A university class at a Louisiana college decides to document a presumably haunted plantation for some extra credit. It will be their The Final Project.
Their footage is made public by a man whose voice and image are hidden. He wants us to know what really happened that night. Why we need to sit through an excruciating amount of “Oh, is the camera on?” footage during study sessions, classroom antics, and the van trip to the plantation is anybody’s guess.
The film itself feels like a student project, but not necessarily in the way it’s meant to. Clearly made on next to nothing, The Final Project is a fair if amateurish effort, the cast and crew doing what they can with no budget for blood or effects. An awful lot is left to the imagination. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t bring the suspense, the sense of foreboding, or the visual panache to keep your attention long enough to engage your imagination.
Like The Blair Witch Project and far too many other found footage films since, The Final Project pulls you through the seemingly innocent hours before the catastrophic end of an attempted documentary. Aside from the very rare window apparition or an underdeveloped plotline involving a portrait on the plantation, the film offers precious little in terms of scares or suspense.
The set-up is more like that of a slasher: six unpleasant yet attractive young people head to a disastrous location to be picked off one by one. The characters are underdeveloped, with performances ranging from mediocre to poor. The actors are not helped at all by the routinely unrealistic dialog.
The Final Project is a first effort from director Taylor Ri’chard, who also co-wrote the script, produced, and handled the visual FX. Kudos to him for handling so much and for actually producing a film, which is, in itself, a victory. Also, better luck next time.
As a horror lover I more often than not find myself disappointed by what the mainstream side of the genre has to offer. What’s usually served up, when it eventually arrives undeservedly on the big-screen (despite so many smaller projects delivering stellar results direct to VOD/DVD), is found-footage dreck or a ghastly sequel/remake that’s never in the slightest bit scary.
It’s to my surprise that The Other Side of the Door feels like a throwback to the days when The Omen and Don’t Look Now delivered chills in spades. There is an obvious and eerie atmosphere evident very early on in writer/director Johannes Roberts’ film, and it’s to his and the small cast’s credit that we immediately care about the characters. Granted, much of the frights are of the cheap and loud “jump scare” variety, but rarely does horror show its heart. Even if it is a dark one at that.
The reason The Other Side of the Door feels like a success is because its tragic premise will likely resonate with every single moviegoer. We’ve all lost loved ones at some point in our lives, and who wouldn’t want to the opportunity to say one last goodbye. That’s the prospect faced by grieving mother Maria (Callies), who’s seriously struggling in the wake of her young son’s death.
Set entirely in Mumbai, India, gives the film a certain authentic flavour when Maria learns of a ritual that will allow that last goodbye. Unfortunately, it’s all too much for her, and when disobeying the only rule she had to follow – “No matter how much he cries or begs, DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR!” – the balance in the afterlife is upset when little Oliver wants to stick around and play dead!
Admittedly, the strong emotional opening gives Callies and Sisto a rare chance to shine, and two appear to share genuine chemistry in the face of such tragedy. The conclusion too feels fitting for a horror film, and works overall even if it feels familiar. However, it’s the lull in the middle where the door creaks a little too much and we, the audience, will ultimately stumble as it falls into cliché.
That said, The Other Side of the Door has real emotive depth few others of the genre can say the same. Affecting, unsettling, even brave at times, close the door on this one at your peril. You’ll never view Tom Hanks’s Big in the same way again!
If Antoine Fuqua’s 2013 “Die Hard in the White House” effort Olympus Has Fallen felt too PC, too artistic, too restrained, too competent for you, you are in luck! The cinematic dumpster fire of a sequel that is London Has Fallen has arrived.
Gone are the ludicrous but gorgeously choreographed set pieces Fuqua is known for, replaced by generically brown villains, incompetently choreographed action, and jarringly stock footage stitched together with badly mismatched sound stage shots.
But Gerard Butler and his super convincing bad ass act are back!
Butler’s secret service agent Mike Banning – torn between the dangerous job he loves and the unborn baby he wants to spend more time with – must travel to London with BFF/President Benjamin Asher (granite jawed Aaron Eckhart) for a state funeral.
But wait! Some poorly explained, amazingly convenient, ridiculously performed terrorist attack kills the world’s heads of state while decimating props that almost look just like the stock footage of London landmarks we were seeing moments ago!
Jesus, this film is incompetently made. Set aside, for a moment, the irredeemable bloodlust and jingoism at the heart of the screenplay. Forgive, if you will, the heinous dialog spilling from the mouths of talented actors like Angela Basset, Melisa Leo, and Morgan Freeman. Let’s focus, for a laugh, on the wild lack of directorial skill behind this action epic.
London Has Fallen looks like something you’d see on SyFy network on any given Saturday afternoon. Director Babak Najafi’s one set piece really meant to wow – a single-take shoot out in a London alley – has the feel of a video game recreated by high school kids on a gym auditorium set made of paper mache.
But maybe that’s OK with you. Maybe you’re in it for the knife fights. Hope you’re OK with all talk and no blood, though. For all of Banning’s overtly racist sadism with that big ol’ knife, the wounding itself is always conveniently out of frame.
But at least you’ll never get lost trying to follow the story because, luckily, every so often Najafi cuts back to a group of far-too-talented actors sitting in a room together, watching the action on a screen and explaining the entire plot to each other. Whew!
You have to give Butler credit, though. It is hard to put out two films in back to back weekends that are so memorably awful. Between Gods of Egypt and London has Fallen, he’s made quite a mark.
What separates A War (Krigan) from films of similar mindset isn’t the way it balances the strains of both battlefield and home front, but rather how it bravely attacks the very sympathies it so admirably creates.
Writer/director Tobias Lindholm takes a gritty, verite approach to the daily workings of a Danish military platoon stationed in Afghanistan. Commander Claus Pederson (Pilou Asbaek) guides his unit through the pressures of war, while back in Denmark, Claus’s wife Maria (Tuva Novotny) deals with the strain of an absent husband and father.
In between firefights, Claus tries to calm the fears of Afghan civilians threatened by the Taliban, one of whom rebuts his assurances by telling Claus, “Your children live in a safe place.” As Lindholm (A Hijacking, The Hunt) alternates between the viewpoints of Claus and Maria, he creates a contrast that is well constructed and compelling, regardless of its familiarity.
A recent Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film, A War finds a more unique voice when Claus is charged with bombing a civilian target and then sent back to Denmark to stand trial.
Suddenly, we’re forced to question how we feel about two very sympathetic characters. As Claus meets with his lawyer and relives the event in question, Asbaek’s moving performance lets us glimpse the internal war at work. In a gripping private conversation, Maria implores Claus to remember that regardless of whatever tragedies may have occurred, his children are still alive and need him to come home.
Utilizing sharp dialogue, tense closeups and a letter perfect cast, Lindholm turns the screws slowly, achieving a natural authenticity that permeates the film and transcends the setting. Innocent people have died, and as sides are drawn and stories dissected, it isn’t hard to imagine grand jury testimony after another tragic police shooting in the States.
It’s Lindholm’s sensitivity that ultimately gives A War its stark power, and a soldier’s story resonates as an aching reflection on choice and consequence.
By approaching the love relationship central to Frozen as one between sisters, Disney made some strides toward rectifying the beauty-wealth-marriage focus of its long history of princess movies. Sure, they were still princesses, still impossibly beautiful, thin, wealthy, and white. But, you know, why rock the boat too hard?
Well, with Zootopia, Disney – not Pixar, not Dreamworks, but Disney proper – spins an amazingly relevant and of-the-moment political tale with real merit, and they do it with a frenetically paced, visually dazzling, perfectly cast movie.
When small town idealist Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) becomes the first bunny cop in the big city of Zootopia, she finds the “you can be anything you want to be” motto a bit tough to realize. Her Chief, an imposing buffalo voiced to gruff perfection by Idris Elba, balks at this token recruit, assigning her to meter maid duties. But Hopps is determined to crack the case of the missing predators, even if it means compelling the reluctant assistance of wily con man fox Nick Wild (Jason Bateman – outstanding).
The casting is downright dreamy. Goodwin and Bateman have chemistry to spare, but every character is cast impeccably, boasting the spot-on talent of JK Simmons, Jenny Slate, Tommy Chong, Octavia Spencer, Alan Tudyk, and Shakira, among others.
In this astoundingly detailed, brilliantly conceived, and visually glorious urban mecca, prey and predator have long since given up their archaic, bloodthirsty ways in favor of peaceful coexistence. And while the adventure that follows is a vibrantly animated buddy cop mystery – smartly told and filled with laughs – the boldly expressed themes of diversity, prejudice, and empowerment are even more jaw dropping than the spectacular set pieces.
Co-directors Byron Howard (Tangled), Rich Moore (Wreck-It Ralph), and Jared Bush, working with a team of writers, pull of a truly amazing caper of their own. Are you looking for adorable anthropomorphic friends?
Zootopia is teeming with them.
Stunning 3D animation? Yep!
Characters with actual arcs, voiced by genuine talent? Oh my, yes.
Smart – like really, really, smart – writing that shares as many emotional moments as true laughs? Also yes.
What about a story that vividly articulates our own personal biases, those we may not realize we have until confronted with them? How about a story where the bad guys (Breaking Bad fans rejoice, by the way) are using the media to create a culture of fear specifically to oppress a minority population so they can remain comfortably on top?
Is this Disney, or a Republican primary?
If you worry that Zootopia is a preachy liberal finger-wagger, fear not. It is simply the most relevant Disney film to come along in at least a generation.
Can’t imagine what it was that inspired us to run through the best witch movies. Oh wait, it was the spellbinding and unsettling The Witch, that’s what it was. So, celebrate that film and many a Black Mass with us as we count down the best films about witches, and invite Junior Emmy-Winning Corresponding Mike McGraner to hash out the pros and cons of The Witch. Listen to the full brawl…er…podcast HERE.
5. Starry Eyes (2014)
Sarah (Alex Essoe) is an aspiring actress in LA and a bit of a delicate flower. She lives in a complex full of other aspiring actors, but she doesn’t hang out with them or participate in their low budget indie circle – they believe she thinks she’s too good for them. Then she auditions for a part, does some things on camera for the audition she regrets, behaves weirdly in the bathroom, and is invited to meet The Producer.
On the one hand, Starry Eyes offers an obvious plot about selling your soul for success, dressed in a cautionary tale about Hollywood. But the writing/directing team of Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer are much more sly than that. Yes, the insights they provide about the backbiting lowest rungs of the Hollywood ladder abound, but they are far more compassionate than what you routinely see.
Also fascinating is the clever use of the protagonist Sarah – she begins as our empathetic heroine, our vehicle through the daily degradation of trying to “make it.” But the filmmakers have more in store for her than this, and Essoe uncomfortably peels layer after layer of a character that is never fully what we expect.
Look for outstanding, witchy appearances by genre veteran Maria Olsen, as well as a spot-on Louis Dezseran. They will make you uncomfortable.
4. Suspiria (1977)
Italian director Dario Argenta is in the business of colorfully dispatching nubile young women. In Suspiria, his strongest film, American ballerina Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) moves to Germany to join a dance academy, but the other dancers are catty and the school staff are freaks. Plus, women keep disappearing and dying.
As Suzy undertakes an investigation of sorts, she discovers that the school is a front for a coven of witches. But Argenta’s best film isn’t known for its plot, it’s become famous because of the visually disturbing and weirdly gorgeous imagery. Suspiria is a twisted fairy tale of sorts, saturating every image with detail and deep colors, oversized arches and doorways that dwarf the actors. Even the bizarre dubbing Argento favored in his earlier films works beautifully to feed the film’s effectively surreal quality.
It’s a gorgeous nightmare, bloody and grotesque but disturbingly appealing both visually and aurally (thanks to Argento’s go-to soundtrack collaborator, Goblin).
3. The Witches (1990)
Roald Dahl can spin the most wondrously dark tales for children, and the tale that fits that description best is The Witches. Directed by Nicolas Roeg (Don’t Look Now, The Man who Fell to Earth, Performance) from a screenplay adapted by Allan Scott, the film may pull a punch here or there, but it lands others unexpectedly.
Angelica Huston – always an imposing presence – leads a cast of witches whose dastardly plan to eliminate all the children in England is overheard by, well, a child in England. Now he has to save the world, even though they’ve turned him into a mouse.
While this is absolutely a family film, full of Honey I Shrunk the Kids style fun with the tiny mouse protagonist, plus a lot of slapstick humor, Huston is forever frightening, and the film takes an absolutely terrifying turn once all those witches remove their day-to-day faces.
No, The Witches may not be a true horror flick, but it was a terrifying experience for countless kids in 1990 and it definitely boasts some of the scariest witches in cinema.
2. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Nearly 50 years after its release, this film remains a disturbing, elegant, and fascinating tale, and Mia Farrow’s embodiment of defenselessness joins forces with William Fraker’s skillful camerawork to cast a spell. Yes, that crazy pederast Roman Polanski sure can spin a yarn about violated, vulnerable females.
Back in ’69, Roman was interested in Rosemary Woodhouse, she of the fuzzy slippers who doesn’t want to be a bother. Tethered to aspiring actor/bad husband Guy Woodhouse, Rosemary moves into a Manhattan apartment building with a dark past and some peculiar neighbors.
Working from Ira Levin’s novel, Polanski takes all the glamour out of Satanism – with a huge assist from Ruth Gordon, who won an Oscar for her turn as the highly rouged busybody Minnie Castevet.
By now we all know what happens to poor Rosemary, but when the film was released, thanks much to Mia Farrow’s vulnerable performance, the film boiled over with paranoid tension. Was Rosemary losing it, or was she utterly helpless and in evil hands? Not that Roman Polanski, of all people, can be trusted in such a situation.
1. The Witch (2015)
The unerring authenticity of The Witch makes it the most unnerving horror film in years.
Ideas of gender inequality, sexual awakening, slavish devotion to dogma, and isolationism and radicalization roil beneath the surface of the film, yet the tale itself is deceptively simple. One family, fresh off the boat from England in 1630 and expelled from their puritanical village, sets up house and farm in a clearing near a wood.
As a series of grim catastrophes befalls the family, members turn on members with ever-heightening hysteria. The Witch creates an atmosphere of the most intimate and unpleasant tension, a sense of anxiety that builds relentlessly and traps you along with this helpless, miserable family.
Every opportunity writer/director Robert Eggers has to make an obvious choice he discards, though not a single move feels inauthentic. Rather, every detail – whether lurid or mundane – feels peculiarly at home here. Even the most supernatural elements in the film feel appallingly true because of the reality of this world, much of which is owed to journals and documents of the time, from which Eggers pulled complete sections of dialog.
Equally important is the work of Eggers’s collaborators Mark Kovan, whose haunting score keeps you unnerved throughout, and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke. From frigid exteriors to candle-lit interiors, the debilitating isolation and oppressive intimacy created by Blaschke’s camera feed an atmosphere ripe for tragedy and for horror.
As frenzy and paranoia feed on ignorance and helplessness, tensions balloon to bursting. You are trapped as they are trapped in this inescapable mess, where man’s overanxious attempt to purge himself absolutely of his capacity for sin only opens him up to the true evil lurking, as it always is, in the woods.
Shifting alliances, desperate men, deadly double-crosses, dirty cops and sacks of cash…Triple 9 doesn’t pretend it’s doing anything new, but it often finds effective ways to repackage the old hits.
Borrowing from a host of other cop thrillers from Heat to The Town, Triple 9 give us characters of varied shadiness taking orders from the Russian mob. Michael (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a former Blackwater operative working with a crew that includes two Atlanta detectives (Anthony Mackie and Clifton Collins, Jr.) to pull a brazen heist that will help get a Russian crime boss out of Putin’s gulag.
But Irina, that boss’s wife (Kate Winslet) has one last job in mind for Michael and his boys, and she’s not shy about getting nasty to make sure they comply. Delivering will take a bigger diversion than usual, and a cop going down (a “triple 9”) would give them just the time they need.
Slowly, a new face on the force (Casey Affleck) and his seasoned-cop uncle (Woody Harrelson, sporting some unsettling dentures) start sniffing out the plan, and the countdown to a final confrontation is on.
Matt Cook’s script is plenty familiar, with thin spots in the narrative and character choices that don’t always ring true , but director John Hillcoat (The Road, The Proposition) is adept at making brutal worlds engaging. There is precious little light anywhere in Triple 9, but Hillcoat leans on his veteran ensemble and delivers enough stylized tension to keep you interested, even if you’re rarely guessing.
There are not a lot of Australian horror movies I would pass up. Whether it’s the relentless, grisly terror of Wolf Creek, the shattering metaphorical horror of The Babadook, or one of the trademark muscular, bloody comedies like Wyrmwood or 100 Bloody Acres, somehow Aussie genre output satisfies more often than not.
Nick Robertson’s The Pack offers a slight premise, but mines it for all it’s worth as an isolated farmhouse family must survive the night once a pack of flesh-hungry dogs surrounds their property.
There’s precious little story outside the nightlong attack. Carla (Anna Lise Phillips) is a vet who tends to the pets and farm animals in the surrounding countryside, a job that’s meager wage pays most of the bills now that something’s been killing so much of her family’s livestock. Her husband Adam (Jack Campbell) refuses to sell the property to the creepy banker; their son (Hamish Phillips) wants to stay while their teenaged daughter (Katie Moore) would rather live in town.
And then dogs come.
The wild isolation of the outback has provided the backbone for most of the country’s horror output – as it does again here. Rather than filming the vast, surrounding woods and wilderness as a menace, cinematographer Benjamin Shirley’s camera captures the elegance and beauty of it. You don’t wonder what makes this family want to stay. It’s an interesting cinematic choice, because you aren’t given the sense that their separation from the larger society is necessarily dangerous, rather that this abundance of beauty somehow betrays them.
Same with the dogs. These are not your sinewy, feral beasts slinking through the woods. They’re gorgeous – fluffy, even. And yet, when enough of them spread out through the trees just beyond the edge of the property, their heads lowered, their eyes catching the fading light, it’s all you can do not to yell to Adam to run.
The problem with The Pack is that the whisper thin plot doesn’t allow for much of a climax or denouement. The final scene in this film leaves more questions than answers, and not in an exciting, ambiguous way.
It’s a quick and finely acted rush, but like the sugar from this box of Thin Mints next to me, it’s not a rush that sticks around.
Corneliu Porumboiu’s new film The Treasure is just that, if you have the patience to wait for it.
The Romanian director is a master of the deadpan comedy of manners, setting his films firmly in the conflicting values and strapped economy of post-Communist Romania. Dry, that’s what I’m saying, but no less than wonderful.
In The Treasure, he is once again braiding historical ideas with workaday sensibilities to create the driest kind of treasure hunt.
The ripe ground for this comical examination is a chance to escape the paycheck-driven world. The stage is set when Costi (Toma Cuzin), an office worker with a bland if contented life, is offered a sketchy opportunity to find riches buried in a neighbor’s crumbling family property.
Like Porumboiu’s excellent 2009 film Police, Adjective, The Treasure uses its low key approach to turn the minutia of daily existence – administrative red tape, day to day boredom, bill paying – into understated yet absurd comedy.
Cuzin’s performance – much of it simply the expression on his face – offers so much with so little. As boringly adult as his life has become, there is a childlike quality to the character that gives his every choice a sweetness. Is he naïve, even ignorant, to buy into this clearly desperate scheme?
His quietly likeable good guy is perfectly counterbalanced by his griping neighbor, Adrian (Adrian Purcarescu). Adrian’s sense of entitlement and bitterness come out most strongly and most humorously when a third treasure hunter – just an interested party with a metal detector (Corneliu Cozmei – a non-actor and actual metal detector technician) enters the picture.
The banter as the three men tediously sweep the property, gain and lose hope, bicker over the situation, exposes the social commentary about Romania’s political landscape in a way that is familiar, believable, and uncomfortably funny.
Porumboiu’s consistent use of stationary, wide shots exacerbates the film’s sense of inertia, which is used to generate the tension that fuels the comedy.
It can feel like a long set up for a surprisingly lovely climax, followed by the most inspired use of music. When the final, surprising but fitting image rolls against the death metal band Laibach’s cover of the 80s pop hit Live is Life, the absurd clash of reality and fairy tale is complete.
Gods of Egypt brings the deities out to play for a boring mess of ridiculousness that will make you wish they had rested one more day.
Apparently one of the 16 people that saw both John Carter and Jupiter Ascending took too much cough syrup and decided to create the mutated offspring of those travesties. Look away!
It is a time “before history began” (what?), when Gods and mortals live together but are easily identifiable, thanks to the Gods being extra large and having gold running through their veins. The two groups seem to co-exist well, with the women folk apparently bonding over a shared love of push-up bras.
But, just as the God King of Egypt (Bryan Brown) is set to abdicate his throne and bestow the crown on his son Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), the King’s malevolent brother Set (Gerard Butler) swoops in with his army and proclaims himself to be the new King.
After a struggle, Horus is in exile and the populace is enslaved by Set. But wait! A clever, spunky mortal named Bek (Brenton Thwaites) just might be spunky and clever enough to rescue his beloved Zaya (Courtney Eaton), and help Horus bring down his power-hungry uncle, all while cracking a few one-liners!
From the hilariously hyper-dramatic opening to the let’s-all-learn-something-today ending, director Alex Proyas (The Crow, I Robot) crams the screen full of CGI effects and swooping panning shots aplenty, but can’t generate any more substance than something you might watch standing in line at Disney World while dad sneaks peeks at passing cleavage.
Proyas gets no help from the script. Co-writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (Dracula Untold, The Last Witch Hunter) vacillate between camp, video-game exposition, and genuine WTF moments such as Zaya’s treatment at the hands of her “cruel” master: a sternly-worded rebuke!
Oh, the humanity!
The performances range from Master Thespian overacting (Butler), to big-eyebrow mugging (Thwaites) to Geoffrey Rush fighting a cloud monster (Geoffrey Rush). And, like Eddie Redmayne’s disastrous turn in Jupiter, Chadwick Boseman brings an interpretation to Thoth, the God of Knowledge, that is painfully awkward.
After more than two hours of this haplessness, you get the feeling that Gods of Egypt aspired to be some sort of swashbuckling adventure akin to The Thief of Bagdad, with a side of Indiana Jones.
