Dir - Jon Knautz
Overall: MEH
The sophomore full-length The Shrine from Canadian filmmaker Jon Knautz has an solid build-up and nearly blows it on an over-the-top finale, but it thankfully misses going too far into eyebrow raising territory. A number of things hold it back from working as well as it could, namely the character’s motives which are not strong enough to warrant the incredibly bad decisions that they make; a typical horror movie faux pas. Also, some sub-par acting from an arguably too-good-looking cast sells the film’s more horrific moments short. The opening scene ultimately proves to be a bad idea as well, since it gives the viewer certain information that the characters do not have, yet it does so at the cost of undermining later developments. Leaving subtitles out to enhance both the characters and the audience member's confusion is a wise movie and while the twist manages to be foreseeable, it is still effectively done while pushing into schlock terrain. A standard B-movie in most respects, but enough creepy moments transpire to warrant the safe approach to its subject matter.
Dir - Tetsuya Nakashima
Overall: GOOD
Though its disorienting, monologue-heavy style may take considerable getting used to, Tetsuya Nakashima's first foray into the horror/thriller genre with Confessions, (Kokuhaku), is an effective one. An adaptation of Kanae Minato's 2008 novel of the same name, it takes the point of view of various characters who detail their internal thoughts, (i.e "confessions"), in a nonlinear fashion concerning the death of a teacher's young daughter by two of her students and then the complicated aftermath thereof. Japan's Juvenile Law of 1947 is routinely brought up, whereby minors who commit murder are not only spared the death penalty, but also get off on light sentences and sympathy from the general populous. In this sense, it explores warped, sociopathic tendencies influenced by societal guidelines, as well as guilt, abandonment, desperation, and revenge where those who cause suffering or trauma find ways to justify their less than benevolent actions. Music plays throughout the entire film,with Radiohead's "Last Flowers" making more than one appearance in its entity and Nakashima utilizes this along with slow motion montages to create something cinematic and heightened from bog-standard reality. It all mirrors the detached psyche of those on screen who are lost while swimming in their own troubled heads.
Dir - James Nguyen
Overall: WOOF
Recalling the output of non-filmmaker extraordinaire Neil Breen, James Nguyen's Birdemic: Shock and Terror is the type of inept, environmentally tinged vanity project that lacks all self-awareness and becomes a fascinating, bizarro-world bit of independent movie making in the process. Cluelessly horrendous cinema has been around since the days of Dwain Esper, Ed Wood Jr., Herschell Gordon Lewis, and Bill Rebane, with the SOV boom of the 1980s proving that virtually anyone with a couple of bucks could get their hands on a camera and go shoot something to pass off as a "movie", talent or production values be damned. Nguyen made this anti-masterpiece for under $10,000 over the course of four years, mostly shooting it on weekends with hardly any crew, plus a cast that is made up of extremely unfortunate people who could either be the world's most wooden actors or simply powerless to come off as anything else under the horrendous weight of the material. While it is ultimately rare for something so relentlessly unprofessional to keep an audience's interest since acceptable pacing is one of the first elements to be tossed aside, this one has the "benefit" of the worst digital effects next to 2012's The Amazing Bulk, the most inconsistent sound design ever, a pretentious script that is both under and overwritten, unnatural dialog for the record books, laughable editing, and a tone that is oblivious to how embarrassing all of these components present themselves in the final form.
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