Maria Bello

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

McFarland

Director: Niki Caro (2015)

Spanish students face an uphill climb in this aspirational high school sports drama.

It’s set in the world of competitive cross country running. Free from surprises, it’s a leisurely jog along the route to self-improvement.

When PE teacher Jim White is sacked for misconduct, the only job he can get is in the down market California town of McFarland.

It’s an hispanic area and his beautiful blonde family struggle with the language, food and local hoodlums.

Keen to move on, up and out of the school and the neighbourhood, he seizes upon an opportunity for funding for a cross country team as a means of resurrecting his career.

Jim sees potential in the seven pupils he recruits to form a team, but they must run up real and metaphorical mountains in pursuit of success.

Kevin Costner is well cast as the coach, the film capitalises on his decent demeanour, gruff charm and physical presence to good effect.

Sadly the talented Maria Bello hasn’t much to do as Jim’s wife, though she fares better than the youngest daughter who serves no purpose whatsoever.

The film is careful to treat Spanish culture with respect, placing an emphasis on the importance of family, food and hard work.

It’s a struggle to give the individual boys’ screen time or fully develop their characters but they’re an agreeable, engaging group. Carlos Pratts as Thomas Valles is given the closest to a genuine character arc.

Jim’s charges’ have to skip school and training runs to work in the fields. Though the script hints at domestic violence and gang culture, it shies away from showing it.

They race against teams of all-white privileged posh boys. Qualifying for the state championships offers the boys the chance of a university place, away from a future of fruit picking or prison.

As the team show signs of success, Jim faces a fork in the road between loyalty to his team or his career.

A nicely realised postscript saves this film from descending into a simple white saviour flick such as Michelle Pfeiffer’s Dangerous Minds (1995).

McFarland is competently crafted and nicely acted. Though the pace slows in the uphills of sentiment, it has sufficient reserves to provide a satisfying finale.

★★★☆☆

Prisoners

dir. Denis Villeneuve

Hugh Jackman and Terrence Howard are vigilante fathers fighting for justice in this damp, dull and silly thriller.

In this rain-drenched small town that seems to have a deranged individual twitching behind every curtain, there are a seemingly endless number of torture chambers.

Riddled with stupidity, inconsistency, alarming coincidence and a gun-toting granny, it corkscrews a path through plot-holes into a pit of preposterousness.

Survivalist carpenter Keller Dover (Jackman) and his neighbour Franklin Birch (Howard) are relaxing after sharing Thanksgiving dinner with their families.

Jackman pairs a ragged beard with a knitted frown and acts with a fist waving intensity while Howard gawps along with the audience.

As Dover’s wife Maria Bello has little to do but stagger in a pill-popping daze and Viola Davis as Mrs Birch is given less than that.

Their two young daughters fail to return home from playing outside and a desperate search begins for them.

As every cop in the state are brought in to hunt for the girls, Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) is assigned to lead the investigation and is known for never failing to solve a case.

Gyllenhaal is impressive as the tattooed and slick-haired cop, offering with wry humour the merest specks of light in the gathering gloom.

Keller tracks down the suspected killer himself, beating up the suspectAlex Jones (Paul Dano) and pleading with Franklin to interrogate him.

Brilliant British cinematographer Roger Deakins creates an air of bitter chill that emphasises the bleakness of tone but his talent is squandered on this material.

★★☆☆☆