Category: Horror

The Curse of the Weeping Woman

Rated: MThe Curse of the Weeping Woman

Directed by: Michael Chaves

Written by: Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis

Produced by: James Wan, Gary Dauberman and Emile Gladstone

Starring: Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, Patricia Velasquez, Marisol Ramirez, Sean Patrick Thomas, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen and Roman Christou.

Based on the Hispanic folk tale of La Llorona, The Weeping Woman, the film begins where the curse began – the 1600s, Mexico.

Llorona, famed for her beauty, catches the eye of a rich man who rides into her small village.  Marrying the man of her dreams, she bares two children.  The folk tale describes Llorona flying into a jealous rage when she finds her husband in the arms of a younger woman; her revenge, to kill those he prizes the most.  His children.

She drowns his children.  But when she realises what she’s done, guilt consumes her so she throws herself in the same waters, to drown.  But her spirit remains to haunt, looking for children to replace the ones she has lost.

The film starts scary, with some surprising, brutal moments and angled camera shots that tilt the view through the eyes of the spirit, Llorona (Marisol Ramirez).

Yet as the film progresses, those creaking doors start to lose effect.

In present day Los Angeles, 1973, Anna Garcia (Linda Cardellini) lives as a single mum with two kids, Chris (Roman Christou) and Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen).

Working as a social worker, she struggles to balance life, to spend enough time with her kids and to take care of everything on her own.

But it’s a happy family.

Until, visiting Patricia (Patricia Valásquez), a client she knows through work, where she finds children locked behind a closet door covered in drawn eyes.

Thinking she’s saving the children, Anna unwittingly catches the attention of the Weeping Woman.  A spirit determined to drown her children.

It all sounds like a good scary story.  But l lost focus along the way with moments that left me wondering, how does a baseball bat scare off a spirit?

And social workers don’t investigate other colleagues when it comes their children’s welfare.  Well, not officially.

Then along comes the ex-priest – not the one still with the church who loses all credibility when mentioning his dealings with the evil possessed doll, Annabelle.  But the faith healer, Rafael Olvera (Raymond Cruz).

I just could not take him seriously.  And neither could the Garcia family he’s trying to save when he gets them to rub intact eggs along the frames of doorways.

It was like the director realised the film was turning from horror to ridiculous and then used an incredibly dry humour to lift the film from drowning in a wash of boredom.

The film becomes borderline silly with lace and doe-eyed moments stated in dialogue like, ‘She’s come to drown us.’

I felt pretty water-logged.

But then I realised the irony of the faith healer’s humour against the murderous crazy spirit who drowns kids.

Overall, a lost opportunity that turned a horror movie into, something else.

Hellboy

Rated: R18+Hellboy

Directed by: Neil Marshall

Screenplay by: Andrew Cosby

Based on: the Dark Horse Comic Book, “Hellboy” Created by Mike Mignola

Produced by: Lawrence Gordon, Lloyd Levin, Mike Richardson, Philip Westgren, Carl Hampe, Matt O’Toole, Les Weldon, Yariv Lerner

Starring: David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane and Daniel Dae Kim.

This is the third instalment of Hellboy, a franchise based on the comics created by Mike Mignola.

Here, we have a new Hellboy and before the screening, I wondered how David Harbour (known for his starring role as Police Chief Jim Hopper on the hit Netflix series “Stranger Things”) was going to fill the iconic role previously played by Ron Perlman.

Without issue, we get that same dry delivery of one-liners like, ‘Hellboy?  No, it’s Josh.  People mix us up all the time.’  He says, drool rolling out his drunken mouth.

What I’ve always enjoyed about the Hellboy films are the incredible effects.  This re-boot is all what the previous films delivered, and more.

Opening on a scene of black and white, we’re introduced to the appropriately named Nimue, The Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich), her red cape the only colour to be seen in the foreground of an ancient tree.

This splash of red is a good indicator of what’s to come – when I say bloody, I mean that visceral, bloody flying through the air with bits of brain and bone, the marrow of people sucked out by giants, limbs torn off monks by a pigman and children eaten by witches.

Hellboy number three is rated R for a reason.

So yes, it’s gory.  But jez, it really is a LOT of fun.

This is a story of Hellboy’s true nature, and why he was brought into this world.

He’s never fit in, looking like the devil himself.  Breaking off his horns doesn’t hide his demonic appearance.  Hellboy admits his, ‘Therapist says I rely on jokes to normalise.’

This is his weakness.  He’s a monster living in a world of people who hate and kill monsters.  And have hunted monsters for centuries.

You can only have people try to kill you so many times before it gets personal.

The Blood Queen understands this.  She’s a monster too.

Bringing Hellboy to her side, to become King would mean the end of the world: the apocalypse.

Starting again, to re-build Eve together; to bring the monsters out of the shadows, doesn’t sound so bad.

So does Hellboy give in to his true nature?  Or does he side with the ones he loves, his adopted father, Professor Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm (Ian McShane) and friend Alice Monaghan (Sasha Lane), whose life he saved when she was a baby?

The script is a collaboration between the creator Mignola and Andrew Cosby.

“It was important for us, and for the fans as well, to really stick to the roots and origins of Hellboy,” says producer Les Weldon. “No one wants somebody else’s Hellboy — they want Mike’s…”

And it’s one hell of a ride with non-stop action as giants and demons and witches and humans are fought with constant asides from Hellboy to break the, at times, intense tension and scary bits.

There’re monsters that reminded me of the demons from Hellraiser.

Talking of monster’s, we also get the character B.P.R.D. Team commander Major Ben Daimio (Daniel Dae Kim) adding another dimension to the film.  He’s a conflicted ex-soldier-turned-agent also from the Mignolaverse but has never been on the same page as Hellboy.

So bloody and scary, yes.  But then we’ll get Hellboy asking how a terrifying, one-eyed, wooden-legged witch can have hair on her tongue.

And a moth escaping from a cave, deep underground, rising, into the air, high above, only to be eaten by a raven.

We smoothly segue from one entertaining scene to the next that’s both visually stunning and brutally absorbing.

A worthy re-boot that blurs the line between horror and action.

Pet Sematary

Rated: MA15+Pet Sematary

Directed by: Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kölsch

Based on the Novel by: Stephen King

Screen Story by: Matt Greenberg

Screenplay by: Jeff Buhler

Produced by: Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Steven Schneider, Mark Vahradian

Starring: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz and John Lithgow.

Opening on a scene above the trees, it’s like looking above to shed light on the below, on the woods that surround the new home of the Creed family.

When Dr. Creed (Jason Clarke) and his family, wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and their two children, Ellie (Jeté Laurence) and Gage (Hugo Lavoie) move to Maine, all they want is peace and quiet.

The next-door neighbour, Jud (John Lithgow) seems like a well-natured old codger.  But the kids who bury their dead pets in the so named, ‘Pet Sematary’, included in the Creed’s newly acquired land, not so much.

Kids wearing animal masks, beating a tin drum while wheeling a dead dog towards a woodland cemetery can be intimidating to a mother still grieving, processing, terrified of her dead sister – remember her?  The one with spina bifida who hated her sister?  Who still haunts her?

I found these bits scarier than the other more supernatural moments.

So, there’s a cemetery and an old codger who knows of an ancient Native American burial ground that brings back those buried there.  Like a dead cat named Church, for example.  Dead things get buried there.  They comeback.  But not the same.

Pet Sematary is a remake of a familiar story.

While watching, I was reminded of the original, Pet Sematary (1989), an, ‘oh that’s right, that happens…’

But also, ‘that’s different. I don’t remember that bit…’

I watched the original film during the day, about thirteen years old, and had to sit outside on the swings till someone came home after.  Didn’t think I’d get that scared.  Then, I read the book, and that was much better, much scarier.

I’m so glad the transfer of the mind of Stephen King and his stories – the telepathy of stories, he might even say – is becoming more successful.

I still don’t think the films get that creeping suspense of the characters slowly losing their mind.  There’s just not enough space to get the build.

The novels are slow, subtle and ultimately terrifying because of the creep.

Here, the film has character, setting and story; the film more story than character.  But the condensing is successful, covered in the dialogue.  Not the same effect, but with a different perspective from screenwriters, Matt Greenberg and Jeff Buhler; the story remains solid.

It’s a push at times with throwaway remarks like: ‘How far back is the acreage?’

‘Further back than you’d like to go.’

And there were moments where I wondered why you’d bury the dead somewhere you know they’re going to come back?  Bad?  Which is where we get the dialogue to explain the call of the Windego.

This is where the film glosses over character and where the novel digs deep.

What I like about this re-make is how visceral the scenes get when it matters.

And there’s some great devices used here, the montages of dripping blood, the movement of feet while compressing the heart to the flashing of red lights to entice the unsuspecting in front of an oncoming grill of a runaway truck – the red flashing because the ground is sour and woods are calling.

Look, I wasn’t completely blown away, probably because if felt familiar; yet directors Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kölsch have taken this known tale and refreshed the storyline.  A solid storyline with enough scares to satisfy this horror fan.

Us

Rated: MA15+Us

Directed by: Jordan Peele

Written by: Jordan Peele

Produced by: Jordan Peele, Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Ian Cooper

Starring: Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Madison Curry, Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon.

‘What do you want?’ asks Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o) of her shadow.

‘What do we want?!’ her reflection, Red replies.

Us is a film of many layers, the use of reflection, of Adelaide talking to herself reflected in a glass window; shadows tethered to bodies, while waving across the sand: ‘Once upon a time, a girl was born with a shadow…’ introduce the folklore of the doppelgänger to create the fear of self as an everyday American family meet their Other selves, while vacationing at their summer beach house in Santa Cruz.

It’s a strange setting for a horror-thriller – going to the beach as a family of husband, Gabe (Winston Duke), wife, Adelaide, daughter, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and son, Jason (Evan Alex); meeting friends, hanging out on lounges, drinking, well husband and wife, the Tylers’ (Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker) drinking while their two teenage daughters Becca and Lindsey (Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon) play in the sand.

And that odd play of normality, just off kilter, sets the tone of the film.

Us is different to what I expected.

I thought I was walking into creeps and super-scary, but for me, I found the film thought-provoking, and sure, suspenseful, lightened by this incredibly dark satire.

Director, writer and producer Jordan Peele states, “Horror and comedy are both great ways of exposing how we feel about things…  The comedy that emerges from a tense moment or scene in a horror film is necessary for cleaning the emotional palate, to release the tension.  It gives your audience an opportunity to emotionally catch up and get prepared for the next run of terror.”

I wholeheartedly agree there’s a close link between horror and humour.  There’s a fine line between the two, tapping into an old part of our brain that can react with fear or laughter, if the moment misses the mark – I’m not afraid of the dark, ha-ha.  To tap into this reaction and include a character like husband Gabe bases the film in normality, because that’s the way people behave: tissue up a bloody nostril, and statement, ‘almost looks like some kind of fucked-up art instalment,’ included.

Winston Duke really nailed the character, Gabe and I appreciated this layer of bizarre humour to lighten the strange – as Jorden states above, to, ‘clean the palate’.

Jordan has managed to tie the normality of the family priority: money, cars, competition in the face of brut survival – like reacting to threat with violence being the most normal thing in today’s world.   Never forgetting how cool it is to own a boat.

The story hangs on this story of a family, of a mother still traumatised by an incident in her past, back in 1986 when she gets lost as a little girl in a Fun Park, where she meets her Other.  And vacationing back in the place of that first incident creates a domino effect of coincidence, until, her family meets…  Hers.

But there can only be one self.  That’s where the horror comes in, with some good blood and guts – yet the film’s not really about the doppelgänger, it’s more about what the doppelgänger represents: evil, the shadow, the end of times:

The verse from Jeramiah 11:11 also a running theme through-out the film:

There thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.

So, did I like the movie?

Honestly, Us wasn’t as scary as I thought it was going to be.

Yet, the careful handling of timing and layering of complicated ideas and story made a unique viewing experience.  And I kept giggling – strangely, the humour was what affected me the most – while also thinking about the comment made about the ones we’ve abandoned far below the tunnels of ourselves.

Happy Death Day 2U

Rated: MHappy Death Day 2U

Directed and Written by: Christopher Landon

Based on Characters by: Scott Lobdell

Produced by: Jason Blum

Starring: Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine, Suraj Sharma, Steve Zissis, Rachel Matthews, Charles Aitken, Phi Vu, Sarah Yarkin.

The baby-faced masked killer is back, along with characters from the original, Happy Death Day (2017), including ‘crazy-white-girl’ Tree (Jessica Rothe) who manages to get sucked into The Death Cycle at the end of every day until she figures out who the killer is… again…

What made the original so successful was the character Tree and her self-deprecating, fatalistic dark humour.  We get the same tone here along with the suspense of waiting for the baby-masked killer to strike and the mystery of who’s behind the mask this time.

Christopher Landon has returned as director and writer (based on character by Scott Lobdell, writer of the original), throwing something extra into the storyline because there has to be a reason for the cycle to start all over again.

The clever re-cap gives a backstory for those who missed the first – but I recommend going back to watch Happy Death Day because it makes those moments of Tree reliving the hellish nightmare funnier.  And here, it’s fun to see familiar characters also get sucked into the cycle with a few new nerdy scientists added to explain the new dimension added to the story.

I have to say the ‘dohicky’ knitting Dean Bornson (Steve Zissis) is hilarious.

And here we get Ryan (Phi Vu) meeting his replica with an added touch of sci-fi lifting the sequel into a different space – so it’s the same concept, but the obstacles have changed.  Which was needed to make this a worthy follow-up rather than just more of the same – yeah, excuse the constant puns but can’t seem to help myself after leaving the cinema with a wry grin.

I had a lot of fun watching Happy Death Day 2 U, even getting into the teary dramatic moments of Tree struggling with the death of her mother and the choices she needs to make going forward in her life.

Although, I have to say the push at the end of the film felt tack-on and a too little much.

But there’s twists and turns, romance, suspense (not as much horror as the first though), and good humour making this sequel worth a watch.

The School

Rated: MThe School

Directed by:  Storm Ashwood

Produced by: Clement Dunn, Cathy Flannery

Written by:  Storm Ashwood, Tessa Alana

Starring:  Megan Drury, Will McDonald, Jak Ruwald.

After a visually stunning trailer, I was more then ready to watch The School: an Australian supernatural horror thriller by award-winning director Storm Ashwood.  But I have to admit I was slightly disappointed.

Amy is a doctor, wife and grieving mother. After spending two years by her comatose son, David’s side, Amy falls into her own twisted world of obsession and denial. Blocking out everything and everyone around her while the walls of the hospital she neglects begin to fall apart. She begins to awaken in what seems to be an abandoned old school, where Amy finds herself a prisoner to a hoard of displaced cultish and feral kids trapped in a hostile supernatural purgatory for children.

As the stakes get higher, Amy becomes an unwilling surrogate mother and must try and escape an impending evil. But terror ensues and Amy must find her way out, fighting against the demonic, supernatural creatures and ultimately her very own demons.

Despite the catchy plot and stunning visuals, The School fails to offer a sense of place, making the hospital where her son remains, and her workplace, the same site where a school used to be.

Filmed at the Gladesville Mental Asylum, founded in the late 1830s, the film’s location is also the oldest facility of the kind in Australia. Regrettably, the unusual punishment of its patients was a normality, including the use of electric shock therapy making both patient and employee deaths common.

There are 1,228 unmarked patient graves on-site providing an unsettling place to capture the supernatural horror elements in the film.

Storm Ashwood has led a successful directing career thus far. His short film The Wish was not only nominated for Best Director and Best Script in the SASAs, but was also screened in festivals around the world including The Australian Film Festival, The LA Film Festival, and the most prestigious, The Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival in Paris. Storm was nominated for an AACTA (Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Awards) for best short screenplay as well as having overwhelming success in the festival circuit, with an array of awards and nominations including Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Foreign film and several Merit awards.

His feature film script A Search For Hope was a runner up for the 21st Century ScreenWriting awards in 2007.

Early in 2012 Storm’s feature film script and teaser for THE SCHOOL was included as one of the Top 10 Finalists for the MTV Optus180 project.

Climax

Rated: MA15+Climax

Directed by: Gaspar Noe

Screenplay by: Gaspar Noe

Produced by: Edouard Weil, Vincent Maraal, Brahim Chioua

Choreography: Nina Mc Neely

Starring: Sofia Boutella, Romain Guillermic, Souheila Yacoub, Kiddy Smily, Clude Gajan Maull, Giselle Palmer, Taylor Kastle, Thea Carla Shøtt, Sharleen Temple, Lea Vlamos, Alaia Alsafir, Kendall Mugler, Lakdhar Dridi, Adrien Sissoko, Mamadou Bathily, Alou Sidibe, Ashley Biscette, Mounia Nassangar, Tiphanie Au, Sarah Belala, Alexandre Moreau, Naab, Strouss Serpent, Vince Galliot Cumant.

A spectacular sensor experience that slowly becomes a disturbing endurance.

‘1996, it was just last night’ – director, Gaspar Noe.

Climax is a horror set to dance music from the 90s where everyone goes insane on very, very bad acid.

This is a film based on a real news story from France.

Daft Punk had just released their first record.  And you could still smoke on the dancefloor.

A troupe of dances finish a rehearsal choregraphed by Selva (Sofia Boutella); DJ Daddy (Kiddy Smile) keeping up the tunes while the dances decompress and party.

We’re brought into this amazing space of dancing and music, with most of the characters made up from the best dances director Gaspar Noe and doll line producer Serge Catoire could find in France (and those who could travel to France): waackers, krumpers, a group of electro dancers and a contortionist (Strauss Serpent) for that extra bizarre movement.

And we watch as the dances drink spiked sangria.

And we watch as each of the characters go insane.

There’s a fascinating introduction to each of the dancers with their audition tapes shown on video so we get this psychological profile before they’re all, well, fu*ked.  So we see who they are normally and how they might react to the LSD: horny, confused, hysterical, paranoid, self-harming, murderous.

And the way the dancers were shown speaking to the camera, the dance-moves shot from above; the spinning…  I was completely absorbed from the opening scene.

But really, prepare yourself, there’s cutting, incest, burning and basically people completely losing it, all in this abandoned school with the music always playing.

I was reminded of scenes from Event Horizon (1997) depicting the crew in space when they went literally through hell.

But Climax is based on real and relatable people.

I was into the film.  Then it became an endurance.  It just kept on getting more and more confronting.

People left during the media screening.

For me, if there was just a shocking end to the crescendo (a climax!), I would have gotten into the film more.  But the timeline was kept linear, showing the decline into madness with each step given its due…  Lower and lower until the camera barely lifted from the polished concrete floor reflecting the animalistic grunting and f*cking and blood.

Climax will definitely evoke a response.

It certainly shocked me sideways.

Music:

TROIS GYMNOPEDIES (ERIK SATIE) by GARY NUMAN  SOLIDIT by CHRIS CARTER  SUPERNATURE by CERRONE  BORN TO BE ALIVE by PATRICK HERNANDEZ  PUMP UP THE VOLUME by M/A/R/R/S  FRENCH KISS by LIL LOUIS  SUPERIOR RACE and TECHNIC 1200 by DOPPLEREFFEKT  DICKMATIZED by KIDDY SMILE  SANGRIA and WHAT TO DO by THOMAS BANGALTER  VOICES by NEON  THE ART OF STALKING by SUBURBAN KNIGHTS  ROLLIN’ & SCRATCHIN’ by DAFT PUNK  WINDOWLICKER by APHEX TWIN  ELECTRON by WILD PLANET  TAINTED LOVE / WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO by SOFT CELL  UTOPIA ME GIORGIO by GIORGIO MORODER  ANGIE by THE ROLLING STONES  MAD by COSEY FANNI TUTTI and COH.

Halloween

Rated: MA15+Halloween

Directed by: David Gordon Green

Written by: David Gordon Green, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley

Based on Characters Created by: John Carpenter and Debra Hill

Produced by: Jason Blum, Malek Akkad, Bill Block

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Will Patton, Nick Castle, Andi Matichak, Omar J. Dorsey.

A continuation of the first Halloween (1978), serial killer Michael Myers (Nick Castle), the boogie man, remains behind the walls of Smith Grove Sanatorium.

He doesn’t speak; he’s The Shape.  Without reason he is the ultimate human monster.

And forty years after her last encounter, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), now a grandmother (to Allyson (Andi Matichak)), knows he’s a monster.  She has sacrificed her life, losing her daughter (Karen (Judy Greer)) to social services because of her obsession to prepare as she waits and hopes for his release… so she can kill him.

There’s not much more to the story: the monster, the victim turned heroin, the mask.

Director and co-writer David Gordon Green isn’t known for working in horror.  Yet he’s successfully kept the re-boot of this thriller simple yet effective in the telling.

There’s an echo from the original Halloween that gives that 70s tone with the same synth soundtrack and font for title and credits.  It feels like the same film but brought forward in time with a story-line with details giving the film a surprising sharp edge (ha, ha): it’s violent and bloody without getting over cheesy with too much gore.

There’s clever editing and careful shooting never slowing the monster; and a sometime focus on the eyes of the stalked without too much drama.  Just some good old fashion knife-in-the-neck, head stomping, hanging-from-a-wrought-iron-fence-by-the-head horror.

John Carpenter states, ‘I’m excited for audiences to see this.  It is going to scare the shit out of you.  I guarantee it.’

The monster behind the mask is scary because his face is never shown, he’s a mystery.  I still don’t understand why he’s evil and the film doesn’t explore the depths of his psyche, just the statement that fifty clinical psychiatrists assessing Michael each reached different conclusions.

It’s the way the film is shown that’s interesting and the intensity is relieved with some good humour like Michael’s current and long-term psychiatrist Dr. Sartain (Haluk Bilginer) being told to sit still after his patient escapes, ‘I am sitting still, what are you saying?’

And the little dude, Julian (Jibrail Nantambu) being baby-sat (of course) a classic, wanting to be the pretty babysitter’s favourite with some fun dialogue from the writers that I always appreciate in a good slasher movie.

Yet more importantly, there’s a careful piecing together of moments that gives the film a solid driving undercurrent with the relentless pursuit of the masked monster and the equally resilient Laurie Strode determined to exterminate what she can see is pure evil.

Nothing really new with a simple story, yet the blunt and bold telling made me feel like I was re-watching a classic made new.

The Nun

Rated: MA15+The Nun

Directed by: Corin Hardy

Screenplay by: Gary Dauberman

Story by: James Wan & Gary Dauberman

Produced by: Peter Safran, p.g.a, James Wan, p.g.a

Starring: Demian Bichir, Taissa Farmiga, Jonas Bloquet, Bonnie Aarons.

After first making her presence known in, ‘The Conjuring 2’, audiences were left wondering where the demonic being, Nun Valak originated.  Here, ‘The Nun’ is set in 1952 in Romania where screen writer Gary Dauberman (“IT,” the “Annabelle” films) explores the beginnings of this force dripping with evil, leaking its way out of the chasm beneath the cloister where nuns worship isolated from the rest of the world.

Director Corin Hardy makes full use of filming in the dark 14th-century castles of Romania, including the Abby of St. Carta, with tunnels beneath the surface creating shadows and inescapable hallways as Father Burke (Demian Bichir), novitiate on the threshold of her final vow, Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) and local villager Frenchie (Jonas Bloquet) investigate the suicide of a nun.

The more they dig, the more horror they find buried beneath the surface (so to speak).

I had high hopes for, ‘The Nun’ after the introduction of this terrifying creature in, ‘The Conjuring 2’ (where many in the audience left because it was so scary!) but instead of the build-up and surprising evolution of terror, here we have moments of panning like pregnant moments in a day-time soap opera.  Instead of building to climax, the moments are just… left…

The flowing shadows of spectres and bell-ringing from graves set the scene and the believable and wide-eyed Sister Irene answered some of our questions about The Nun.  But I was left with more questions unanswered about the murder of nuns who were left murderous without explanation.

I’m glad we weren’t left with a psycho exorcist film which really could have been a focus here, with all the Catholicism and crosses and well, possessed nuns.  But there were red-herrings and loose threads that just didn’t pull the story together well enough to be truly scary.  Long moments left to drift didn’t make suspense.  And the overreliance of the scare-factor of evil nuns made the nuns not so scary.

I liked that there was no digitisation used to create the spectre of The Nun; and there was some clever camera work using a Steadicam for Sister Irene versus handheld for Father Burke.  But there was none of the subtle, corner-of-your-eye moment where The Nun appears like she’s been created out of your subconscious.   So there was that missing creeping under the skin that Wan manages to create with the early instalments of Insidious and The Conjuring series.

Weaving back to the Conjuring verse made The Nun feel more like the Annabelle series than a Conjuring Part 3 – which didn’t make it terrible, just not as good as it could have been.

The Meg

Rated: MThe Meg

Directed by: John Turteaitub

Produced by: Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Belle Avery and Colin Wilson

Written by: Dean Georgaris and Jon Hoeber & Erich Hoeber

Based on: MEG, the bestselling novel by by Steve Alten

Starring: Jason Statham, Li Bingbing.

The depths of the ocean. Unexplored. Unknown. Unconquered. Sound familiar?

I must confess that the scifi premise, used many times before in better and/or smaller productions such as Jaws (1975) or Piranha (1978), intrigue me. While the cast of Jason Statham made me lower my expectations to rock bottom.

>A deep-sea submersible—part of Mana One, an international undersea observation program off the coast of China—has been attacked by a massive creature and now lies disabled at the bottom of the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean… with its crew trapped inside.

In the film, Statham plays Jonas Taylor, an undersea rescue diver who was the best of the best before a terrifying brush with a massive creature powerful enough to crush the hull of a nuclear submarine. The traumatic attack took the lives of two friends and put Jonas into voluntary drydock. When Megalodon emerges once again and threatens the lives of Mana One’s crew, Jonas becomes their last and only hope.

I love a big monster movie just like anybody else but I hate when a trailer plays with my feelings as a viewer, teasing a bigger version of the classic Jaws and delivering what’s nothing more than a louder film.

The irresistible combination of over-the-top special effects and a great soundtrack is not enough to scratch the surface of the story. Half way through the film I became more concerned about the fate of the gorgeous little Yorkshire Terrier paddling around the Megalodon than of the weak romance orchestrated between Jason Statham and award winning Chinese actress Li Bingbing.

If there is anything to be afraid of, is that The Meg has become one of the year’s few Hollywood surprise stories, making $45 million in one of the highest debuts of the year. Meaning that more such a films may well be on their way to feast from the box office once again.

Subscribe to GoMovieReviews
Enter your email address for notification of new reviews - it's free!

 

Subscribe!