The Lair: Like Something Paul W.S Anderson Would Have Made Years Ago, But Worse.

Summary

After being shot down a pilot, played by Charlotte Kirk, must contend with an army of alien human hybrids.

In many senses this film feels like a videogame movie, that is not a knock on videogame movies as I actually like more of them than most, however, it also highlights the obvious short comings of this film but unlike videogame films it doesn’t have the premade excuses those films have or the charm of their associated IP.

We have all seen films like this before wherein a group of soldiers have to hold off wave after wave of monsters as they are picked off one by one. In this sense this film isn’t anything particularly interesting, but is watchable.

Charlotte Kirk is not a good lead here at all, she is much better in Marshall’s other recent work The Reckoning, she barely emotes at all and her dialogue is paper thin at best. What’s worse is that a lot of her action scenes don’t come across as either believable or well-choreographed and can even be described at times as laughably bad.

Overall, whilst this is watchable it is nothing new and the acting, dialogue and action are all lacking.

2.5/5

Pros.

It is watchable

It is unintentionally hilarious

It is well paced

Cons.

The dialogue is awful

Kirk gives a terrible performance

It feels like a bad videogame film

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Enys Men: Can You Make Meaning Out Of The Meaningless?

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A woman, played by Mary Woodvine, begins to experience breaks with reality whilst living on a remote Cornish island.

I haven’t been so disappointed with a film in a long, long time. What was this film? It didn’t even feel like a film in the sense that it had a narrative and characters and really just anything that you could follow. It had minimal to no dialogue, no discernible story or plot and seemingly was just a series of random shots stuck together, it was the height of pretentious art house garbage.

Two other issues that go along with this are firstly that the pace is awful and the film as a whole quickly becomes tedious, in all honesty I disliked this film so much I would have got up and left if it were not for being bunched in by people on either side. This film is a chore to get through that is the easiest way to describe it. Secondly, the film seems to like piercing random loud noises and uses them again and again, for what reason we will never know but no doubt it is pretentious in reality all this does is leave you with a splitting headache.

The only thing positive I have to say about this film is that it has some interesting folk horror aesthetics but really this is barely even a film.

Overall, a tedious painful film to get through that feels more like a live art performance you have been forced to sit through rather than anything even remotely resembling a film. Easily my worst of the year so far.

0.5/5

Pros.

I liked some of the visuals

Cons.

It has no narrative

It uses loud noises constantly and again for no reason

It is tedious

It is incredibly pretentious

It never made a lick of sense

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A Man Called Otto: The Perfect January Film

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Tom Hanks plays a curmudgeon who after losing his wife seals himself off from the world, until his new neighbours give him a reason to live again.

This is one of those films that you will watch once and enjoy but then likely never watch again. I don’t think that is inherently a bad thing, rather I think this film has a powerful message and conveys it beautifully and it will reach those who need it, when they need it and it doesn’t need to do more than that.

In many sense this film is the perfect January film it is both sad and at times manically depressing but also hopeful and life affirming. Many of us who find January an incredibly hard month for a lot of different reasons, need the positivity this film brings and for them it will be a boon.

I really enjoyed Tom Hanks here I thought he played the role really well and as the film progressed it was incredibly hard not to root for him. The flashbacks were incredibly moving and affecting, but I won’t talk about them as they made me get upset in the cinema and I can feel the same emotions stirring as I sit here and write out this review, suffice it to say you will be wiping away a few tears in this one.

Overall, a beautiful film but one that will never stand a rewatch.

4.5/5

Pros.

The message

The emotions

Hanks

The ending and its feel good properties

The supporting cast

Cons.

It would be hard to watch again

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Slash/Back: Aliens Are Always Popping Up Where You Least Expect Them

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A group of Inuit teens do battle with aliens.

I thought this was a really quite fresh feeling horror film, both for exploring the mythology of a group of people that most of the world isn’t familiar with, and also for depicting aliens in a way that differs quite strongly from the little green men or humanoid figures we are so used to.

I really appreciated and liked the low-fi appeal of the monsters, I thought when the clearly dead animals were possessed and moving it was quite unsettling because in a sense you hadn’t, or certainly I hadn’t, seen something move like that before. I thought the skin suits later employed by the aliens were equally quite unnerving.

My one complaint of the film would be that it has a slow start, it feels like it is quite a while before we actually get into the alien business, and yes the film is setting up its world and characters in this time but it drags on.

Overall, a fun film that tries and mostly succeeds in doing something new.

4/5

Pros.

The look of the aliens both in animal and human form

The scares

Exploring Inuit mythology

The central teen cast are all likeable and do a good job for child actors

Cons.

A slow first act

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House Party: LeBron Is Kind Of A Jerk

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

Two friends, played by Tosin Cole and Jacob Latimore, host a party at LeBron James’ house whilst he is out of town.

I thought this film was fun enough, it was fine and relatively easy to watch whilst not reinventing the wheel in any way and playing out the same old tropes over and over again.

The cameos were mostly used well, though at times the film did over use them by having the camera simply pan over to show a famous face without even giving them much to do or more than a few lines, Snoop Dogg I’m looking at you.

I thought the film was held up by the chemistry between the two leading men, they were convincing friends and had a good back and forth. I thought the film was at its best when it was the two of them being thrown into extreme situations and having to come up with some zany way out, in that sense it reminded me of Harold and Kumar.

Overall, watchable but nothing to write home about.

3/5

Pros.

It is watchable

It has a few good laughs

The wackiness is fun

Cons.

Not all the jokes land

It is a lot of recycled plot points and tropes

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A Field In England: Taking Drugs In A Field

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

An alchemist’s assistant, played by Reece Shearsmith , and a group of deserters try and navigate the battlefields of the English Civil War.

I like the films of Ben Wheatley for the most part even though sometimes they miss the mark. However, this film I think may be his worst and misses the mark by a large degree boiling down into pretentious nonsense that feels like the sort of thing a first year film student might make if they couldn’t decide on a narrative direction for their film and instead decided to throw everything at the wall.

This is clearly most experimental work but that isn’t a good thing as it makes the film feel far too art house for its own good, coming across as an effort in pretention. Additionally, this decision to be experimental means there are big sections of the narrative that make little to no sense and don’t really fit with the tone of the rest of the film, this doesn’t come across as some brave stylistic decision but rather a lack of ability to write narrative and an attempt to disguise lazy writing by being pretentious.

The only thing that really gripped me about this film is the occult focus which I enjoyed and which did deliver some good scares, we could have done with more of this and less silly art house nonsense.

Overall, Wheatley pushes the boundary into how art house he can be and still maintain audience interest and arguably goes too far.

2/5

Pros.

A few good scares

The occult stuff later into the film

Cons.

It is pretentious

Some sections of the film don’t fit

It has awful pacing

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Toga: A Return

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A videographer, played by Shaun Rose, begins scouting new locations for a filmmaker only to be brought back to his home town, going on an emotional journey in process.

I will open this review by saying that I haven’t seen Upstate Story which serves, I am lead to believe, as a part one of sorts to this story. As such I may not fully comprehend the character journey between films and my review can be seen as solely reflective of this film and not relating to the wider series or quasi saga.

I found this film to be quite effecting, something about the idea of home towns can and often do stir up both a sense of nostalgia but also haunting and as such returning to them after a long absence can be a very mixed experience. I found that this film really captured the emotional nuance of that, and had the home town itself almost function as a narrative act centre piece.

Additionally, I found the performance by Rose himself was simply captivating, throughout the run of the film I couldn’t look away in many senses I was transfixed by his life and journey, not necessarily because they were in any way fantastical but rather because they were so relatable and human. The writing of this film is truly magnificent.

Overall, very much an enriching watch.

4/5

Pros.

The emotional nuance

The writing

Rose’s fantastic performance

The pacing

Cons.

I felt like I was missing something, but likely that is because I jumped in at the sequel

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M3GAN: Chucky’s Competition?

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A new evil doll is born, Chucky has competition.

I went into this film with high expectations, after hearing all the praise for the film and seeing al of the decorated reviews I was expecting this film to be good and honestly, it was just okay.

I think the strengths of the film are M3GAN herself, she is both sassy and scary in equal measure, and the fact that the film doesn’t take itself too seriously and that there is a good amount of tongue in cheek humour throughout the film that will likely make you laugh.

However, my issue with the film is that the tone never really feels quite right, it wants to be scary, but also wants to keep the jokes in, but then also doesn’t want to fully abandon the scares and go full comedy either. In my mind if the film had committed more to being silly and had gone even more over the top then it would have been better, we have enough spooky doll films something more in line with Bride Of, Seed Of Chucky would have played better in my mind.

Another thing that bothered me was that it all felt very played out, and by that I mean that this film did not surprise me in anyway everything that I thought was going to happen did and it happened when I thought it would. Maybe this stems from the fact that I watch a lot of horror films and for someone who watches less they might not find it so familiar, but for me it was an issue.

Overall, certainly watchable and with potential if they ramp up the satire and silliness for the next film then I could easily see a new horror franchise be born, but as it stands it feels too derivative.

3/5

Pros.

M3GAN herself is quite funny

I enjoyed the comedy for the most part

It was very watchable

Cons.

The humour doesn’t go far enough and there are tonal issues

It felt very familiar

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Nanny: The American Dream Is Dead

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

An undocumented Senegalese immigrant, played by Anna Diop, works hard to try and bring her young son to the US, but all the while something seems amiss.

I will say quite upfront this is not a horror film, there are vague supernatural elements that really never amount to much at all, but this is in fact a drama film concerned with notions of trauma and mental health rather than anything else. As such if you go in expecting scares, as I did, you will be disappointed as this film isn’t scary but is instead manically depressing.

I enjoyed the film for what it did with time, often moving around and back and forth between things without any notice to the audience, and also for the use of African themes and mythologies in its horror, often the genre gets very bogged down with western Christian themes and monsters and it is nice to see something else for a change.

I also thought the performances were strong across the board with Diop and Michelle Monaghan being particularly fantastic, both convey the darker aspects of motherhood well and bring a wide emotional range to their respective performances.

Overall, strong performances and fresh mythology clash against a deeply predictable twist and a lack of scares.

2.5/5

Pros.

Diop and Monaghan

The focus on African mythology

It tries to do something fresh

Cons.

The twist is incredibly obvious

It is depressing

There are no scares

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Unbreakable: Ageing Poorly

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A train crash survivor, played by Bruce Willis, realises that he has superhuman powers and then enters into a twisted power game with a disabled comic store owner, played by Samuel L. Jackson.

This is one of those films that a lot of people really like but that I have never been able to get into. When looking at Shyamalan’s wider body of work it is his forays into superhumans that really lose me, with the exception of Split, that and his dreadful After Earth.

My biggest issue with this film has always been that the characters don’t feel fully realised, in many senses they feel like someone has read a comic book and seen Batman, a purely random example, and has only understood one very basic aspect of his character and then has used that to create an inferior rip off character. To me the characters don’t feel in any way relatable and that is a big issue.

I also think the deeper question of do these people actually have powers, which gets turned up throughout the film and a lot going into Glass, is not actually as interesting as Shyamalan seems to think it is. Honestly after having the question asked for the hundredth time during the subtext of the film I begin to stop caring.

There are other avenues I could point to in my criticism of this film such as Bruce Willis being incredibly miscast but they are low hanging fruit and I won’t take them.

Overall, some of the worst aspects of Shyamalan as a filmmaker.

1/5

Pros.

It’s hard to not like a Samuel L. Jackson performance, he is a redeeming factor of the film.

Cons.

The characters are entirely unrelatable and feel alien in the worst way

It is far too long

Willis is incredibly miscast

It is not as deep as it thinks it is

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