Matangi /Maya /M.I.A.

Rated: MA 15+Matangi /Maya /MIA

Directed: Stephen Loveridge

Featuring: Maya Arulpragasam

‘This is what happened to a kid whose dad ran off to be a terrorist:’ Life doesn’t turn out the same way as someone whose dad is a banker, a lawyer or a fireman.

Maya’s choice of words is interesting. Usually, it would be the other side using such highly coloured and provocative language to describe the man behind the Tamil Tiger resistance movement. Partisans might be expected to use terms such as liberator or freedom fighter.

Maya was eleven when her mother and her siblings fled the war zone in their native Sri Lanka, to resettle in the refugee enclave in London. Although, the family was warmly welcomed into the fold, life was still harsh. Maya felt as if she didn’t fit in anywhere: she was ‘shot at in Sri Lanka’ and ‘spat at in Britain’. Music was her consolation and she would drift off to sleep listening to British pop through her headphones. That was, until they were burgled. Maya could do nothing but watch as her radio was carried off to a neighbouring flat.

It might have been one of the lowest points in her life as she lay awake listening to the music spilling out from the flat across the way, but it was a turning point, too. Up until then music was Madonna and the Spice Girls, but when Maya heard her first hip hop beats it was an epiphany. She was listening to people with something to say, and hip hop was the way to say it.

While her sister was lamenting the lack of birthday and Christmas cards from their father, Maya found a source of strength and identity in his absence. Her father was fighting for ‘a human rights problem’, everything was ‘inhumane’ for the Tamils in Sri Lanka. ‘What he’s done to us, made us so strong. We are so independent. Fearless fighters.’ But, rather than taking up arms, Maya turned to documentary film making to express her activism.

Haunted by footage of a women her own age in the jungle armed with assault rifles, Maya returned to Sri Lanka hoping to reconnect with her extended family and find some answers: ‘How do women survive in the jungle’ just on a day-to-day practical level and ‘Why was it me that got away?’ Following that visit, MIA was born, and she released her debut album, Arula (named after her dad). A million copies were downloaded from Napster. ‘It happened so fast.’ Finally. MIA had a microphone, and there was no question she was going to use it.

Subversive and defiant, instead of ‘cookie cutter videos with beautiful girls’, MIA started out with a clip of, monkeys and the jungle, before moving on to exploits and video clips that would bring her both international stardom and notoriety. Because, ‘the worst thing they can do to you is make you irrelevant’.

Well, they can try …

But the woman who infamously flipped the bird to the audience during a half-time performance with Madonna at the Super Bowl in 2012 and the singer/songwriter of ‘Born Free’—a song that accompanies a deeply disturbing music clip where pale-skinned, red-haired boys are brutally hunted down by faceless military types clad in black body armour—will not be going quietly.

How to Tran Your Dragon: Hidden World

Rated: PGHow to Tran Your Dragon: Hidden World

Directed and Written by: Dean DeBlois

Based on the Books of: Cressida Cowell

Produced by: Brad Lewis, Bonnie Arnold

Starring: Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Cate Blanchett, Kit Harrington, Craig Ferguson, F. Murray Abraham.

The final of the trilogy (I had to go back and watch the previous two instalments (well worth the watch), How to Train your Dragon: Hidden World, finds Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and his Night Fury, Toothless, saving dragons from the Hunters to bring them back to the safety of Berk where Vikings and dragons coexist in peace.

Does anyone else think it’s strange that the Vikings have Scottish accents?!

The Hunters don’t believe dragons should be treated as equals, the evil villain, Grimmel (F. Murray Abraham), the Fury killer, believing peace can only be found when every Fury is dead.

The Hidden World is full of myth and fantasy; the Mariner Myth of the Hidden World a place where dragons live freely at the end of the world is the drive behind the story.

While fighting to save dragons from the clutches of Grimmel and searching for the mysterious Hidden World, Toothless meets a female Fury who’s beautiful and light with expressive blue eyes and moves that make his little heart race.

The courtship between these two is adorable, there’s no other word, my nephews and I awing and ahing at the antics of Toothless, his attempt to woo the beautiful Light Fury hilarious and delightful.

And the animation of this adventure-packed film is stunning; the burst of colours and detail of waterfalls and expressions of the dragons spectacular on the big screen.

Returning director and writer, Dean DeBlois has made a film to be enjoyed by all with some happy tears shed by many in the audience.

While making the most of the colourful characters like Tuffnut (T. J. Miller) brandishing his full thick beard (hilarious), we get a story about love, equality and freedom.

I had a smile on my face the whole way through, my nephew announcing The Hidden World the best How to Train Your Dragon out of the three, and quite rightly getting an applause from the audience at the end.

He then went on to say it was the best movie he’s ever seen.

I wouldn’t go that far, but The Hidden World is a great entertainer and a certain hit for the school holidays.

Aquaman

Rated: MAquaman

Directed by: James Wan

Story by: James Wan, Will Beall, Geoff Johns

Screenplay by: Will Beall, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick

Based on characters created by: Paul Norris and Mort Weisinger for DC

Produced by: Rob Cowan, Peter Safran

Starring: Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Willem Dafoe, Patrick Wilson, Dolph Lundgren, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Nicole Kidman, Ludi Lin and Temuera Morrison.

Aquaman was always going to be a difficult adaptation – the film about ‘fish boy[‘s].  No, it’s fish men!’; the setting underwater.

But with James Wan as director and one of the writers, I went into the film somewhat reassured.

Then the film opened with Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), Atlantean royalty meeting a surface dweller, and I was thrown because I just couldn’t believe I was seeing an Atlantis queen falling in love, the contrast a little too much.

Perhaps it was seeing Nicole Kidman as an action figure?!

And there were times when I really couldn’t decide whether to laugh with the film or at it – the guitar riff to highlight a joke not helping.

Yet, as the film progressed and Jason Momoa as Aquaman opened up to give us a down-to-earth (well, half-surface dweller, half-Atlantean Arthur Curry) hero, I became more absorbed.

Forbidden love between a queen of the sea and a man from the surface bears a forbidden son, a half-breed.  Aquaman.

Yet even as a half-breed, Aquaman has the right to claim the throne of Atlantis instead of his younger brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) who plots to become the Ocean Master; to bring together all seven kingdoms of the underwater world: Atlantis, Brine, Fisherman, Xebel, Trench, Deserter and the Lost.  Together they can destroy those on the surface.

Afterall, aren’t the surface-dwellers creating pollution and trashing the sea into poison for those who inhabit its waters?

Those who want peace with the surface dwellers not war, rise to the surface to seek Aquaman to fight for the throne to then save those above and below, with love-interest Mera (Amber Heard) abandoning Atlantis, just like his mother.  All leading to the meeting of the two brothers on opposing sides of an inevitable battle.

The writers have created enough twists and turns to keep the film interesting and it has to be noted the film has a different tone to the other DC, Justice League films.

Aquaman is more a technologically based world with an 80s-esq tone including synth soundtrack and fluorescent lit underwater worlds that become more spectacular as the film progresses.

Let me state again, it gets better!

There’s the expected cheese, because, yeah, this is Aquaman: Son of the land, king of the sea.

But Wan has offset this with humour and his own unique style.

Jason Momoa’s performance as Aquaman certainly helped.

So after an ordinary beginning, Aquaman ramps up to a deliver a visually stunning entertainer that was able to take a laugh at itself with a story that comes full circle.

Kusama Infinity: The Life and Art of Yayoi Kusama

Rated: MKusama Infinity: The Life and Art of Yayoi Kusama

Directed by: Heather Lenz

Produced by: Heather Lenz, Karen Johnson, David Koh, Dan Braun

Edited by: Keita Ideno, Sam Karp, John Northup, Nora Tennessen

Composed by: Allyson Newman

Director of Photography: Hart Perry

Featuring: Yayoi Kusama

From international scandal when she notoriously crashed the Venice Biennale in 1966 to Japan’s first female representative of in 2003, Yayoi Kusama is possibly the highest selling female artist on the planet today, and the queues for her exhibitions can be so long they can only be described as preposterous.

But, any exhibition is just a tiny window onto a body of work that, in this case, spans around 80 years. So, an opportunity to observe the genesis of the ideas and view a curated selection of the artist’s entire oeuvre, to see the various strands through the eyes of the artist can elicit that special thrill of recognition when you know that you get it, too.

In 1957, Kusama arrived in New York during the heyday of Minimalism with almost nothing but her talent and her boundless ambition. When she left Tokyo, flying first to Seattle, Kusama was mesmerised by the endless crests and swells of the sea below. Later, standing on the point of the Pacific Ocean, she felt as if she was poised on the edge of infinity. In a departure from her signature dot motif, Kusama produced a series of large canvasses, richly patterned with thick, impasto arabesques brushed over a thin stain. Superficially at one with the spare, self-referential style of Minimalism, Kusama’s Infinity Nets were inspired by the diametric opposite.

Instead of reduction, Kusama’s Nets represent a highly tactile and exuberant accumulation: ‘I am obsessed with Nets, they fascinate and haunt me.’ Rather than an art that speaks only to itself, Kusama’s work began with her deepest private experience, moving out to embrace the world and the infinity beyond: ‘I convert the energy of life into the dots of the universe.’

In her response to Minimalism, Kusama found herself among a cohort of white males, the rising stars of Pop Art, but the career trajectory was very different for the young Japanese émigré. In lieu of sales and grants, she worked tirelessly to secure patronage and, while she often achieved her goal, her desperation translated as aggression, further distancing her from the rarefied circles she hoped to move among. Since her goal was no less than, ‘To create a new history of art for the USA’, Kusama increasingly sought ever more radical and subversive avenues to bring attention to her practice.

Even so, Kusama was showing more in Europe than in America by 1966 when artist Lucio Fontana invited her to exhibit in front of the Italian pavilion at the Venice Biennale. She assembled an installation composed of 1500 reflective silver spheres with a sign in the middle that read, ‘Your Narcissism for Sale’. When asked to desist—despite the invite, Kusama was exhibiting without official permission—she had the perfect Pop Art comeback: ‘Why cannot I sell my art like ice-creams and hotdogs?’

By turns luminous and illuminating, this is the story of an artist who refused to accept oblivion. In response to decades of stonewalling by the art establishment, Kusama has sought ever more varied avenues to express her vision, from painting and sculpture to pioneering installation, naked happenings, performance and film. Very much aware of ‘the publicity that got a lot of attention’, Kusama has frequently waged her art as a guerrilla campaign. But at its heart are Kusama’s dots, ‘because stars don’t’ exist by themselves’.

Peppermint

Rated: MA 15+Peppermint

Directed by: Pierre Morel

Written by: Chad St. John

Produced by: Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi, Richard Wright, Eric Reid

Starring: Jennifer Garner, John Ortiz, John Gallagher, Jr., Juan Pablo Raba, Annie Ilonzeh, Jeff Hephner and Pell James.

Who is Riley North?

She’s a female vigilante who wants justice.

A classic revenge film, Riley North (Jennifer Garner) loses her husband Chris (Jeff Hephner) and her daughter Carly (Cailey Fleming) when Chris even contemplates robbing a drug cartel.

After Riley wakes in hospital from a coma, something has changed. When the guys who killed her family are let off, something breaks.

It’s a rampage of revenge with Riley North becoming an assassin; social media arguing whether she’s a criminal or a hero.

I wasn’t sure what to expect walking into Peppermint, hoping I wasn’t going to see a melodrama of family crisis.  And thankfully, the film is more action than drama with Garner holding her own in the believable character of Riley North.

I did however, get struck wondering how this wife and mother, taking her kid out to sell baked goods for the equivalent of the Brownies (for all those Aussies out there who partook in Pow Wows during their Primary School years…) suddenly becomes a killing machine.  But the story gets there, sort of.  I would have liked more backstory, making the most of filling some of the character with interesting mother-becomes-assassin interest.  But in the end, this is an action movie not a drama.

What I found difficult was the timing that felt off at moments, like tough cop talk lines delivered flat: ‘Pro tip’, states Detective Moises Beltran (John Ortiz) to fellow detective Carmichael (John Gallagher Jr.) who likes a shot of booze added to his morning coffee, ‘Wait until you’re dead before you embalm yourself.’

So there were jolts in the narrative.

And it felt like a film I’d seen before with nothing really new; techniques like flash backs as exciting as it gets.

But hey, it works!

And the story evolves with some good action.

What can I say, I like a good crime thriller.

So although not the best I’ve seen, Peppermint served with ‘a double scoop’ is worth a watch.

Bumblebee

Rated: MBumblebee

Directed by: Travis Knight

Screenplay by: Christina Hodson

Story by: Christina Hodson

Produced by: Michael Bay, Tom DeSanto, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Don Murphy, Mark Vahradian

Starring: Hailee Steinfeld, Justin Theroux, Dylan O’Brian, Angela Bassett, Peter Cullen, Pamela Adlon, John Cena, Jorge Lendeborg Jr, Jason Drucker, Stephen Schneider.

A spin-off from the Transformers series (1-5 directed by Michael Bay, here as producer), Bumblebee introduces new director Travis Knight and writer Christina Hodson.  And the franchise just keeps getting better.

Bumblebee opens on the war raging on Cybertron.

With the Decepticons on the brink of annihilating the Autobot resistance, Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) sends B-127 (Dylan O’Brian) to Earth in the hope to rebuild and fight again.

On Earth, circa 1987 (this is a prequel to the original Transformers (2007)), Charlie’s (Hailee Steinfeld) about to turn eighteen.  She spends her days listening to music (The Smiths, of course) and fixing an old Corvette in memory of her deceased Dad.  It’s zits (Hailee Steinfeld has that teen-angst down to an art), her annoying martial-arts yellow-belt younger brother, Otis (Jason Drucker) and humiliation while working at the fair in what looks like a clown costume while serving divas who have number plates that read: UWish.

It’s painful to the extent new stepdad, Ron (Stephen Schneider) decides it’s a good idea to give Charlie a book about the magic of smiling… For her birthday.

Charlie doesn’t notice Memo (Jorge Lendeborg Jr) trying to get her attention.  What Charlie does notice is a yellow VW Bug, just asking for some love, AKA Bumblebee.

With the army chasing an alien they don’t understand and the Decepticons fighting to extinguish the last of the resistance, human and transformer fight together while forming an unlikely friendship.

Even in the previous instalments of Transformers Bumblebee was a favourite.  And writer Christina Hodson has built on a winning character, explaining quirks like his lost voice and how Charlie gives it back to him.

And the expression given to this Autobot, with pupils that dilate to show emotion, the kicking of legs while being examined like a kid who trusts a carer, all add to that adorable, bull-in-a-china-shop appeal.

We get funny and adorable from all the characters, really.  Even the annoying younger brother gets his time to shine, all mixed with explosive action and sudden flash forwards of focus to keep up the pace.

The writing here is really entertaining; the timing of jokes just right so even a cheesy moment is backed-up with a laugh.

And director Travis Knight adds detail after detail to get the most out of the action and drama of the story, adding layers like a reflection of lights a shadow of the Decepticons onto the army men with evil intentions – a transference instead of a transformance.

So, there’s more to the film if you’re looking for it.

Mostly, I was entertained by the antics of Bumblebee.

A lot of fun, Bumblebee was better than expected with good humour, explosive action and heart-warming moments that manages to humanise a mass of moving metal parts: like us, playing music makes a car feel better.  Loved it.

Second Act

Rated: MSecond Act

Directed by: Peter Segal

Screenplay by: Justin Zackham and Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas

Produced by: Jennifer Lopez, Benny Medina, Justin Zackham and Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas

Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Milo Ventimiglia, Leah Remini, Vanessa Hudgens, Treat Williams, Annaleigh Ashford.

While Jennifer Lopez, the mega-successful singer, dancer and actor has made dozens of movies, only a handful are actually what could be classified as rom-coms, yet she has become synonymous with those kinds of roles.

The trailer for Lopez’ latest outing, Second Act, gives the impression that Jennifer, playing an assistant store manager called Maya, is starring in a light-hearted romantic comedy about a local girl making good.

So it was a surprise to watch this movie unfold and discover that it wasn’t really a comedy at all, more an often reflective exploration of a woman turning 40, who wonders, is this all there is? And why is life experience not valued as highly as a university degree?

Sure, there are some comical moments, mainly due to Lopez’ playful interaction with her bestie Joan, played by Leah Remini in a role that Joan Cusack used to play with ease. There are a few scenes where Lopez’ character Maya is mistakenly supposed to have talents that lead to humorous outcomes. There is also a gently wry sub-plot involving a dorky chemist at the corporation where Maya becomes a highly-paid consultant, and her eccentric assistant who has an extreme fear of heights.

But these light-hearted moments are not the focus of the plot.

Despite having similarities with Working Girl, where the heroine learns to add a veneer of polish to her outward appearance, while her street smarts give her the advantage she needs to succeed, this film relies on a deliberate lie that inadvertently gets Maya the requisite foot in the door of a successful corporation. She may have been employed based on information that severely exaggerates her accomplishments, but once there it is her intelligence and business acumen that sees her score victories and her star start to rise, despite opposition from different men (and some women) who seem threatened by her business knowledge and innovative ideas.

But Maya is harbouring a secret from her past, one that inhibits her and leaves her feeling unworthy of success in her current life, so that she doesn’t readily embrace the opportunities that Fate has suddenly thrown her way. The movie takes a sudden turn down an unexpected path that I didn’t see coming, and that adds even more layers of suspense and interest.

Of course, in any movie with a heroine who has down-to-earth girlfriends, you’d expect there to be some romantic ups and downs. Maya’s boyfriend of five years, Trey (played by Milo Ventimiglia, shuttling from coast to coast across America while working on this film and the TV series This Is Us) seems too good to be true. He also wants something from the relationship that Maya is too conflicted to provide (and can’t tell him her reasons). So their issues provide an undercurrent of tension as her professional star rises.

One scene shows Maya jogging (ostensibly for exercise), yet I got the impression she was running from her demons as well, often dwelling on past mistakes and waiting for the moment she will be exposed. This angle gave the film a slightly less predictable plot arc whilst also imbuing the interaction between characters with unexpected depth, but without ever really leaving the audience in doubt of the eventual outcome. The film, despite not being a normal rom-com, is entertaining, briskly directed, with a fabulous wardrobe for Ms Lopez, effective use of locations and a hummable soundtrack, as well as a supporting cast that ably assists with fleshing out the action.

According to director Peter Segal, Second Act is ‘about second chances, reinvention and not giving up’.

According to Lopez, who was also a producer on this film, the mantra is ‘the only thing stopping you is you’, a lesson her character learns and accepts, just in time for her own particular brand of happy ending.

Mortal Engines

Rated: MMoral Engines

Directed by: Christian Rivers

Written by: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson

Based on the Book by: Philip Reeve

Produced by: Zane Wiener, Amanda Walker, Deborah Forte, Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson

Starring: Hugo Weaving, Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Jihae, Ronan Raftery, Leila George, Patrick Malahide and Stephen Lang.

Set in the far distant future, all the cities of the world have been destroyed by an event known as the Sixty Minute War.  Now, cities move around as roving machines, cities on wheels that ‘ingest’ other smaller cities (Municipal Darwinism) to keep feeding the beast that transports its citizens around the Great Hunting Ground.

The enemy to these future-humans is old tech, now viewed as the downfall of the Ancients; Tom (Robert Sheehan) who works in the museum of London (yep, that’s the biggest and baddest rolling machine around) collects artefacts in an attempt to understand the history of their predecessors.

We see the attempt at humour with rusted Minions displayed as gods and the cracked screens of mobiles and monitors that asks the question of whether the Ancients ceased reading and writing completely.

Didn’t tickle my funny-bone, but there was an attempt, I guess.

Then we have Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar) break on board London in the assassination attempt of much admired lead archaeologist, Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving).  A two-faced man who killed her mother.

After seeing what Thaddeus is made of and finding themselves grounded, Hester and Tom have to fight to survive while under attack from the Southies (machines driven by people who hunt humans for sausage meat) and having to drink water from puddles… the unlikely pair of urbanised Tom and would-be assassin Hester, now working together to stop Thaddeus from his evil plan to take control and change the very ideals of this future world.

But wow, there are so many other side-stories and characters in this sprawling saga that the momentum of the film gets lost.  The investment in what’s happening gets thrown away because the emotion just isn’t there.  Instead, we get this overdramatic soundtrack that’s supposed to make us feel what the dialogue and build of relationships should.

The whole film felt like stolen bits from other films, thrown together and glossed over with an explosion of many moving parts I frankly didn’t care about.

Ironically, the character I liked the most was the part-human, part-automata (yep, it’s a terminator rip-off), Shrike (Stephen Lang).  He’s the last known Stalker – a dead man resurrected by technology – that’s a killer yet haunted by his human memories.

Shrike is the character used to give Hester a backstory, the only real showing of character we get.  The rest of the characters explain themselves with a forced monologue that made me grit my teeth.

Yes, the intricate design of the machines and future world are amazing and detailed.

And Hugo Weaving as Thaddeus Valentine kept the believability of the story up to a certain level.

But there were so many holes it made me wonder how much was left out from the book the film was based on.

It’s a young-adult novel, which may explain the bad humour… But trying to condense so much into the film made the sentiment feel forced.

Elliot The Littlest Reindeer

Rated: GElliot The Littlest Reindeer

Directed and Written by:  Jennifer Westcott

Produced by:   Michael Emerson, Victoria Wescott

Starring: Morena Baccarin, Josh Hutcherson, John Cleese.

I must confess I got excited when I read about the stellar voice cast including names such as John Cleese and Martin Short. I love animation and I knew absolutely nothing about Elliot The Littlest Reindeer, walking in with an open mind.

First impression was weak though for he graphics looked like I was home playing PS4 and the awkward character’s tone attempt to wink at humour was soon defeated by a numb storyline. There was one moment I laughed, when the Highland horse with Braveheart-painted face and accent to match appeared on the screen. And that was it.

Barely 30 minutes into the film, something unprecedented happened: half the reviewers watching left the cinema. Imagine that. And I sat there, unable to find a comfortable position not the will to fall asleep for a painful hour and a half. Do you want to know my very honest opinion? Well, I wouldn’t take my worst enemy’s children to endure this waste of time and resources. Still want to know more? Sure, let’s continue.

The protagonist, a miniature horse with illusions of grandeur, is bullied by jerk-reindeers (the film’s words not mine) every time he attempts to train with them. Suddenly, Blitzen decides to retire and Santa organises a competition to select the next best thing and everything goes down the hill from here. Elliott goes from friendly horse to wannabe-reindeer in sixty seconds flat, leaving his old friends for a chance to be accepted.

But wait, there is more. The baddie-bad villain Miss Ludzinka, a Cruella De Ville type voiced by Martin Short, plans to purchase Elliott’s farm to make jerky out of its residents. Yes, I said jerky. Yummy. Now, after winning, Elliott is disqualified for not being a reindeer and the judges discover that DJ (the antagonist, Blitzen’s son and Elliot’s personal jerk-reindeer bully for convenience sake) has used additional ‘magical cookies’ to stay high in the sky for longer and win the competition.

If they don’t win, they lose the farm. All is lost, or is it? No spoilers here. All I am going to say if that the logline ‘big dreamers dream big’ is repeated over and over to ensure the audience stays tuned and follows Elliott the wannabe-reindeer and his owner the wannabe-farmer on their journey to become better beings.

What happens next? You’ll have to find out. Or maybe not. Maybe you can spare your kids and go watch something where animals are not threatened to be butchered, smoked and become jerky. Just a thought.

Redeeming features of the film include a nice old-fashioned score by Grayson Matthews and interesting facial expressions courtesy of animation director Sean Coughlin’s and his team. Until next time!

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.

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

 

Subscribe!