horror

HELLBOY (2019)

Cert 15 121mins Stars 2

Unrepentant for its blood-splattered gore, this comic book comedy horror reboot is brash, noisy and violent, reflecting the demonic character at the heart of the CGI-heavy action.

Under deadening layers of makeup, actor David Harbour tries manfully to bring life to Hellboy, a truculent government field agent attempting to prevent Milla Jovovich’s resurrected fifth century sorceress from starting the apocalypse.

Though as she wants to save us all from the hell of Reality TV, I don’t think she’s all that evil.

Rattling around England in pursuit of a decent script, Hellboy is accompanied by Sasha Lane’s very modern fortune teller, and a SWAT team leader with a secret agenda of his own.

As Hellboy’s adoptive father and boss of the US paranormal research bureau where Hellboy works, Ian McShane uses every ounce of his foul-mouthed and scene-stealing experience to bring energy and humour to this frequently flat exercise.

This is a very different beast to Hellboy’s previous cinematic incarnation in a pair of films from over a decade ago. Original director and writer, Guillermo del Toro, bailed out and went off to win Oscars for his fishy romance, The Shape of Water.

And fans of his elegant and stylish version will be horrified by way director, Neil Marshall, brings a much more action-orientated approach.

Clearly the genial Geordie was watching the same video nasties I saw growing up, and indulges his taste for gory thrills first seen in his 2002 werewolf debut, Dog Soldiers.

Throwing in an army of demons, flaming weapons, shoot-outs and Scouser Stephen Graham as a half-human warthog, it’s evident Marshall shares with Terry Gilliam a love of fairytales and Arthurian legend as well as a gleeful taste for the grotesque. 

But there’s little tension or chemistry, the CGI looks cheap, and the hardworking editing disguises a lot of sins, leaving this to feel more like purgatory than a hellish good time.

 

MA

Cert 15 99mins Stars 3

Parents trying to party down with the kids is always mortifying to teenagers but are rarely as terrifying than in this fun and functional revenge driven high school horror.

Another bloody and low-budget shocker by the makers of The Purge franchise, it’s a grab bag of drunk teens, public humiliation, sexual assault and torture.

It’s headed up by Octavia Spencer who leads the game young cast in a merry dance, and is supported by stalwart performers such as Juliette Lewis and Luke Evans.

Spencer plays a veterinary nurse suffering a serious case of arrested development who attempts to curry the favour of local teens when she puts the basement of her remote house at their disposal for illicit parties.

In an entertaining change of pace from the wise motherly types she more frequently portrays, Spencer is having a great time teasing out her inner psycho.

Though the eye watering violence is late to the party, they provide a fresh impetus just as the flagging party needs it the most.

 

 

 

A CURE FOR WELLNESS

Director: Gore Verbinski (2017) BBFC cert: 18

 

Gore Verbinski administered shock treatment to Johnny Depp’s career by directing the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, and the magnificent mess, The Lone Ranger.

The appropriately named director now turns his hand to horror, with equally mixed results.

It’s beautifully designed on a grand scale, and stunningly photographed.

Brit actor Jason Isaacs is wonderfully measured as the governor of an exclusive Swiss sanitarium. Forever pale and interesting, Dane DeHaan is suitably cast as a young US executive sent to Switzerland to rescue his CEO from hydrotherapy.

In the vein of the venerable Hammer House of Horror, the story draws heavily on the European folktales which inspired Dracula and Frankenstein.

Distended on a diet of eels and red herrings, the constipated storytelling puts a strain on the audience. It needs a good dose of leeches. Movement in the bowels of the castle allows for a necessary and explosive purge of plot, providing great relief all round.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER

Director: Billy O’Brien (2017) BBFC cert: 15

There’s a beating heart full of love within this off beat and disturbingly entertainingly horror.

Young actor, Max Records, is terrific as John Cleaver, a bullied high school student works part time at the family mortuary and believes himself to have the potential to be a serial killer.

Veteran Christopher Lloyd has fun as his elderly neighbour and only friend.

But when John believes he’s discovered the existence of a real serial killer at large, his life takes a doubtful turn.

Due to the smart writing, assured direction and performances of rigid conviction, this is a macabre, small town joy.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

BEYOND THE GATES

Director: Jackson Stewart (2017) BBFC cert: 18

 

Rewind to the era of the video nasty with this lovingly made, entertaining and accurate homage to cult comedy horrors such as such as Fright Night and Re-Animator.

When two brothers return to their parents’ defunct video store, they find a mysterious interactive video cassette game movie called Beyond The Gate.

They realise it holds clues to their father’s disappearance, but are warned playing the game could cost them their souls.

There’s a healthy amount of camp fun among  the blood letting action and enough menace to give you the shivers.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Split

Director: M. Night Shyamalan (2017) BBFC cert: 15

The master of the twist ending returns with this psychological horror. Director and writer M. Night Shyamalan made his name with The Sixth Sense but after a string of disappointing films, he is slowly rebuilding his career at the Blumhouse studio.

Better known as the makers of The Paranormal Activity franchise, the low budget horror specialists don’t care how much new age waffle about mind over matter Shyamalan squeezes into his script, as long as he includes a lunatic  terrorising semi-dressed teenage girls.

So its a win win for both parties then.

James McAvoy delivers an outstanding, showboating performance which includes menace, pathos, comedy and damaged innocence. The Scots actor  stars as Kevin, a multiple personality maniac who imprisons three girls in his basement.

Child abuse and cannibalism feature in the story which draws on Beauty and the Beast and Dr Jekyl And Mr Hyde.

The surprise at the end ties the film in with Shyamalan’s early, better work and hints at a sequel. Despite my better judgement, I’m intrigued to see what happens next.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

We Are The Flesh

Director: Emiliano Rocha Minter (2016) BBFC cert: 18

There’s not a fetid fig leaf to be found in this apocalyptic riff on the Adam and Eve creation myth. When two siblings seek shelter in a ruined building, it leads to their eternal damnation via an orgy of murder, insanity, cannibalism and rape.

The serpent in their squalid industrial garden of Eden is represented by a gold lame wearing madman. He leads them into temptation with his home brewed moonshine.

With actors willing to crawl the hard yards for their craft, some effective production design and a creative soundtrack, We Are The Flesh contains some unearthly delights and takes  a dim view of humanity’s reliance to religion.

But while the mocking of Catholic symbolism and the singing of a national anthem hints at an overall satiric intent, it’s feebly provocative and leaves nothing to laugh at.

★★☆☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Ouija: Origin Of Evil

Director: Mike Flanangan (2016) BBFC cert: 15

This belated and unwanted supernatural prequel to 2013’s Ouija is scary only in its lack of originality and ability to frighten up any fun.

When a widowed fortune teller introduces a Ouija board into her repertoire, her younger daughter makes contact with a spirit from the other side. At first providing gifts and helping with homework, when it exposes its malevolent nature there are dire consequences for the family.

Hard working Elizabeth Reaser, Annalise Basso and Lulu Wilson form the basis of an agreeable cast as mother and daughters. But as there’s no flesh on the scripts ghoulish bones for them to tear into, and we don’t care when very bad things start to happen.

There’s no attempt at twisting the setup into something interesting or topical such as drawing a parallel between the ouija board and internet grooming. Instead the script scratches at the walls of blank eyed possession, hidden rooms and half-hearted torture porn.

Among the absence of thrills are laughable nods to The Exorcist (1974) and Poltergeist (1982). The lighting and period detail gives the paranormal activity an undeserved gloss, while an underdeveloped sense of camp is bludgeoned into submission by cheap shocks.

The banging and shrieking on the soundtrack is loud enough to wake the dead. And possibly even the audience.

★☆☆☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

 

The Purge: Election Year

Director: James DeMonaco (2016) BBFC cert:

In these turbulent post-Brexit political times, I’m casting my vote in favour of this gleefully violent satirical action thriller.

This third in the low budget and highly succcessful US series is set in the year 2022.

Frank Grillo returns as the bullish and brutal cop with a conscience, Leo Barnes. He is now head of security to Elizabeth Mitchell‘s Senator, Charlie Roan.

She’s standing for President to abolish the Purge, the annual night of chaos where for one night all law is suspended and murder is legal.

The event makes the ruling far-right wing party a lot of money. As such the New Founding Fathers see the Purge as the ideal opportunity to have Roan permanently removed from the ballot paper.

They suspend the rules protecting political figures, a short sighted decision which seems destined to backfire.

A betrayal by one of the senator’s team leaves Roan and Barnes on the streets of Washington D.C. at the height of The Purge.

Citizens are tortured, burnt, shot, hung and guillotined. No one stops to eat, drink or sleep and the tension rises with the body count.

Costumed crazies rampage through the neon lit streets like a garish halloween party with chainsaws and machine pistols.

As Roan battles to survive, she finds allies in shotgun wielding shopkeepers and veteran Purge night players. They’re motivated from a desire to see the senator win the election.

But as the night progresses they discover they’re not the only group trying to smash the system.

There’s manic rhetoric, an asset stripping government exploiting religion for politic gain and state sanctioned slaughter on the streets.

The satirical intent is somewhat neutered by the astonishing real life US Presidential electoral race taking place. But as an action movie The Purge: Election Year is the candidate that ticks the right boxes.

★★★☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Lights Out

Director:David F. Sandberg (2016) BBFC cert: 15

With slamming doors and shrieking spectres, the only scares this haunted house horror offers are its damnably shocking politics.

Teresa Palmer heads up the  likeable cast who all put in an efficient shift. She plays twenty-something Rebecca who lives next to a tattoo parlour.

She goes to the rescue of her step brother Martin and mother Sophie who are plagued whenever the lights go out by a hissing harpy, called Diana.

Young Gabriel Bateman looks suitably terrified and Mario Bello gives a fidgety performance, befitting of a character off their meds in a major way.

Diana is a long haired monster with superhuman strength but who burns in the light. The victim of a skin condition and medical malpractice, the harpy is obsessed with Sophie, her one time fellow psychiatric patient. The ghoul spends a lot of time scratching her name into floorboards and removing lightbulbs.

Having destroyed the adult male relationships in Sophie’s life, Diana now threatens Rebecca’s blossoming romance with a leather jacketed hunk.

At the heart of the Light’s Out paranoia is a conservative heterosexual male fear of lesbian threat to the traditional nuclear family.

Named after the goddess of love, Diana represents the coercive power lesbians are perceived to be able exert on ‘normal’ society. She is an obsessive, violent, ugly, deranged family destroying bogey-woman. It’s a regressive view bang in tune with current right wing rhetoric.

The only light at the end of the tunnel is I’ll never have to suffer this nonsense again.

★☆☆☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett