horror

THE MUMMY (2017)

Cert 15 110mins Stars 1

This big budget action adventure lumbers into cinemas and begs to be put out of its torment. Long before it ended, so did I.

Though the world is threatened when an ancient terror is unleashed, a directorial dead hand can’t muster a sense of fun, danger, mystery or suspense.

It’s only brought to a semblance of life by the spark of Brit actress Annabelle Wallis and the dogged determination of Tom Cruise.

He stars as Nick Morton, an impish US soldier and blackmarketeer who is cursed when he opens a tomb in the Iraqi desert.

To save himself he must reunite a ceremonial dagger with a jewel discovered in a London grave.

He’s accompanied by a shouty, face slapping Egyptologist called Jenny, played by Wallis.

They stagger through a script which exhumes the dead bits of better movies and wraps them up in murky CGI.

Aeroplane and underwater stunts are airlifted in from Cruise’s last Mission Impossible film. And scenes from An American Werewolf in London are humourlessly reanimated.

Meanwhile a resurrected Egyptian mummy wants the knife to rule the world, or something.

Algerian dancer Sofia Boutella spends her time either chained in rags or parading across the desert in the style of a 1980’s Turkish Delight advert.

This stumbling mess is intended to be a franchise starter for Universal Studio’s Dark Universe. It’s a series of connected films rebooting classic movie monsters such as the Wolfman.

So our heroes also encounter Russell Crowe’s Dr. Jekyll, lurking in a lair of Bond villain extravagance.

Years of good living hang heavy on the 53 year old Crowe and he makes the 54 year old Cruise seem even more remarkably well preserved.

Next year we’ll have a new version of The Bride of Frankenstein and Johnny Depp has been announced as the Invisible Man.

After this dull horror show, that’s a truly terrifying prospect.

ALIEN: COVENANT

Cert 15 122mins Stars 5

Scream as though no-one can hear you as the galaxy’s greatest space horror franchise is back to terrorise us once again.

Director Ridley Scott returns to the sci-fi thriller which made his name, and delivers an epic of spine-busting action, exotic locations and stunning design.

The Oscar winning director made the original Alien in 1979 when he was a young man in a hurry. As one of cinemas elder statesmen, in 2012 he belatedly  followed up with the grandly ambitious but less well received, Prometheus.

Now he splices the pair to create an explosive hybrid of blood-splatting thrills and apocalyptic destruction on a mythic scale. It’s all very familiar and at times daringly new.

There are chest-bursters, face-huggers, and acid blood. Orifices are penetrated and cavities evacuated, as we’d expect. But Scott plays on our knowledge of the franchise to skilfully toy with our expectations of the narrative.

We’re challenged to have some sympathy with the the ferocious flesh hungry parasitic alien, called a Xenomorph. A seduction is played with such subtle grace and integrity, it disguises how audacious and mind bendingly freaky it is. 

Set ten years after Prometheus, a small team of colonists are stranded on a planet and are unable to communicate with the orbiting mothership.

As the script wrestles with the big questions of existence, our heroes have to grapple for their lives.

Leading the fight for survival is Daniels, played by Katherine Waterston. The tall, dark-haired beauty is slyly styled by Scott to resemble the undisputed queen of the franchise, Sigourney Weaver.

Despite displaying Weaver’s kick-ass aptitude, Waterston is overawed by a majestic Michael Fassbender. He’s mesmeric in a dual role as synthetic androids, David and Walter.

Scott’s final theatrical flourish sends the franchise spinning out in a new direction. This is screamingly great cinema.

TRANSFIGURATION

Cert 15 97mins Stars 3

You have to take a bite from this stomach churning horror story to taste the sweet sadness under its skin.

The script from first time director and writer, Michael O’Shea, plays on our understanding of the long history of cinematic vampires. With wry humour he neatly skewers other big screen portrayals of the undead, with the Twilight series getting it in the neck more than most.

Far from the European aristocratic realm of Count Dracula, the story is set among the urban grime of contemporary New York.

The natural performances suit the almost documentary filmmaking approach, capitalising on a daringly original twist on the monster myth.

Teenage Milo is fascinated and repulsed by his vampirism, trying to hold on to his humanity while learning about his bloodsucking condition.

He begins a relationship with new girl on the block, Sophie. They’re drawn together by the chaos of their environment, But Milo can’t tell her his sickening truth.

 

 

 

THE VOID

Cert 18 90mins Stars 2

This homage to 1980’s body horror flicks combines an old school style with new age nonsense, but fails to conquer the credibility gap.

A welcome throwback to classics such as The Thing and The Fly, but at times strays perilously close to unwitting parody instead.

While knife wielding cult members stalk the grounds of a small town hospital, the innocent citizens inside are terrorised by a shapeshifting beast.

It’s great to see physical special effects create the monster, which is a throbbing mass of tissue and tentacles.

However the good work is hamstrung by a small budget, and there’s a failure to compensate with either great writing or a sense of camp fun.

Alarmingly large plot holes lurk around every dark corner and preposterous dialogue such as ‘there are things older than time’ don’t help.

If you’re not in the mood for some gory face-ripping action, you’d probably best avoid.

 

THE EYES OF MY MOTHER

Cert 15 76mins Stars 4

This deeply disturbing American gothic horror is a piercing portrait of macabre madness. It enters your brain with the jab of a rusty pitchfork, and is just as difficult to remove.

The brutal violence and transgressive sex occurs off screen, and is more unsettling for it. Filming in soft black and white adds to the sense of timelessness, helping the story cover a period of years with great economy.

Francisca is the young daughter of a dairy farmer and an surgeon, living a remote rural life. When a gun wielding salesman causes chaos, her behaviour takes a dark turn.

As she grows up, she retains our sympathy. This is due to the remarkably poised performances of first Olivia Bond and then Kika Magalhaes in the role.

Not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach, The Eyes Of My Mother is a powerful and punishing watch, if you can bear to see it.

GET OUT

Cert 15 Stars 4

Fear, prejudice, and hypocrisy are shown the door in this fiendish and clever comedy horror.

It’s an excruciating comedy of manners which takes a darkly violent twist. A racial riff on the sci-fi satire, The Stepford Wives, it includes echoes of comic Steve Martin’s early, funny films, such as The Jerk.

The smart script and knowing cast gleefully collude to laugh at the fears of white America, while highlighting where the balance of power really lies.

Brit star Daniel Kaluuya stars as a middle class photographer who is accompanying his white girlfriend to meet her wealthy parents at their big house in the country. But Rose hasn’t told them he’s black.

Director Jordan Peele had a surprise hit last year when he wrote and starred in kitty kidnap crime caper, Keanu. Get Out has so far scored for a cool £93 million at the box office. Hugely impressive for a film which cost a paltry £4 million.

Get out and go see it.

 

TRAIN TO BUSAN

Cert 15 stars 5

Book yourself a seat on this non-stop first class carriage of carnage. This inventive epic zombie thriller delivers express thrills straight to the jugular.

A businessman and his nine year old daughter are among the mixed bag of grannies, high school sports stars and pregnant women travelling to Busan in South Korea.

The journey turns into the ride from hell when an infected escapee from a failed biotec experiment causes a zombie outbreak.

They’re a ferociously rabid pack of hungry undead, though none too clever.

It’s a rip roaring thrill ride full of heart, muscle and nerve, most of it splattered over the seats.

THE NUN

Cert 15 96mins Stars 3

The fifth in the Conjuring supernatural horror franchise continues its possession of the box office with the addition of cinema’s scariest nun since Julie Andrews started singing.

There’s no Alpine melodies here, but a great deal of high pitched screeching as a demon preys on the devout in rural Romania.

It absolutely doesn’t matter if your nun the wiser about how this film fits in the franchise, it’s best to imagine them as a loosely connected series with each standalone episode introducing a fresh cast and location.

We begin in 1952 with the death of a nun in a convent which stands next to a huge and creepy gothic castle, the sort of place a local Count might call home.

In response the Vatican sends a novice Nun and a war weary priest to establish whether occult forces are at work on the hallowed earth.

Taissa Farmiga is an agreeably bright focus among the murky mist-bound shenanigans, and she’s the younger sister of Vera, who starred as a paranormal investigator in the 2013’s first Conjuring movie.

Acting as her tutor and surrogate father-figure is Demian Bichir as Father Burke, and they’re joined by an amorous French-Canadian farmer turned local guide.

Jonas Bloquet is good fun in the role but his character is a consequence of some occasionally shoddy writing which undermines all the great work of the actors, set designers and special effects wizards.

Fans needn’t worry about a lack of crypts, candles and corpses as we rattle through a script laden with jump scares, sly humorous touches and plenty of Friday night thrills such as beheadings, burials and satanic flagellation.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the Conjuring films but I really enjoyed last year’s prequel, Annabelle: Creation, and had fun with The Nun here. This series for me is starting to become an unhealthy habit.

SUSPIRIA (2018)

Cert 18 153mins Stars 2

This leaden-footed ballet-based supernatural horror is a not only a drab remake of 1970’s lavishly coloured classic original, but is also an unforgivably indulgent hour longer.

Fifty Shades star Dakota Johnson is impressively physical as Susie, who flees her restrictive Christian community in Ohio to join an austere dance academy in 1977’s Berlin, schooled by Brit actress, Tilda Swinton.

Meanwhile an ageing psychiatrist is searching for Chloe Grace Moretz’s disturbed missing dancer, who believed the ensemble is secretly a witches coven.

Earlier this year director Luca Guadagnino won a best screenplay Oscar for Call Me By Your Name, and but he won’t win any awards for this.

Self-importantly divided into seven chapters, the story links witchcraft and religion to corrupt and destructive political ideologies, but fails to develop or clarify its ideas.

A trio of striking dance sequences aside, Suspiria is a muddled and murky mess which will curdle your attention far more than it will your blood. 

PET SEMATARY (2019)

Cert 15 101mins Stars 2

Eternal suffering is threatened in this desperate Stephen King adaptation, and by the end of this torturously stupid supernatural horror I felt I’d been tormented more than enough.

It’s the second big screen version of Stephen King’s 1983 novel and though fans may appreciate its earnest approach and fidelity to the source material, I struggle to stomach his addled hokum at the best of times and this had me giggling at all the wrong moments.

Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz play a suburban couple who move their children to a farm in the country which they discover contains a burial ground for local pets.

After experiencing nightmares and hallucinations, they’re surprisingly relaxed when their pet cat returns from the grave, which triggers a violent chain of silly not sinister events characterised by poor dialogue and fake looking sets.

Jete Laurence as their daughter Ellie gives a good account of herself, but the rest of the cast seemed as bored as I was.