20150827: Drama Review--The Babadook

The Babadook

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: The Babadook
2. IMDb: Users rated this 6.9/10 (79,570 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   98% of critics liked it: 168 critical reviews liked it of 172.
   73% of viewers liked it based on 29,186 ratings
   Critics Consensus: The Babadook relies on real horror rather than cheap jump scares -- and boasts a heartfelt, genuinely moving story to boot.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2014-05-22
6. Production Companies: South Australian Film Corporation, Screen Australia, Smoking Gun Productions, Causeway Films
7. Tagline: If it's in a word, or it's in a look, you can't get rid of the Babadook.


8. Budget:  2,000,000 USD
9. Revenue: 4,222,200 USD
10. Runtime: 93 minutes.
11. Genres: Drama, Thriller, Horror


12. Written and directed by: Jennifer Kent.


13. Starring: Essie Davis as Amelia, Noah Wiseman as Samuel, Daniel Henshall as Robbie, Tim Purcell as The Babadook, Hayley McElhinney as Claire, Cathy Adamek as Prue, Craig Behenna as Warren, Benjamin Winspear as Oskar, Chloe Hurn as Ruby, Tiffany Lyndall-Knight as Supermarket Mum


14. TMDb overview: A single mother, plagued by the violent death of her husband, battles with her son's fear of a monster lurking in the house, but soon discovers a sinister presence all around her.


2. Setup and Plot


1. Amelia's husband dies while she is pregnant with Samuel. Losing the husband is a huge traumatic spike, and raising the now unwanted child as a single parent is strong ongoing stress.  She does not impose practical boundaries on the child, who responds by pushing her well past the limit.  That is, she is a terrible parent, and the child makes her and everyone around them pay for that fact.


2. At age six, Samuel starts broadcasting his dislike of the way he is treated. His aberrant behaviours at school and around town invoke additional stressors to Amelia's already weakened mental state. When mother and son find a book with a pop-up character, they make the mistake of reading it together at night.  Their lives get worse by this simple foolish choice that could be revoked at any time.


3. Will Amelia heal herself and flush all this ridiculously obvious nonsensical cluster of lies?


3. Conclusions


1. This is a psychological drama where the protagonist refuses to resolve her own self-generated difficulties.  There was no character to identify with in the film.  As the film progressed to the ten minute mark, my empathic response to the self-destructive protagonist had already evaporated.  So, who cares?


2. Netflix classifies this hot mess as Thriller, Independent Thriller, Psychological Thriller.  At least they did not mark it as 'horror.'  Also, Thriller?  Really?  There is nothing thrilling (or even engaging) about this descent into the outer boundaries of stupidity.


3. The Movie Database (TMDb) calls it Drama (yes), Thriller (no), and Horror (no).  The film had no body horror, no serial killers, no gorefest.  The madness aspect was all fake, so the supposed supernatural elements were each and every one fake.  What aspect of horror is this misstep supposed to represent?


4. Rotten Tomatoes marked the genres as Drama, Horror, Mystery and Suspense.  There is no suspense here since there were no real threats involved.  The protagonist's pathology was set clearly during the first 45 seconds.  The mystery, I suppose, was whether she would decide to get well.  The other mystery is why RT rated this dog so highly.


5. There are so many dull stretches in this film. At times I thought I was watching Paranormal Activity without the jump scares. Also, watching full-screen, low resolution badly taped ancient television is just boring, whether or not the protagonist thinks she sees something in the childish images. There is nothing there, just the wandering consciousness of a sleep-deprived weakling who has given up on life.


6. One line summary: This film is 93 minutes of witnessing ongoing willful self-delusion.


7. Zero stars of five.  This is one of the worst films I have ever seen. Why it received sacred cow status is a mystery.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 0/10 Oh my, dark and evocative?  Well, no.


2. Sound: 0/10 Unfortunately, I could hear the dialog.


3. Acting: 0/10 I suppose most of the actors accomplished the tasks the director set them.   In that way, this film resembles some of Wes Anderson's horrible early works.  The actors did what the director wished, but that was just the problem.  The director's flawed vision trumped any and all of the actors' efforts, rendering the net effect of acting as zero, nada, zilch.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 There are no real threats, no real suspense, no real anything.  This film is 93 minutes of witnessing ongoing self-delusion.  I did like the line where the child says to a potential suitor that she won't let him have a birthday party and won't let him have a dad.  Of course he hates her, deeply, strongly, and forever.  This all could have been done in much less time.  Apparently the auteur director had already done that: Babadook was an expansion of Monster (2005), which clocks in at 10 minutes.

Babadook is an anagram for 'a bad book,' but 'a bad author' might have been better. As Amelia bragged to her friends in one passage, Amelia wrote the problematic book, and constructed it out of ordinary materials. Then she foisted it on her unsuspecting child.

20150801: Thriller Review--American Psycho 2

American Psycho 2: All American Girl

1. Fundamentals.
1. Title: American Psycho 2: All American Girl
2. IMDb: Users rated this 3.9/10 (11,673 votes)
3. Rotten Tomatoes:
   Tomatometer: 11% based on 9 reviews
   18% of viewers liked it, based on 25,215ratings
   Critics Consensus:No consensus yet.


4. Status: Released
5. Release date: 2002-04-22
6. Production Companies: Lions Gate Films
7. Tagline: Angrier. Deadlier. Sexier.


8. Budget:  10,000,000 USD
9. Revenue: Revenue figures not available at review time.
10. Runtime: 88 minutes.
11. Genres: Horror, Thriller


12. Directed by: Morgan J. Freeman.  Written by: Alex Sanger, Karen Craig


13. Starring: Mila Kunis as Rachael, William Shatner as Starkman, Geraint Wyn Davies as Daniels, Robin Dunne as Brian, Lindy Booth as Cassandra, Charles Officer as Keith Lawson, Jenna Perry as Young Rachael, Michael Kremko as Patrick Bateman, Kim Poirier as Barbara, Boyd Banks as Jim


14. TMDb overview: Rachel is a criminology student hoping to land a position as a teacher's assistant for professor Robert Starkman. She's sure this position will pave the way to an FBI career, and she's willing to do anything to obtain it -- including killing her classmates. The school psychiatrist, Dr. Daniels, becomes aware that Rachel is insane, but Rachel is skilled at her dangerous game of death and identity theft.


2. Setup and Plot


1. There is a lot of voiceover toward the front end of the film, and voiceover later on.  This is usually a sign of not enough attention being paid to developing the screenplay.


2. Rachel has, for good reasons, more than a bit of a fixation on Patrick Bateman from the first American Psycho film.  When she reaches university, she wants to be the assistant of Robert Starkman, a former FBI profiler renowned for catching serial killers.  She wants to know everything he can possibly teach her.  The assistant position would also likely mean she would get a choice entry into training at Quantico.


3. She has some competition for the position, though.  What is the movie about?  It's about whether or not anyone catches up to the extraordinary methods that she used to eliminate the competition.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Essentially a non-sequel despite the name.


2. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 6/10 The visual quality of the version that Netflix screened was not all that good.  The usage of camera was all rather pedestrian as well.


2. Sound: 6/10 I could hear the dialog.  The sound mixing strongly favoured the background music over the spoken voices, however.  The choice of background music was not the film's strong point.


3. Acting: 6/10 American Psycho II, filmed just outside Toronto, made me appreciate the cast in American Psycho I just a bit more.  I like Canadian actors William Shatner (Star Trek), Robin Dunne (Sanctuary), Geraint Wyn Davies (Forever Knight), and Lindy Booth (The Librarians, Dawn of the Dead [2004]).  However, I like them in sci-fi television for the most part.  Their performances in a psychological thriller were a bit unexpected.  Davies and Shatner were fine, but the scenes with only Dunne and Kunis were not the best.  On the other hand, the scenes with only Davies and Kunis were engaging.


4. Screenplay: 5/10 The large percentage of voiceover was not a plus. The badly written dialog featuring Kunis or Dunne was quite off-putting.  Still, the film had a beginning, a middle, and an end, with reasonable connections from scene to scene.

20140130: Horror Review--Rosalind Leigh

The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Canadian live action feature length film, 2012, NR, 80 minutes.
2. IMDB: 5.5/10.0 from 1,542 audience ratings.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' 32% liked it from 201 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.8/5.0 from 149,603 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: Rodrigo Gudino.
6. Starring: Aaron Poole as Leon Leigh, Vanessa Redgrave as Rosalind Leigh, Julian Richings as Rahn Brothers, Stephen Eric McIntyre as Preacher, Charlotte Sullivan as Anna.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Leon returns to the house he grew up in after his mother dies.  They had been apart for many years.


2. Leon spent lots of time in the past with his mental health professional, who has helpful suggestions about his 'bump in the night' experiences at the house.  The house is opulent and chocked full of reminders of Leon's childhood.  There are audio and video tapes from a mystery cult, including one about communications with the dead.  Eventually, Leon finds a room full of religious statues, candles, stained glass and the like.


3. The cult is "God's Messengers" which Leon researches on the web.  He consults his security company by phone, then online, when he seems to have an animal intruder.  They see something in the surveillance data, but cannot make out what it is.  Then he loses online connection.


4. Leon seems to see a lot of things after that, but does he?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Fine production values, but cheap jack script; massively bad ending.
2. One star of five


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Amazingly beautifully done, in low light or high.


2. Sound: 10/10 Well done, sometimes quite atmospheric.


3. Acting: 5/10 Veteran actor Aaron Poole gave a fine performance.  Film legend Vanessa Redgrave was OK as a voice actor.  However, the script was so bad that the performances mattered not.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 Five minutes of a bad plot stretched beyond breaking over eighty minutes.  I certainly hope the director is not funded again unless he has strong oversight.

20140104: Drama Review--The Wall

The Wall (Die Wand)

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. German live action feature length film, 2012, NR, 108 minutes, drama, indie.
2. IMDB: 6.7/10.0 from 1,587 audience ratings.  Spoken word is in German; subtitles in English.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 74% on the meter; 74% liked it from 955 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.0/5.0 from 4,273 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Julian Roman Poelsler.
6. Starring: Martina Gedeck as Frau, Wolfgang Maria Bauer as Mann, Karlheinz Hackl as Hugo, Ulrike Beimpold as Luise, Hans Michael Rehberg as Keuschler (cottage dweller, male), Julia Geschnitzer as Keuschlerin (cottage dweller, female).


2. Setup and Plot
1. The protagonist awakes one day in a hunting lodge.  Her husband and a friend had left to run errands in town; she was alone in the lodge.  When she walks to town, she finds an invisible wall keeping her from progressing.  As time passes by, she finds there is no escape at all.


2. During the next two years, she learns to feed herself in a sustainable way.  There is a cow in the region she can reach; she grows and harvests hay for the cow in return for milk.  She cultivates potatoes and some other roots, and collects berries and mushrooms.  She hunts for the occasional deer, and learns to shoot a rifle quickly and accurately.


3. Her other companions are her dog, Lynx, a pregnant cat who scrounges off her, and a white crow that is outcast by the black crows.


4. We follow her narration of events, which mirrors her writing on the paper she happened to have at hand.  There are ups and downs, including the loss of Lynx and the cow's baby bull, both killed by a murderous poacher who is the only other human she was able to interact with.


5. The film, which consists of visuals that accompany the woman's narration as she comes to adapt to her unexpectedly changed environment, comes to an end when she runs out of paper.


3. Conclusions
1. The film was adapted from the book Die Wand (The Wall) written by the Austrian author Marlen Haushofer in 1963.  It received the Arthur Schnitzler Prize the same year.  The dystopian SciFi work was considered her best.
2. One line summary: Beautiful to watch, sad, and thought-provoking.  A woman faces the fact that she will spend the rest of her life without other human beings.
3. Four stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Sharp, clear, well-focused and framed.  The landscape in Austria was lovely.


2. Sound: 10/10 The vast majority of the sound is voice-over narration.  There is good incidental sound for: the wind in the trees, pouring rain, crunchy snow, the sound of a rifle shot, the footfalls of the dog, and the like.


3. Acting: 8/10 There is one actor, Martina Gedeck. We see some body English, but otherwise, there is only off-screen narration.


4. Screenplay: 7/10 Moves along well in most places; drags in others.  As an existential piece, it is pretty good; for other purposes, not so much.

20131206: Thriller Review--Lizzie

Lizzie

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film 2013, NR, 86 minutes, thriller.
2. IMDB: 2.7/10.0 from 487 audience ratings. Aspect 1.78
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No Reviews Yet...' 0% liked it from 56 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.5/5.0 from 88,301 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: David Dunn Jr
6. Starring: Caitlin Carmichael as Young Lizzy, Amanda Baker as Lizzie Allen, Corbin Benson as Dr. Fredricks, Don Swayze as Daniel Allen, Leif Holt as Jason, Cindy Baer as Lizzie Borden, Shawna Waldron as Maggie.


2. Setup and Plot
1. The film starts with back story told in voice over narration with period 1892 articles such as newspapers and photographs.  It then shifts to the present, say 2013, with what is going on with Lizzie Allen, both now and when she was much younger, say six years old.  She has a therapist, Dr Fredericks, who uses hypnosis, not always with good results.


2. Lizzie lives again in the house where she lived when she was a child.  Dr Fredericks thinks something traumatic happened there when she was young.  She's seeing daydreams and night dreams that are rather horrible.  She has trouble remembering her childhood clearly.


3. Ah, she used to have tea parties with a doll that survived the original Lizzie Borden era.  She drinks a lot of wine and watches scary movies with the boy friend, and does not seem able to get her meds right.  Then she sees (hallucinates) herself introducing the doll, Lucy, to her.  Even worse, she sees the Lizzie Borden figure use an axe to kill her younger self.


4. Dr Fredericks of course associates this with childhood memories and an attempt to resolve them in adulthood.  The next day she goes off on the cable guy, has trouble shaving her legs safely, and hears things go bump in the night.  Jason comes in as a masked burglar, and Lizzie does not take it well. Who would?  Jason starts hearing the bump in the night; he gets out his stashed pistol and barely hides it in the living room.


5. Maggie is Lizzie's new neighbor.  She tries to help Lizzie break into part of the basement that the cable guy could not get to.  They fail, but it gets Lizzie more comfortable swinging the axe that Maggie picked out.  Jason manages to get into the basement, where he experiences more bump in the night phenomena.  Dr Fredericks drops Lizzie as a patient, since she demands stronger meds, but will not confront her childhood issues.


6. Maggie turns out not to be what she first said she was.  Jason takes a turn for the worse, and Lizzie feels more and more alone.  That is not the worst of it all.


7. Will Lizze resolve her issues?  Is there something supernatural going on here?


3. Conclusions
1. This film was clearly not well received by the public.  Also, for all the scenes of sharpening an axe on a motorised grinder, they might have tried to get it right.  What was depicted every time was how to dull an axe completely.
2. One line summary: Retelling of the Lizzie Borden story is incoherent and badly assembled.
3. One star of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 5/10  Dark, generally with low contrast, or slightly out of focus.  There's a bit of camera jump as well.  SFX were laughable.


2. Sound: 9/10 Fine. 


3. Acting: 2/10 Most of the minutes of the show have Amanda Baker alone or in frame.  So the movie sinks or swims with her, and I don't believe her performance.  Leif Holt is pretty bad as well.  Corbin Bernson was fine, but he was not onscreen all that much.  Gary Busey has done much better in other movies.


4. Screenplay: 0/10 The past and the present did not blend well here.  For the movie to work, they did need to resolve clearly and effectively.  The retelling of the 1892 story was not put together well either.  The absurd ending was just too much.

20131122: Horror Review--The Ward

The Ward

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2011, rated R, 88 minutes, horror, thriller.
2. IMDB: 5.5/10.0 from 25,167 audience ratings. Aspect, 2.35; estimated budget, 10 million USD.  Spoken word is in English.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 32% on the meter; 26% liked it from 11,574 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 3.4/5.0 from 697,310 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: John Carpenter.
6. Starring: Amber Heard as Kristen, Mamie Gummer as Emily, Danielle Panabaker as Sarah, Laura Leigh as Zoey, Lyndsy Fonseca as Iris, Mika Boorem as Alice, Susaneh Burney as Nurse Lundt, Jared Harris as Dr. Gerald Stringer.


2. Setup and Plot
1. After burning down a farmhouse in 1966, Kristen is institutionalised at North Bend Psychiatric Hospital.  She gets to know Emily, Sarah, Zoey, and Iris.  A few days in, she gets attacked by a rotting corpse.  At least that is what she sees.


2. They give her electroshock therapy to 'just fry the crazy out of her.'


3. Iris seems to be doing well, but she disappears from Dr Stringer's office.


4. Kristen organises an escape, but it does not succeed.


5. Sarah thinks she's doing well, then she disappears.  After this, Kristen gets Emily and Zoey to tell her about Alice, and how they killed her some time back.  That more or less explains the ghost.


6. Will either of Zoey or Kristen make it out alive?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Looks like a ghost story; is a psychological drama.
2. Three stars of five.  Tough call here, two stars or three?


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent.


2. Sound: 10/10 Fine.


3. Acting: 5/10 Jared Harris was well cast.  Mamie Gummer sure needs to get a day job; she was horrible.  Laura Leigh was in-character timid, but that did not show much acting.  Danielle Panabaker was fairly convincing as a manipulative young person.  Amber Heard was fairly good.


4. Screenplay: 5/10 Why did Kristen land in the hospital in the first place?  There was not much exposition of that until the very end.  How does a 100 pound anti-athletic female physically overpower older, taller, and much, much stronger staff who are trained to put down inmates?  Answer: she does not.  Of course, that is more or less explained at the end, and the end really was off-putting.

20131120: Thriller Review--Only God Forgives

Only God Forgives

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Danish/French/Thai live action feature length film, 2013, rated R, 90 minutes, thriller.  Spoken word is in English and Thai.  Aspect is 1.85
2. IMDB: 5.9/10.0 from 38,976 audience ratings.  Estimated budget, 4.8 million USD.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 40% on the meter; 41% from 34,566 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.6/5.0 from 34,566 audience ratings.
5. Directed by: Nicholas Winding Refn.
6. Starring: Ryan Gosling as Julian, Kristin Scott Thomas as Crystal, Vithaya Pansringarm as Chang, Gordon Brown as Gordon, Tom Burke as Billy.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Set in Thailand. Among other things, Julian and his elder brother Billy observe fights.  Billy pays a fighter afterward, partly on Julian's advice.


2. Billy tries to get laid with a 14-year-old.  The pimp he talks to will not have it.  So Billy beats him up, terrorizes the whores, then kills one of them.  Chang arrives to see what the uniforms have found.  Billy, covered in blood, is still at the scene with the cops.


3. If I had watched this in a theatre, I would have walked out at the nine minute mark.  I would like both brothers dead and the film ended at ten minutes.  Since I'm watching on Netflix, I decided to come back to it later when I hated it less.


4. Crystal arrives from the UK to oversee Billy's burial, and to regularize drug operations in the permanent absence of Billy.  She does this more through Gordon, Billy's friend, than through the feckless Julian.


5. Julian needs to kill Crystal to assume leadership of the family business, but he does not have the moxie to do it.  Crystal despises him for this, all the more so because she made him that way.


6. Julian confronts the man responsible for Billy's death, Chang.  That might improve his self-image, but that's not his real motive, since he is absurdly outclassed.


7. Crystal's betrayals are endless.  How might this all end?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Criminal emasculated by his drug kingpin mother seeks escape from his psychological prison; boredom ensues.
2. One star of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 4/10 The film's visuals alternate between gorgeous and quite bad.  I hate filters and strongly coloured lighting.  The heavy use of these elements in this film made it even more repulsive that the salacious subject matter.


2. Sound: 10/10 Effective for the most part.  On the other hand, there are many minutes of no dialog.  Also, many lines of dialog have no translation into English, whereas the spoken English usually has subtitles.


3. Acting: 2/10 Acting?  Ryan Gosling is catatonic.  Kristin Scott Thomas plays an embodiment of control freak, and I did not believe her performance for a moment.  Vithaya Pansringarm seemed to be taking a nap standing up during the film.


4. Screenplay: 2/10  This is a so-so seven minutes of story weighing in at 90 minutes.  There is very little dialog, which is a huge minus.  The hundreds of lines of missing subtitles make this a disaster.  Major demerits for the ridiculous use of karaoke.

20131016: Horror Review--Nightmare Detective 2

Nightmare Detective 2

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. Japanese live action feature length film, 2008, NR, 103 minutes, horror, drama.  Spoken word: Japanese; English subtitles.
2. IMDB:6.5/10.0 from 375 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 59% from 105 audience ratings.
4. Netflix: 2.6/5.0 from 3,712 user ratings.
5. Directed by: Shin'ya Tsukamoto; written by Shin'ya Tsukamoto and Hisakatsu Kuroki.
6. Starring: Ryuhei Matsuda as Kyoichi Kagenuma, Yui Miura as Yukie Mashiro.


2. Setup and Plot
1. 'Damn, who will save me, then?'   This is my favourite quote from the film, spoken by the protagonist, Kyoichi, who can enter the dreams of others, and sometimes dispel the the bad ones.


2. Kyoichi is the nightmare detective.  Way too much of this film consists of short segments from his childhood: his mother's many fears including her fear of his telepathy, her suicide, his father's leaving her when Kyoichi was very young, Kyoichi trying in vain to find his mother after her death.


3. The other thread concerns a group of girls who were nasty to another girl, Kikukawa.  They suffer bad dreams for having done this.  One of the guilty, Yuki, consults Kyoichi, who tells her to seek out the victim and sincerely apologise to her.


4. The bullying girls decide, more or less by omission, not to apologise.  Then two of them die.  Yukie consults Kyoichi again; he gives the same response.


5. At Kyoichi's request, Yukie meets Kikukawa in a dream.  Yuki apologises to no avail.  Kyoichi intercedes, but Kikukawa does not settle into any kind of peace.  He starts strangling Kikukawa to resolve the matter.  In a parallel dream, Kyoichi's mother strangles him as repentance for bringing him into the world.  This breaks the impasse, and all the stranglings cease.  Like Kyoichi's mother, Kikukawa is afraid to live in this waking world.


6. In various dream levels, Kyoichi holds and comforts Yuki, Kikukawa, and his mother all at the same time.  Since he has nothing to lose in the waking world, he says he will stay as long as they need.


7. Unfortunately for Yukie, the curse of telepathy surfaces in her.  She and Kyoichi can communicate fluently without speaking.


8. The resolution at the end seems only partial; is there a sequel in the works?


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Telepath deals with psychological dramas.
2. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 5/10 Dark, grainy, soft focus.  Add in the habit of jerky camera movements, and some odd framing choices.


2. Sound: 7/10 Some of the incidental music is decidedly tinny.


3. Acting: 7/10 Good.  I think.


4. Screenplay: 7/10 Both simple (not much happens in the real world) and multi-layered (dreams within dreams and the like), the story has a lot to capture the attention.  As with many psychological dramas, there is a lot of sound and fury that signifies very little.  Kyoichi has not learned to live with his mother's inability to deal with his telepathy.  Got it.  Yukie has a hard time the fact that her father is absent and her mother is distant and too devoted to work. Got it. Kikukawa has other fear issues.  Got it.

20131015: Horror Review--Vampires out for Blood

Vampires: Out for Blood

1. Fundamentals, reception.
1. American live action feature length film, 2004, rated R, 95 minutes, horror, action, fantasy, thriller, psychological drama, aspect 1.85.
2. IMDB:  4.0/10.0 from 1,020 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 36% liked it from 507 audience ratings.
4. Netflix:  3.0/5.0 from 82,512 audience ratings.
5. Written and directed by: Richard Brandes.
6. Starring: Kevin Dillon as Hank Holten, Vanessa Angel as Susan Hastings, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe as Layla Simmons, Lance Henriksen as Captain John Billings, Kenneth Colom as Alex, Sam Kanater as 'Vampire Leader.'


2. Setup and Plot
1. Hank is an LA detective, and his wife Susan has left him.  He follows her. A fool tries to rob him at gun point; Hank disarms him, then proceeds to beat the crap out of him.  His captain reads him the riot act, then gives him a new assignment: find out about young women who go into raves, then go missing.


2. Meanwhile, Susan is on TV on the book circuit, selling her latest book on vampires, and dating an actor. 


3. Hank starts his assignment, and meets vampires the first night.  He gets close to a female vampire, Layla. They saunter through a den where an orgy is going on.  Then Hank starts to see the vampires feeding on their human partners.  He shoots several of them; the leader claims him and bites him on the neck.  He wakes up in an abandoned office floor.


4. He has a lot to answer for, and he tries to be honest about his experience.  'Vampires did it' was not well-received.


5. Hank reconnects with Layla.  Two officers intervene, but Layla kills them both.  He awakes the next morning, and the evidence is gone.


6. Hank starts to turn to being a vampire.  He seeks the help of his ex, but she is the opposite of helpful.  When she starts to recognize his change, she goes for another plan: use him to get a story for another book or three.  Susan convinces him to help her get to the leader, so she can know so much more, and, as a collateral matter, perhaps keep Hank from becoming a vampire.


7. Layla and friend break in; the vampires are about to eat Susan when Susan's new friend and his private detective burst in.  The vampires kill them and eat them, then leave with the rising morning sun.  Before leaving, they tell Hank that he has 24 hours before he turns.


8. Hank and Susan find the nest.  Hank handcuffs Susan to a railing, then goes in alone after giving her his cell phone.  What could possibly go wrong?


3. Conclusions
1. One sentence summary: Which is worse, fighting vampires or the ex?
2. Three stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 8/10 Good, but not great.


2. Sound: 8/10 OK.


3. Acting: 5/10 Lance Henriksen was competent as usual.  Kevin Dillon was better than I expected, but Vanessa Angel was worse.  The side actors were unimpressive.


4. Screenplay: 5/10  The plot meanders somewhat aimlessly at times, but at least there is a plot.  Too many times, a large chunk of vampire rules gets introduced suddenly from left field.  That seemed to be one of the purposes of the Susan character.  Hank wears one shirt (that I could see) during the film.  Yet the blood stains on it change remarkably more than once.

20130927: Horror Review--Occupant

Occupant

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 2011, rated R, 85 minutes.
2. IMDB: 4.6/10.0 from 1,063 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 'No reviews yet,' and 28% liked it from audience ratings.
4. Directed by Henry Miller, screenplay by Jonathan Brett.
5. Starring: Van Hansis as Danny Hill, Cody Horn as Sharleen Hunt, Thorsten Kaye as Joe (the doorman), Jamie Harrold as Harold.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Young man's (25 year old Danny Hill) grandmother dies; he comes by to identify the body.  She was in a rent controlled apartment.  The doorman's shyster relative convinces him to move in and stay for twelve days until he can get a court order completed.  This should protect him against moves by the landlord to oust him.  The apartment has 3500 square feet, and the rent controlled rate was 675/month, which is cheap for NYC.


2. Cody drops by and stays the night.  She had inquired at his work to find out where he was.  She's gone the next day without explanation.  Eventually he finds her camera and tries to reconstruct what she recorded.


3. The landlord tries a number of ploys (cable guy, pizza guy, the painter, exterminator) to get him to come out and get locked out.


4. The mirror scene is where the film jumped the shark for me: the mirror image keeps looking back and talking; the primary image goes quiet and turns away.  Hm.  The moving shoes was an ongoing joke I could have done without.


5. The exterminator kills the cat.  Gratuitous. Someone kills the exterminator.  Whoever could that be?  Also, who is the old guy who keeps showing up at the elevator?


6. By day nine I had given up on the film.  Danny had left the exterminator in the stairwell.  The doorman explains how the exterminator has a bottle of heart medicine in his pocket.  Amazing how that works.  Later that day he re-finds evidence that the cat is dead.


7. He gets into altercations with the neighbors when he starts hacking down walls in the middle of the night.


8. Danny's descent continues after the landlord cuts his power.  The doorman seems willing to enable anything Danny wants.  He starts building with the materials the doorman brings.


9. Eventually, though, they change the doorman.  When the lights go back on, he loses it for a while, again, in the middle of the night.  He gets to talk to the police.  Perhaps that should have been a major clue.  Then he finds the cat for sure.


10. Day twelve.  Danny's circling the bowl.  He can't get in touch with the lawyer.  He still has a dial tone.  He loses it once again.  He catches himself in one of his own traps.


11. After Danny's dead, the lawyer shows up with the court order.  Now Danny can leave the apartment safely.


12. Joe, the old doorman, returns; someone else moves in.  Someone who pays full price, I expect.  The child of the renter views the full clip of Cody's video recording, including Danny dragging her dead body away.


3. Conclusions
1. Uninspired psychological drama, not horror.
2. One line summary: Miserable acting by the lead to go with the not engaging screenplay.
3. Two stars of five.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 6/10 The camera work uses some odd filters in several places. There are periods where camera shake is just too irritating.


2. Sound: 9/10 The incidental music is about ten times creepier than the screenplay.


3. Acting: 2/10 Van Hansis does not have the chops to play the lead.  Unfortunately all the other roles are more or less unimportant and of little note.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 Somewhat mysterious, but not engaging.

20130923: Horror Review--Silent House

Silent House

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length, 2012, thriller, horror, mystery, rated R, 86 minutes.
2. IMDB: 5.2/10.0 from 12,553. 
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 41% on the meter, 30% from 40,989 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Chris Kentis, Laura Lau.  Screenplay: Laura Lau.
5. Starring: Elizabeth Olsen as Sarah, Adam Trese as John, Eric Sheffer Stevens as Peter, Julia Taylor Ross as Sophia.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Sarah, John (her dad), and her Uncle Peter go to the family's lakeside house to pack before selling the place.  Sarah meets Sophia, who claims to know her, but whom Sarah does not particularly remember.


2. Sarah sets about to clean out the room where she and her cousins used to stay.


3. After the establishing footage, the film changes mode.  Sarah is alone, and gets scared for a number of reasons.


4. Sarah cannot find a way out of the house.  Someone seems to be in there with her.  She finds her father badly injured and bloodied.  She decides to try to leave the house so she can get help.


5. She finds signs of squatters having stayed in the house intermittently.  Again, someone else is there, and she hides from them as best she can.  She keeps encountering locked doors, and the only key she has does not work the first time or two.


6. She gets out, and meets her uncle in the driveway.  Peter goes into the house with his gun.  They have trouble finding John, but they do find a bloody patch where he had been.


7. The generator goes out, they are in darkness, and someone takes Polaroid photos.  When the generator starts again, Peter is gone, Sarah is hiding under the table, and she sees odd things.  This includes Peter being dragged away by his feet.  Sarah gets Peter's gun, and takes some shots at unknown targets.


8. Sarah has a recurrent hallucination of a small girl.  She starts seeing growing blood pools all over the place.  Sophia visits.  Looks like Sophia is also an hallucination.  After all, no one else was shown interacting with Sophia.


9. As expected, this was a psychological drama, and Sarah finds her way out of her own trap at the end.  There are no supernatural elements.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Psychological drama where abused daughter resolves bad family dynamics.
2. Final Rating: 3/10.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 2/10  Lots of semi-darkness, vignette filtering, and complete darkness, showing way too much enthusiasm for Blair Witch techniques.


2. Sound: 9/10 So much better than the rotten visuals.


3. Acting: 0/10 Elizabeth Olsen is the only actor for a large proportion of the film.


4. Screenplay: 4/10 Finally resolves with one minute to go.  Misrepresented as horror.

20130921: Horror Review--Lovely Molly

Lovely Molly

1. Fundamentals
1. American live action feature length film, 2011, rated R, 100 minutes, horror, drama.
2. IMDB: 5.3/10.0 from 6,697 users.
3. Rotten Tomatoes: 41% on the meter; 32% from 4,840 audience ratings.
4. Directed by: Eduardo Sanchez; screenplay by Jamie Nash and Eduardo Sanchez.
5. Starring: Johnny Lewis as Tim Reynolds, Alexandra Holden as Hannah, Gretchen Lodge as Molly Reynolds.
6. Watched streaming on Netflix.  Currently available on Netflix DVD.
7. Estimated budget, one million USD.
8. (Box Office Mojo) Estimated revenues: States, 18,424 USD.  It was in release for 11 days in 5 theatres.  Overseas revenue, zero.


2. Setup and Plot
1. Molly and new husband Tim move into an older home from her side of the family.  Tim is a truck driver who is away a lot on work.
2. First up, their security system gets tripped and they cannot explain to the sheriff what did it.  They get to know the sheriff, who remembers when Molly's father died in the house.


3. Molly starts hearing voices on Tim's next trip, the day after her birthday.  Then the bumps in the night, the sobs Molly hears when she is alone at night, and lights turned on but not my Molly.


4. Great, handheld camera footage at night with light that is about 5% sufficient.  I had thought that this was at least not Blair Witch level bovine scatology.


5. When Tim returns, Molly is alone naked in one of their bedrooms, staring at the wall.  Tim soon segues to 'do you want to see a doctor?' and 'are you using again?' So, is the film psychological drama (denies the supernatural, and she's insane) or horror (embraces the supernatural, it's not just Molly) ?


6. Christian rock concert, followed by church.  Her sister asks where she's been, as in not at work.  The next time Tim is gone, Molly gets out her teddy bear, and opens up a photo album that clearly makes her sad. The bear is where she keeps her stash.  She gets more reclusive at work, asking to work where no one will see her.  She starts hearing voices at work.  Some CCTV footage her boss shows her that something is seriously wrong.  She goes off on her boss, claiming things happened that are not in the footage.


7. Looks like drug-induced hallucinations with unresolved underlying psychological problems.  I'm still waiting for the horror part of the movie, 49 minutes in.


8. She consults with her pastor while wearing a black negligee.  Great. The seduction fails.  Well, the first time.  She seeks help from her sister.


9. Tim returns to the house being filled with a horrible smell.  He finds Molly's drug paraphernalia in open sight.


10. At 59 minutes in, Tim hears Molly making a video.  She introduces Tim to her father, who's dead.  Oh, goodness.  Molly insists that she is not crazy.  Next stop, medical tests, to be followed by psychiatric tests if the sleeping aids do not do the job.


11. Molly kisses Tim, then bites him badly, causing a great deal of bleeding.


12. Things go downhill from there.  No signs of the supernatural, just one psychotic drug addict.


3. Conclusions
1. One line summary: Even worse than American Mary.
2. Final Rating: 2/10.


4. Scores
1. Cinematography: 4/10 Poor.  The interior shots and night shots tend to look bad.  Focus, camera jump, panning that is too rapid.  Tungsten yellow prevalent.  Segments of night filming from low end hand held camera.  Lots of footage where there is not enough light to capture enough information to prevent pixelation at the user end.


2. Sound: 8/10 Actors seem adequately miked.  Creaky doors.  Irritating incidental music.


3. Acting: 0/10 Terrible.  I did not believe a single player.


4. Screenplay: 2/10 Merely poor as a psychological drama where the protagonist is crushed instead of defeating the trauma.  This is a complete bust as horror.

20130813: Mystery review--Exit

Name: Exit (2011)
IMDb: link to Exit

Genres: Psychological Drama.    Country of origin: Australia.

Cast: Kylie Trounson as Alice, Michael Finney as Simon, Hannah Moore as Grace, Drew Tingwell as David, David Whitely as Tom, 

Directed by: Marek Polgar.      Written by: Martyn Pedlar.

The Three Acts

The initial tableau: 
The film is set entirely in a nameless Australian city.  Graffiti and broken and degenerating building materials are used to illustrate urban decay.  These images are paired against huge, great, new, seemingly perfect sky scrapers.  

People are distinguished in similar fashion.  Some are poor, and many of these have a shared delusion that the city has only one exit, and that exit is somehow hidden by powerful forces.  In contrast, other groups are wealthy with deep resource bases.

Delineation of conflicts:

The lost battle their own delusions by questing after the unique illusory exit.  Some spend hundreds of hours keeping track of their 'progress' in searching for the exit: some use 3D models, others paper accounting, others maps and notations.  

Still others give up and flee into addiction to substances that temporarily stop thinking.  These folk are sometimes the victims of criminals.

Some appeal to the rich for assistance; this appeal often fails.

A precious few try to achieve mental health by shucking off their delusions.

Resolution:
What are the usual exits for the lost? Some die from substance abuse, or from failing to pay the criminals from their limited resources.  Some of the deluded stay deluded.  Do any of them break through their imaginary problems?

One line summary: Psychological drama: nothing new, not well executed.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 4/10 Hulu+ claimed to be streaming in HD, but there were jumps in the video, indicating missing frames.  Some of the video is stunningly good, some is annoyingly bad.  Do I care to see acres of graffiti?  I see it in real life, and despise it there.  I have no reason to like the same sort of crap in a movie.  It is just as ugly, and does not advance the plot.  The same sort of criticism applies to the study of the decay of metal, brick, wood, and other building materials.  I don't want to waste my time viewing thousands of frames glorifying ugliness with attendant rotten background music.

Shot in colour, but feels like black and white, for the dreariness, depression, and lack of optimism evoked by the impoverished pallette. Filmed in Melbourne and Victoria.

Sound: 4/10 The incidental music might appeal more to the Australian sensibility than to mine.  The actors seem to be miked OK so that I could hear what they are saying.

Acting: 2/10 Poor.  I do not believe any of these characters feel any obsession.  They are hitting their marks, reading their lines, and not getting paid much beyond receiving billing on a low budget film.

Screenplay: 2/10 Breaks the fourth wall.  Automatic deduction of marks.  I don't care for characters talking directly to me when the work is one of fiction.  After all the spaghetti plot, the end comes when one character brightens up and realises, 'my obsession really was nonsense.'  As with many psychological dramas, the problems and pain are in the heads of the characters, not in the common view of reality.  Resolution comes when one character gets out of the trap of their own making.  The biggest problem with this film is that I found none of the characters engaging, for which I fault the writing.

Alternates: Try Marnie (1964) with Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery, Moby Dick (1956) with Gregory Peck, Vertigo (1958) with James Stewart.  These are all psychological dramas and are all good movies.  The difference is that these films had good screenplays, good directors, and good actors.  More recent better psychological drama movies include Memento (2000),  Mulholland Drive (2001), and the monarch of them all, The Sixth Sense (1999), with Bruce Willis.


Final Rating: 2/10, two blackholes for acting and screenplay.

20130806: Horror Film Review--The Attic

Name: The Attic (2007)
IMDb: link to The Attic page

Genres: Horror, Thriller    Country of Origin: USA

Cast: Elisabeth Moss as Emma Callan, Catherine Mary Stewart as Kim Callan, John Savage as Graham Callan, and Tom Malloy as Frankie Callan.

Directed by: Mary Lambert.   Written by: Tom Malloy (screenplay and story).

The Three Acts:

The initial tableau: 
The Callan family moves to a new house.  John Savage is the controlling father, Catherine Mary Stewart the former beauty queen mother, Elizabeth Moss the troubled teen, Emma Callan.  At the new home, Moss starts seeing someone who looks just like her.

Delineation of conflicts:
Ninety-five percent of the film is psychological thriller with horrible outcomes.  Everything in the plot can be explained by Emma's family's dynamics and her maladjustment.  The other five percent provide bookends concerning the family that lived in the house before Emma, and the family that would live there afterward.  That would be the horror overlay, the hint that there was something supernatural that contributed to Emma's downfall.

Numerous attempts are made to help Emma come to terms with what she's experiencing: interviews with a physician, a psychologist, a wicca expert, and so on.  She shuts these out, just as she shuts out her friends from the town where she had last lived

Resolution: 
Emma's childhood issues are eating her alive.  One should see the film to see how the tragedy is played out.

One line summary: Dysfunctional daughter crashes and burns.

Statistics:

Cinematography: 8/10 Mostly well-lit and in good focus, with reasonable framing.  Occasionally, a vignette filter was used, which I could have done without.

Sound: 8/10, good but not the best.  In several passages the spoken word seemed hollow.

Acting: 6/10 John Savage gave the performance I expected.  I'd seen Elisabeth Moss in Mad Men and Top of the Lake, and this performance was not nearly as good.  Elisabeth Moss is the centre of the piece, so the whole movie seemed awkward.  Tom Malloy gave a competent performance as the brain damaged brother.

Screenplay: 6/10 Emma's refusals to cooperate with the police resulted in no consequences.  Horror films, and also psychological thrillers, are all about consequences, so this struck me as mighty unlikely.  That her family would allow her self-destructive behaviour to continue was hard to believe.

Final Rating: 6/10