some good performances from actors who are struggling with a script that lets them down. The loonies are caricatures of people with a variety of mental health conditions and post traumatic stress that seem to have been added for comedic relief. One, maybe even two characters that are included to elicit a laugh might be okay, but five comedy relief characters is just too much. This isn't a Police Academy film.

The Predator could have been a good film. It could have been a great film. Unfortunately, thanks to production issues it ends up being a broken film, a film that makes little sense within its own universe. If there are more films in the Predator franchise to come I hope that they are able to correct some of issues that this film has made and fall back into line with what the franchise used to be. The worst film in the Predator franchise, and almost as bad as the Aliens vs Predator films, it's only really worth watching if you're a completionist fan.

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Monday, 5 August 2019

The Lion King - Film Review

I, like many people around my age, have a soft spot in my heart for The Lion King. It was one of the animated movies that I grew up with, and remember the fuss made about it before it came out, and how excited people were for it. Then, when I finally watched it I, like a lot of people, was so deeply affected by the death of Mufasa that the film stuck with me throughout my childhood.

When news came that the film was to be remade in the slew of live action Disney films I was a little nervous. Of the films that I'd seen I found that they were very hit or miss, and I either really enjoyed them or didn't like them at all. However, seeing that Jon Favreau was involved following the success of The Jungle Book, and that James Earl Jones would be returning to reprise his role I was on board.
Having now seen the film I will say that I found it...okay.

Whilst there is nothing in this new version of the film that I absolutely hated there were several times during the movie that I found myself thinking that the animated feature did it better. For the most part these were the musical numbers. I appreciate that it's hard to make animals look photo realistic and have them singing and dancing around the way they can in an animated movie, but most of the song sequences in this new version felt like they were lacking some of their punch. Though 'I Just Can't Wait To Be King' was still a lot of fun.

The main thing that really impressed about this new version was that they had altered the script in a few ways to give more of an explanation or to reveal more about the world. For example, when Zazu talks to Mufasa about how he used to act as a cub. One of these changes that was incredibly welcome was the fact that Shenzi, who was simply part of a comedy trio in the original, was given the spotlight as the leader of the hyena's, and had a much clearer character. She went from comedic relief to something of a lieutenant to Scar, and her showdown with Nala in the finale was very satisfying.

The new cast were also great, and were able to take roles that for a lot of people had become iconic with their original actors and make them their own. The biggest example of this is Scar. Whilst I do appreciate the fact that in the original the scheming villain who wanted to kill the character voiced by a black man and take his land was a white, British man, I don't think that the original filmmakers were trying to make any kind of commentary on how awful white people have been to African nations or citizens across history. Having Chiwetel Ejiofor in the role felt much better. The cast of The Lion King should be black, and the main lion characters especially. He brought a sense of coldness and gravitas to the role that Jeremy Irons just didn't. Irons' Scar was a caricature villain, whereas Ejiofor's felt like a real person.

This is where the new film works well, in these small little changes that elevate certain areas over the original. The increased number of black actors in the cast is an improvement. The additions to the script are an improvement. The action in the finale is an improvement. Yet despite this, there was just something about the film that failed to make it spark for me as amazing. Perhaps it's because I felt myself comparing it to the original a lot of the time that I didn't judge it as it's own separate entity.

I think that this is one of the flaws in the new Disney films. When they're too similar to the original audiences have a tendency to compare the two closely, to sit there thinking that the shots are almost identical, or the songs are the same but one version is sung better than the other. Maybe making the films more obviously different, as the upcoming Mulan appears to be will make the movies stand on their own better.

Despite these small criticisms I really enjoyed The Lion King, and look forward to seeing it again. Though sadly I will not get to experience the best part of the film again, the moment when a woman in the row behind me yelled in fear and disgust during the trailer for Cats.

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Monday, 29 April 2019

The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion – Review

Originally published on Set The Tape

The Witch (or The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion, aka Manyeo), the first part of a potential trilogy series, tells the story of Ja-Yoon (Da-Mi Kim), a young girl who has grown up living on a small farm with her elderly adoptive parents after escaping some kind of sinister experimentation and murder squad some ten years previously.

The film is very light on details as to what Ja-Yoon went through at the beginning, with opening credits that hint at mysterious experiments on children, but very little else to tell audiences what has happened. Instead, the film spends a good half of its run time teasing out small pieces of this mystery, with secret conversations and mysterious figures that follow Ja-Yoon.

Instead of focusing solely on the mystery of her past, the film chooses to give over a good portion to building Ja-Yoon as a character, letting us get to know her, her parents, friends, and even smaller figures in the periphery of her life. It’s a nice decision on the part of writer/director Hoon-Jung Park, as it helps to build the world and lets us get attached to Ja-Yoon before her world starts to spin out of control.

As with a lot of YA fiction Ja-Yoon is at the centre of an evil plot headed up by a nefarious organisation that is trying to exploit young people for their own gains. It follows a young girl who is ripped from her happy family life, who has to fight against these corrupt conspirators in order to save herself and her family. What The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion does differently, however, is to bring a Korean revenge thriller twist to the proceedings.

Without spoiling too much of the film, as there are certain expectations it intentionally builds in the audience before quickly pulling the rug out from under you, the sudden shift in its last half is a masterstroke.

The quiet, rural settings of Ja-Yoon’s home life, are gone, replaced with an industrial futurist look, complete with concrete lined labs, corridors with long staircases and high ceilings, and secret bunkers. Ja-Yoon also changes here, revealing a competent heroine beneath the scared teenage girl that we’ve been following. This shift marks a high point in the film, and is sold in large part thanks to the phenomenal acting by Da-Mi Kim, who is able to shift from scared girl to scary killer within seconds.

The other main cast members also bring a lot of great energy to the film, and the villains of the piece are some of the best. Min-Soo Jo is great as the sinister Dr. Baek, the mastermind scientist behind everything that has happened. She’s cold and calculating, trying to manipulate people from behind the scenes, and Min-Soo Jo plays her as a woman used to being the smartest person in the room, and who enjoys flaunting this sense of superiority.

Woo-Sik Choi, referred to in the credits simply as ‘Male English-Speaking Witch’, is great as one of Ja-Yoon’s fellow experimentees, though one raised within the evil organisation. It’s clear that Woo-Sik Choi is having a lot of fun playing the part, and that energy translates into his character, a twisted young man who enjoys being a killer. Both of these characters steal any scene that they’re in, and whilst being used sparingly definitely helped to raise their mystique I would have loved to see more of them.

The highlight, however, is the sudden shift into brutal action that comes within the last half hour, seeing these characters with super-human abilities fighting not just each other, but scores of soldiers too. These scenes have a visceral kind of beauty to them as people are shot, stabbed, and beaten to death in showers of blood, yet done so with such amazingly choreographed movements that it’s almost like watching a brutal ballet. If the film proves to be a success and we do get more entries into the series I can’t wait to see more of this kind of fighting and action.

A story that is really only setting the stage for things to come, we end up with a heroine that we still don’t really know, who is more than just the caring daughter that we saw in the first half of the film, a dangerous, frightening killer hiding just beneath. It’s not clear if she is even really a good person, and it’s possible that those distinctions don’t really exist within this world, opting instead for everyone to being on some kind of spectrum of grey. Despite these questions the film still delivers a great experience even on it’s own, and if the franchise ended here it would still be a great story.

Similar in a lot of ways to The Raid and the Villains novel series by VE Schwab, this is a film that is sure to draw in people who love superhero films, yet want to experience something different, fans of YA stories with strong female leads, and even action junkies who want to see some amazing fights. A brilliant start to what could be a truly amazing trilogy of films.

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Wednesday, 13 February 2019

Friday the 13th – Throwback 10

Originally published on Set The Tape

It would be easy to call the 2009 Friday the 13th a remake. It came out around the time a lot of remakes of popular 70’s and 80’s horror films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and A Nightmare on Elm Street, but you can’t help but feel that this fails to fall into that mould.

For one thing, the very first film, which was so popular that it knocked Empire Strikes Back off the number one spot in cinemas, doesn’t follow Jason Vorhees at all, with it instead being his mother, Pamela Vorhees. Not only does this new film recount the events of the very first Friday the 13th within the opening titles, thereby giving any unfamilar audience members the info they need to get started, but the events that fill up the rest of the film aren’t a retread of any of the existing sequels.

Yes, Jason comes across a group of teens who do drugs, drink, and have sex so therefore need to be punished with brutal deaths, but that happens in all of the films and is more a trope of the series and horror films in general than a specific scenario. This Friday the 13th follows the formula of the series, but tells its own story. So can it really be a remake?

Whether a remake or not, it’s pretty damn good. Horror franchise sequels can often get a bad reputation, mostly due to their flimsy plot and excuses to ramp up the killings and gore factor, and Friday the 13th is no exception to this. Instead of trying to compete with these old films the 2009 version chooses to tell its own story instead.

Twenty five years after watching his mother (played by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Nana Visitor) Jason Vorhees (Derek Mears) stumbles across a group of teens camping up at the remains of Crystal Lake where he has been living. Whilst attacking and killing the group he discovers that one of the girls, Whitney (Amanda Righetti) looks like his mother, and kidnaps her. Several weeks later Whitney’s brother Clay (Jared Padalecki) is searching for his missing sister when he comes across a group of teens heading up to a cabin near Crystal Lake for a weekend of partying. Clay and the teens soon become the targets of Jason.

It’s a fairly standard kind of horror set-up, and doesn’t contain anything revolutionary, but the plot around Whitney looking like Pamela Vorhees and her brothers search adds a little something extra to the standard partying teens get killed scenario. The teens are the standard mix of attractive Hollywood teens, but have some pretty good actors amongst them, including Ben Feldman from Superstore, Travis Van Winkle from The Last Ship, and Danielle Panabaker from The Flash. They’re a great mix of actors, all of whom are able to pull of the silly teenager shenanigans, yet also portraying the fear and desperation of people being hunted by a killer.

If there’s one cast member who stands out, however, it’s Jared Padalecki as Clay. Honestly, this is just a personal thing, but after years of seeing him play Sam Winchester in Supernatural watching him searching for a missing girl and having to fight an unstoppable, almost supernatural killer kind of threw me because I was just waiting for Jensen Ackles to turn up too. Whether or not he was cast in the role because he would essentially be doing the same thing he’d been doing for years on TV it’s great casting, as he’s clearly very comfortable in this kind of role.

The film is full of vicious killings, some of which are gruesome to watch, yet the filmmakers manage to keep things from going too far into the gore territory and become off-putting. The main thing that may put some people off the film would be the nudity over the violence. Whilst the violence is fairly toned down and less gory for a slasher film Friday the 13th embraces the old sensibility of showing their characters having sex. They don’t just make it clear through scripting and direction that two people have gone off to have sex, they show Juliana Guill naked on top of her costar. This is sure to appeal to some, most likely teenage boys, but feels a little gratuitous and unnecessary.

A new addition to the Friday the 13th franchise, the film takes the best parts of the series and does its own thing, telling a fairly well rounded story that makes more sense than some of the previous entries. With smart direction, good cinematography, and a well cast group of actors it stands up as a pretty darn good addition to the series.

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