Tag Archives: Corin Hardy

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Lips Together and Blow

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Whistle

by Hope Madden

Wish Upon. Polaroid. Talk to Me. Ouija. Choose or Die. The “gang of youngsters stumble across a cursed object to everyone’s peril” subgenre is alive and thriving.

But hey, Talk to Me was good.

Corin Hardy’s Whistle isn’t particularly good. It is incredibly formulaic, with mainly one-dimensional characters forever making unlikely choices because the plot requires that they do. It’s shot quite well, though.

Dafne Keen (Logan) just moved in with her cousin after some terrible mishaps. Her first day in the new high school, she opens her locker—vacated by a basketball star who inexplicably died recently—and finds some kind of creepy, ancient looking skull whistle.

Any number of ridiculous contrivances later, and a group of high school cliches—the burnout (Keen), the smart girl (Sophie Nélisse), the drunken asshole jock (Jhaleil Swaby), his hot girlfriend (Ali Skovbye), and the comic book nerd (Sky Yang)—have to battle death as conjured by that creepy whistle.

Yes, writer Owen Egerton mashes some Final Destination whatnot in with the other familiar beats. Don’t expect that franchise’s Rube Goldberg style kills, but Hardy does bring some blood and gore, as promised by that R rating.

The curse itself does feel somewhat fresh. The death stalking each victim is their own natural death, just come early. Why their own death would want to creep around, chasing and terrifying their still-alive selves for days beforehand is a bit of a mystery.

Percy Hynes White stands out as a new twist on the neighborhood drug dealer, and Nick Frost is fun as a teacher who likes to hand out detentions. Truthfully, most of the cast does solid work, impressive given the uninspired script. James is particularly hamstrung with the most boilerplate character among them.

Keen struggles, too, delivering a one-note melancholy character that never feels authentic.

There is fun to be had here and there, especially at the Harvest Festival. One basketball player goes in costume as Teen Wolf without mention, and another unnamed werewolf character is a treat. The whole festival setting is filmed beautifully and reminds you that Hardy has some skill.

Not enough to elevate this script to something worth watching, though.

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Hey, Soul Sister

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The Nun

by Hope Madden

When we were four, my sister and I wandered off at the Toledo zoo. Nuns found us and reunited us—via lost and found? I don’t remember—with the larger Madden clan. And that’s the thing about nuns: they are either entirely wonderful or entirely terrifying. There is no middle ground.

Corin Hardy knows that. With that knowledge, The Hallows director crafts his little part of The Conjuring universe with a history lesson on that scary sister, The Nun.

His film, written by Gary Dauberman (Annabelle, It) from a story by James Wan, takes us back to the 1950s when the Vatican called upon a priest with a specific set of skills. Fr. Burke (Demián Bichir) investigates the suicide of a cloistered nun in remote Romania, bringing along a novitiate nun, Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga – little sister to Conjuring star Vera).

You think nuns are creepy? Well, they fit right in at crumbling old Romanian abbeys. Hardy and cinematographer Maxime Alexandre make glorious use of the location, and then create richly shadowed castle interiors suitable for Dracula himself.

Hardy throws any number of really eerie visuals onscreen as Farmiga’s novitiate (a nun who hasn’t yet taken her final vows) descends into the demonic labyrinth, while Father Burke fights demons (personal and literal) just outside the gate.

Velvety shadows and jump scares, medieval witchery and the now-quaint idea that the Catholic Church can save us—Hardy balances all these items with nostalgia, humor and a fun dose of Conjuring universe odes.

Farmiga brings enough salt-of-the-earthiness with her innocence to make Sr. Irene relatable. Bichir seems less suited to the role of holy man, but as an investigator who smells something rotten, he works out well.

The real treat is Jonas Bloquet as Frenchie, the French-Canadian transport living in Romania who can carry a torch into catacombs with the best of them. He’s funny, his scenes keeping the film from veering into committing the sin of taking itself too seriously and losing its audience.

Where the film comes up short is in imagination. Mainly, it bears far too strong a resemblance to another Irishman’s Catholic horror, Devil’s Doorway, which follows two priests investigating strange phenomenon at a convent only to find something sinister in the tunnels beneath.

Though Devil’s Doorway lacked the visual flair, budget and humor of The Nun, it sidestepped the nostalgia that casts the Catholic Church in such unvarnished light, so it felt a bit more relevant and less disposable.

Still, with a slight, sometimes silly storyline and an awful lot of atmosphere, Hardy manages an entertaining if forgettable 90 minutes.





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Beware the Faery Folk

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The Hallow

by Hope Madden

Visual showman Corin Hardy has a bit of trickery up his sleeve. His directorial debut The Hallow, for all its superficiality and its recycled horror tropes, offers a tightly wound bit of terror in the ancient Irish wood.

Adam (Joseph Mawle) and Clare (Bojana Novakovic) move, infant Finn in tow, from London to the isolated woods of Ireland so Adam can study a tract of forest the government hopes to sell off to privatization. But the woods don’t take kindly to the encroachment and the interlopers will pay for trespassing.

What’s in the woods and why is it so angry?

“An occupied people forced into hiding by fire and iron,” explains a friendly Irish policemen to the Brit couple helping to sell off Erin’s ancient forests.

Openly influenced by Evil Dead, The Shining, The Thing, and Straw Dogs, among others, the film rarely feels stale for all its rehash. Hardy borrows and spit-shines, but the final amalgamation takes on such a faery tale quality that it generally works. (Except for that Necronomicon-esque book – that’s just a rip off.)

Hardy has a real knack for visual storytelling. His inky forests are both suffocating and isolating with a darkness that seeps into every space in Adam and Clare’s lives. He’s created an atmosphere of malevolence, but the film does not rely on atmosphere alone.

Though all the cliché elements are there – a young couple relocates to an isolated wood to be warned off by angry locals with tales of boogeymen – the curve balls Hardy throws will keep you unnerved and guessing.

A lot of the scares require very little visual effect – one early bit where Adam is knocked into the trunk of his car while something claws and bangs at the door toward his screaming infant is particularly nerve wracking. Still, Hardy’s joy and real gift is in the creature feature half of the film.

The magical folk of the Hallow – “faeries, banshees, and baby stealers” – have a look that is unique, appropriately woodsy, and immensely creepy. And just when you think the film’s reached its peak with this back woods monster mash, Hardy takes a sharp turn with a deeply felt emotional plot twist.

The political allegory doesn’t really pan out; Clare, though well performed, is entirely one-dimensional; the mythology of the sludge, while cool, doesn’t clearly fit with the monsters; and why in the hell do the rest of the natives stay?!

That’s a lot to ponder, but Hardy – magician that he is – will keep you so interested with relentless pacing and horror wonder that you won’t even notice.

Verdict-3-5-Stars