NO ONE LIVES Review

Woah woah woah… SPOILER ALERT! Then again with a film as bloodbath assured, cine-literate and reverentially paying homage to its 80’s American Slasher roots as NO ONE LIVES, the title is actually tacit: a given, a promise and a warning. Maybe instead it should be called ‘NO ONE LIVES… OBVS’.

The amiable all-out psychopath is as ingrained in American Culture as liberty, fried chicken & bad healthcare; from Norman Bates to Patrick Bateman, Michael Myers to Michael Moore (sorry, couldn’t resist, though he isn’t exactly amiable), the nation- and especially it’s film industry- loves a good serial killer. Now as the nation reeled from 9/11, the good old American psychopath just wasn’t scary anymore. Horror’s villains took a more global and nuclear face [RESIDENT EVIL(s), THE WALKING DEAD, THE CRAZIES] or familiar and familial [THE STRANGERS, THE PURGE, YOU’RE NEXT]. However, we horror fans crave what we crave, and amiable psychopaths share more with fried chicken than just cultural imbedding: they’re also mighty delicious. The ‘America’s Favourite Psychopaths’ Gallery may just be ready for a new psychopath to idolise.

In a stunningly original set up we follow a handsome and pretty 30-something boyfriend and girlfriend roadtripping through the American backwoods who hole up at some spit and sawdust bar only to have a decidedly unpleasant run in with the criminal hick locals and end up shackled & bound in a dingy factory. Oh yeah, by the way the boyfriend happens to be a skilled serial killing psychopath with a girl tied up in his trunk. Plot twist. Oops.

Director Ryuhei Kitamura is well adept at twisted stories and what follows is a cat-and-mouse fight for survival between villain and villains, littered with subtly- and smartly- hinted at twists and revelations, one-liners that make you want to fist pump the air and a cornucopia of demented set pieces, it’s some of the most fun you will have with a film this year.

To elaborate on the set pieces would be detriment to their surprise, and surprise they do. Every other death will have you recoiling from the screen or whooping and hollering along with the synth pulsing soundtrack. One particular incident that puts a whole new spin on the term ‘body bag’ defies the audience to not have their jaws on the floor, and sure would make one hell of a Halloween costume. Then there is an actual body bag. Or rather a bag filled to the seams with body parts that is a brilliant homage to FRIDAY THE 13^TH. Not to mention possibly the best throat slit since LAWLESS. The practical effects work by Robert Hall’s always impeccable team Almost Human are resoundedly top notch and appropriately icky, often stealing the show and blending seamlessly with the action choreography.

These set pieces don’t just come quick and fast, they effectively make up the entire run time. Every scene has its standout moment of batshit craziness, be it a self tracheotomy or a daughter-stepmother catfight. All of this makes the runtime haste along quicker than a 40oz beer turns to pee.

At the centre of all this, our good old charismatic all-American psycho known simply as The Driver (a brilliant, scenery chewing Luke Evans) is an endlessly creative mercenary of madness whose skill with a weapon is only trumped by his skill with one liners. Evan’s Driver is franchise worthy as far as characters go and I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t the last we see of him. Endlessly quotable, NO ONE LIVES’ dialogue veers from kick ass: “He’s dead” “You don’t know my brother… “ “and I never will” to the wonderfully campy “if I wanted to talk to an asshole I would’ve torn you a new one”.  The pièce-de-résistance dialogue speaking, of course being the actual reading of the title, once again sure to elicit many a punching of the air.

It is this that is most refreshing about NO ONE LIVES, in that it never takes itself fully seriously- some of the acting is almost seemingly deliberately bad, it throws down hammy lines quicker than Adam Sandler’s latest shit salad of a film, and seems perfectly adept at a few goofy fight scenes.  Kitamura seems to know exactly what he wants to do with the film, narratively and tonally, and to the right audience (AKA me), the film is a resoundingly rowdy success, guilty pleasure horror at it’s very finest. Stylistically too, Kitamura domineers, shooting in grain filled Super 16MM, the picture echoes the aesthetic of the 80s slashers it’s standing alongside (read: not simply paying homage). And it’s that cinematic grain that makes NO ONE LIVES feel all the more American cult classic, blood has rarely looked this grittily good on screen in 30 years.

America’s Favourite Psychopaths Gallery is set to open a new exhibit, and it’s called NO ONE LIVES. I’d recommend you don’t wear white.

9 human suits / 10 synthesiser hero-themes

And that’s my two cents.

I DECLARE WAR Review

“We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

Luckily the battle cry vociferation from Jason Lapeyre’s pre-pubescent-Platoon I DECLARE WAR, is: not damn much went wrong, and yet if they were adults, it all would have been very very wrong.

You see, I DECLARE WAR is like nothing you’ve ever seen before, and yet is 100% made up of everything you’ve seen before. Take every classic war movie you’ve ever seen, put the ranks back in middle school and throw about the fanastical whimsy of a Beano and you’re two thirds of the way there. This is BLACK HAWK DOWN by way of STAND BY ME.

On surface level, I DECLARE WAR is effectively 90 minutes of battle re-enactment: A hot summer’s day skirmish of capture-the-flag between a group of middle school kids. A very well shot, acted, edited and scripted juvenile blitzkrieg of log-bazookas and red-paint-water balloon grenades, which actually manages to evoke a remarkable amount of tension & audience investment considering it’s under-16 ensemble cast are essentially play fighting. Said tension is in part due to the frequent stylistic infringement of the kids’ fantasies over the actual ‘play fight’ reality: a water balloon suddenly is a C4 loaded grenade, a Supersoaker is firing with muzzle flares & a dissonance of gun shots. These intrusions of real-world combat constantly blur the lines of what the audience is watching: is this still a battle of capture the flag? Do one of these kids have an actual gun? Is this going to turn Columbine?

Because quick witted scripted quips aside, this is no game to the characters- particularly team leaders PK (Gage Munroe) & Skinner (Michael Friend)- but rather an actual call to arms to save Private Ryan. In these 13 year olds minds, that flag is everything, blood may be shed. It is this handle of seriousness that means I DECLARE WAR never veers into pastiche. The film dolls out every archetype seen in every war film since PATTON: torture, honour, love, sacrifice, betrayal, abdication, revenge etc etc, yet it never does so with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge self awareness that would ruin the tone and effective tension of the movie. As in the opening Golding quote, These kids do everything that adults have done for decades of war cinema, yet manage to evade being derivative or formulaic because of in part the fresh faced slew of child actors & mostly the knifes edge balance between fantasy & reality, BB Guns & bowie knives. The playful satirising of war-film tropes & disturbing question of wait-did-she-actually-just-shoot-him-with-an-arrow keeps the audience constantly on edge.

Cliche as it may be, this review could have by-lined with pretty much any quote from Lord Of The Flies, but the allusions between Golding’s 1999 classic novel & Lapeyre’s feature film are too rife for the reference to not be made front & centre. Both contain a band of youths re-enacting the very atrocities of war, starting out as a juvenile game and ending in a varying amounts of bloodshed. And while I DECLARE WAR remains much lighter hearted and fleet footed than Flies- never ploughing the annals of actual mortal brutality- its social commentary on violence in today’s youth is still effervescently above subtext. In handling these themes of desensitisation of violence in youths in such a matter of fact & playful way, I DECLARE WAR is much more successful in its portrayal than more extremist accounts of juvenile violence such as ELEPHANT & WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN. One can enjoy the film, fist bump the sky & grin from ear to ear, and yet still consider the acts of seriousness and aggression behind these children’s eyes. It really is masterful scripting.

Juggling the script with naturalness and keen delivery is a stellar ensemble cast of fresh faced newbies that we are likely to see proliferating our screens in the years to come if this performance is anything to go by. They remarkably capture the characters that flooded our classrooms growing up: the headstrong leader, the loyal follower, the wannabe popular douchebag, the layabout joker, the lovestruck do-anything; and play each of their roles with relatable accuracy and youthful innocence. Someone Ouija board River Pheonix and tell him he’s got competition.

On the lens aside of things, the entire film could in the wrong hands have looked like a YouTube Fanvid, yet the picture is blissfully crystal, the steadicam fluid & fervent & the depth of field pin-point. Cinematographer Ray Dumas used every inch of that Red One to capture the permanently forested surroundings as proficiently as possible. The film looks smashing.

I DECLARE WAR is lean & mean, yet charming & clever; a 1080p high definition Polaroid snapshot of both the cruel & fun nature of growing up. Full Metal Jackets now comes in kid sizes.

8 laser eyeballs /10 smashed hornet nests

And that’s my two cents.

BAD MILO! Review

Let’s be clear, I just watched ET’s demon baby-brother crawl out of Professor Wilder from ‘DAWSON’S CREEK’’s ass and chew off a publically masturbating doctor’s penis. I’m not entirely sure what my reviewing job is here. That alone will stand whether you – the audience- will want to watch this movie or not. But, alas- here’s my two cents on BAD MILO!

I give you E.T. That is, E.T. The EXCREMENT TERRESTRIAL.

The premise is as follows, meet Ken (Ken Marino), a plain Jane 30 something dude with a lame accounting job, relationship pressure from his girlfriend (the lovely Gillian Jacobs), stressful parents, and some severe bowel problems. But after Ken’s acquaintances start dropping dead faster than the crew of THE OMEN, It doesn’t take too long for him to realise said bowel problems are actually something a little more carnivorous than post-Saturday-night Jaeger shits; something that turns out to be… a butt demon. Yep, a butt demon.

And, no, that’s not a metaphor: Ken has a demon, which he nicknames Milo, who adorably looks not unlike ET’s foetal sibling living, in his asshole.  Milo, helpful little poop demon that he is, wants nothing more than to reduce Ken’s stress levels and so goes about dispatching Ken’s sources of stress in the most toothy way possible. Stress management has never looked so shitty.

Now, you can look allegorically at the film as a piece of Freudian Id study, a Kafkaesque physical agglomerate of one’s inner demons, a social simile on Zimbardo’s Lucifer Effect; but I’m fairly sure the movie itself states its intentions when our protagonist screams “I HAVE MONSTER UP MY ASS, THIS IS THE FURTHEST THING FROM A METAPHOR”.

Yet for as off the deep end berserk as that sounds, BAD MILO remains a remarkably restrained & understated comedic piece. I mean sure there are gags such as where Milo does his version of a dog coming in from the rain & shaking itself off, except in this scenario, it’s brown rain Milo is shaking off, but for just how batshit zonkers it *could* have gone, the film retains a tight grip on its sensible reigns. While for some this more retained approach will be its downfall, what it succeeds in doing is imbue BAD MILO! with an actual sense of purpose. For every grandiose poop-gag set-piece they don’t feature, Ken’s domestic drama remains all the more in perspective and important to the film’s storeline; in effect rendering the ridiculous relatable. It’s surprisingly clever restraint for what is essentially a midnight movie.

With that being said, some good gags aside- in particular a Mayan carving showing “the ancient myth surrounding the anus- and a rollicking STAR WARS-esque showdown finale between Milo and his nemesis, one can’t help but wish they’d pushed it a little bit further. Director Jacob Vaughn wears his inspirations on his sleeve, BAD MILO! is clearly the product of a childhood spent watching BASKET CASE & GHOULIES rented late night from a video store, and yet it never quite reaches the campy midnight-movie peaks that those inspirations manage. It almost feels as if thinks it’s more of a future cult movie than it actually is.

Future camp classic (clampsic?) it may not be, but enough with what it isn’t. What BAD MILO! is, is 85 minutes of damn good fun; and if that is all you want from film, you can do a lot worse that this one. The jokes tickle just enough, the actors do ample to hit all they can with the material, and towering above them all, the character of Milo- so fantastically designed & puppeteered -is cutesy and creepy enough that, the rest of the film aside, he may become a clampsic.

7 tiny vaginas / 10 rogue raccoon attacks

And that’s my two cents.

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2 Review

 

Nope.

And that’s my two cents.

I DIDN’T COME HERE TO DIE Review

Ladies & germs, freaks & geeks, I just applauded a film in my own damn living room. Sat in broad daylight, on my own, in my boxers, drinking a 3 hour old coffee, I applauded my own TV. And am I ashamed? Am I fuck.
I watch a lot of cinematic tap water, those 89 minute dirges that simply struggle to be adequate, limping along on limbs Frankensteined from their predecessors and selling it as ‘homage’. To list them here would be redundant, time consuming & detract from the more important review matter at hand, but you get what I’m referring to. For a movie to faithfully & entertainingly pay homage to the trashy VHS era of slashers is a hard enough nail head to hit [case and point, the well meaning but frankly dire GUTTERBALLS & MADISON COUNTY]. But to capture that spirit and elevate it beyond simple homage into something clever & fresh for a modern audience tired of simple recycling, that is more akin to hitting the head of a sewing needle. Thankfully, along with a *couple* of wayward blows, I DIDN’T COME HERE TO DIE strikes just that needle head.
The setup is been-there-done-that-got-the-t-shirt: a group of 20-something’s venture into the “Hey, this is pretty isolated” woods to “work on team building & volunteer work”- by which they mean booze & boobs- only to for things to go TERRIBLY TERRIBLY WRONG [Mwahahaha]. The film starts out just like this, and even more so just like every other of those aforementioned ‘homage’ pieces- complete with egregiously over the top film burn effects. We get it, you’re Grindhouse. I’ll even go as far as to admit this opening had me on shaky grounds, reaching for my iPhone & tweeting the following:

… Boy was I glad I stuck with it. Because when this kid breaks away from the pack, dear god does it do so with gusto. Just as I’m not afraid to admit I clapped at during its credit roll, I’ll also gladly admit this film- in its tear-away-from-the-pack moment, made me actually. physically. gasp. And that’s even more of a rarity than applause. To give away what that moment is would be severely detriment to the film, so for once I’ll steer away from spoilers. But know that this wasn’t even the half of it, the film is positively loaded with gasp moments. Going as far as to say that *every* kill/attack is ingeniously memorably, very we’ll executed and – especially in the pinnacle of this where a slippery incident with a chainsaw turns even more nasty that it sounds- gut bustingly entertaining.

From the shit hitting the fan to the credits rolling the film moves faster than a knife fight in a phone booth, and that’s both credit to some handily slick editing & a script that really knows how to right-hook the audience just when they think they’ve got their footing. That’s the real facet of fun here: while I DIDN’T COME HERE TO DIE does pay homage to its predecessors, it also transgresses their tropes & uses the genre savvy audience’s pre-expectations to its advantage- leaving you swapping between picking your jaw off the floor & giggling like a child at Christmas.

[SPOILER ALERT KLAXON]

For example, in a showdown between a malodorous jock and the sole remaining female who has to this point been set up as our final girl, the genre trope tells you who the winner of this showdown will be. So when a blunt boulder comes crashing to our final girls skull in a turn of surprisingly verite violence, it’s sold all the more shocking since it goes against what 30 years of horror copycats have taught us.

[END OF SPOILERS]

Both said slick editing & dandy writing can be attributed to Bradley Scott Sullivan, who also jumps in the cinematography & directing chair here- his first time doing any of these for a feature- and as such, this really is Sullivan’s feature. Sure the actors do a swell job and David Templin’s practical effects are gaudily gruesome, but Sullivan is the man of the hour here. And frankly, with this debut he’s embossed his name into most genre producers’ watch-list.
You’ll have to excuse my garrulous praise, but when you’ve seen so much ‘tap-water horror’ a surprise as impetuous as this, it’s really worth singing about. Sure, it’s far from perfect- the ‘retro’ colour grading is a little heavy handing & the sound mix often leaves much to be desired- but that’s not the point here. The name of the game here isn’t nuance or subtlety, it’s made for the same reasons Jackson made BAD TASTE. And it’s results are much the same: pure blood drenched fun. And in fact, I DIDN’T COME HERE TO DIE may just be the most fun I’ve had with a movie (festival environment aside, drunk friend trash marathons aside etc) in a damn long time. This is campy fun horror at its purest & most heartfelt. I DIDN’T COME HERE TO DIE deserved my applause, and it deserves yours too.
And that’s my two cents.

8 necklace-magic-tricks / 10 unfortunately-placed-branches

ON TENDER HOOKS Review

Samuel Taylor Coleridge- poet extraordinaire, aesthetic philosopher and all round hero- in 1817 or thereabouts coined the phrase ‘A suspension of disbelief’, suggesting insofar that if a  writer could infuse a human interest in a fantastical tale, the reader would suspend all judgement and flow with the piece, not matter what was thrown at them- however fantastical or horrific.

Little did old Sam know, not only could his handy phrase make the leap from page to screen, from reader to viewer (who didn’t get emotionally cavalcaded by the infusion of human interest to an abandoned cowgirl doll in Toy Story 2?!); but that its phraseology would be so apropos with the act of forcing a steel hook through your kneecaps and suspending from it. Or rather, be so apropos to Kate Shenton’s feature directorial debut, the touching expose documentary on said act: ON TENDER HOOKS.

Yes, the white elephant in the room is that this film is about a select community of folk who voluntarily pierce their flesh with less-than-tender hooks and hang their entire bodily weight from these piercings. To the majority it’s shudder inducing material; and sadly to most of those majority it’s also enough of a white elephant to have them reaching for the remote. Case and point: in a scene set at a Body Modification convention, a man who looks remarkably like Charles Bronson with 85% tattoo coverage & 50+ piercings watches members of the team suspend and responds, when asked what he thinks of it, with: ‘that’s too extreme for me’. Suffice to say, it’s gnarly stuff.

But to reduce ON TENDER HOOKS to merely this shock act alone would be tantamount to reducing GONE WITH THE WIND to Nazis. For a feature whose runtime is 85% actual footage of piercing & suspension, none of it feels gratuitous; nothing is played for wanton gore glory. Rather, the documentary is an earnest and, appropriately, tender window into a world unseen; and one I’d readily encourage any of that aforementioned majority to see – white elephant be damned. What we are watching here is not a film about suspension, but a film about people that suspend. Not to say it’s a deep psychological case study into the existential reasons behind suspension, for that would be far too clinical, far too judging: ON TENDER HOOKS is simply a love letter to the diverse family of suspendees.

To briefly digress it’s glowing intentions & touch on the films visuals. Shot for a near minus budget, with a crew of one, shot on a camera and edited on a computer that is advertised on ITV, ON TENDER HOOKS is understandably unpolished and rough around the edges. Such, though both adds to the film’s charm and provides a sense of intimacy to the act that would otherwise be ruined with a large crew of multi-camera coverage and cologne-commercial editing.

Kate Shenton- director, cameramiss, interviewer, interviewee & editor – enters into the scene a suspending virgin, and as such the audience very much takes the journey with her. Aid to this empathy is the films remarkably verite fly-on-the-wall aesthetic. When Kate winces is when we really wince. And to not ruin the films transcendental climax, but wince she does.

Shenton has previously shown with fictional shorts BON APPETITE & GIMP (check them out, they’re boss) that she has a great knack for comedy and cinema. Here, she shows she’s also a dab hand at personal documentary; a good thing considering her next outing is a similar fly-on-the-wall portrait on a character from ON TENDER HOOKS adventures in full body modification, entitled MODIFY ME. Miss Shenton is certainly one to watch from all filmic angles, fictional & non.

Human suspension is actually an act not entirely new to film, seen in varying iterations in from Michael Crichton’s 1978 COMA to last year’s body mod’ sensation AMERICAN MARY and more closely in the documentary MODIFY, but none quite portray the human aspect of the act. None quite manage to make the audience do as Coleridge proposed and suspend their disbelief and become as totally involved in the characters they’re watching. ON TENDER HOOKS does.

7 torn Achilles heels / 10 drunk hot poker brandings

And that’s my two cents.

 

http://ontenderhooks.com/

facebook.com/ontenderhooks

THE GUEST Review

Of all the short films I’ve seen this year- and believe me, there’s been many, few handled the perfect balance of style, substance & tease that so few shorts manage to grasp as effortlessly as Jovanka Vuckovic’s THE GUEST.

Existentialism can be seen as the beating heart of many a horror classic, from the gothic auteur of James’ seminal Turn of the Screw to the stark realism of JACOB’S LADDER. “Who, really, are we?”. That same beating heart resonates within THE GUEST, Vuckovic’s 3^rd time at the directing wheel, yet what those references manage to evoke over 200+ pages or 1 ½ hours, THE GUEST unravels in mere minutes- the age old adage that man’s greatest fear is what is inside his own head. Or is it? Such is the central dilemma to THE GUEST, and boy is it starkly terrifying in its raising of man’s fragility. Yet it never comes across as a preaching exercise, contrarily it raises more questions than it answer, and as such will likely stay with you long after the credits have rolled. It’s Kafkaesque dilemma, like a parasite burrowing into your brainstem.

That’s not to say all THE GUEST brings to the table is theoretical; possibly the only thing more terrifying than its concept is its ethereal imagery, which just like the existential problem will bury itself into your brainstem, as much for it’s beauty as its horror. These are quite simply images that, much like the film’s protagonist, you will not be able to remove from your memory. Special mention should be given to both Vuckovic for conceiving of such abstractly gorgeous tableaus but also cinematographer Ian Anderson for realising them so evocatively in an almost stroboscopic nightmare of beauty.

THE GUEST is a piece almost devoid of reviewability in analysis, thanks to its aforementioned existentialist nature; it’s not a case of ‘You’re best going in blind’, but rather I would be surprised if this film did not have a nonetheless profound but very individual impact on each of its audience members. It works on such a cerebral level, I feel it a disservice to dilvulge any more than I already have to you. Quite simply, seek it out at all costs.

A haunting and visually remarkable Faustian tale on its surface, with a transcendental beating heart within it; THE GUEST is more than welcome in my house.

8 blood mouthwashes / 10 talking arm chairs.

And that’s my two cents