Dir - Bong Joon-ho
Overall: GOOD
An immediately renowned work from South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho, Parasite, (Gisaengchung), manages to morph away from its sly, comedic commentary on wealth and social iniquity by turning into something more potent and harrowing by its end. Originally considered as a stage production, Bong and co-screenwriter Han Jin-won eventually worked it into the former's follow-up to his 2017, US/Korean co-production Ojka. Fusing two different families together from polar opposite class structures, all of the characters are richly portrayed with both morally gray and sympathetic brush strokes. In a story where everyone is a victim of sorts, the emphasis on economic inequality being the true antagonist is made unmistakable yet never rudimentary. There are no science fiction ideas on display here to examine modern times through an exaggerated dystopia; instead, these are palpable issues based on feasible scenarios that are given a cinematic sheen and a suspenseful, calculated presentation from Bong. The fact that the tone shifts between acts all seems natural and well-deserved as the bottom was tragically meant to fall out at some point and when it does, it hits that much harder while settling into a sense of melancholy that is cynical, (i.e. realistic), without being too down-trodden to endure.
Dir - Justin Dix
Overall: MEH
Vampires, (eventually), run amuck on a boat in Justin Dix' sophomore effort Blood Vessel; a grimy cliche-fest that appears to take itself more seriously than any viewer should. Life raft survivors who seek refuge on a mysterious ship in the middle of the ocean, (with presumably no one on board), is an age-old horror set-up, and further details like Nazi occultism, monsters easily duping and disguising themselves as their victim's loved ones, an innocent little kid who is not that innocent, and a character's gradual transformation into a creature of some kind are also cherry-picked from other genre fare. While the combination of familiarity is not entirely egregious, the movie unfortunately has bigger issues. Said grandiose, mugging undead do not arrive until fifty minutes in and once they do, the main baddie looks unintentionally ridiculous like a cross between Mickey Mouse and Max Schreck. A schlocky tone starts to take over concurrently with the action revving up, plus the characters are either unlikable or just annoying bicker with each other, which seems intentional due to the World War II setting and everyone heralding from a different country as to make trusting each other exponentially more difficult. The vampire's ability to telepathically control those who are bitten and feel the brunt of their infected blood-sucker's own injuries is at least an interesting tweak, but elsewhere, this is hum-drum stuff.
Dir - Ryan Spindell
Overall: MEH
Released the same year as the abysmal Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark adaptation, writer/director Ryan Spindell's The Mortuary Collection serves as a comparatively not-terrible variation to a similar anthology framework where glossy, CGI-whimsy meets macabre scenarios and set pieces. The fact that it is unrated will delight gore fans as there is plenty of gruesome nastiness on display here; everything from a guy's hand getting mutilated in a meat grinder, another guy hacking up his invalid wife into pieces, and most bizarrely, a douchebag frat boy having unprotected sex and getting himself inexplicably pregnant with a mutant monster baby that enters the world through "the way it got in". Like any omnibus series of stories, some are more memorable than others, with "Unprotected" and "The Babysitter Murders", (the latter of which was released individually as a short film in 2015), being more fun than the pointless "Segment 1" and uninteresting "Till Death". Unlike most films of this nature though, the framing narrative is actually the one that we wish to return to since Clancy Brown makes a delightful Crypt Keeper stand-in and the inevitable twist ending surrounding Caitlin Custer's eager, funeral home employee hopeful is predictable yet amusing. Overlong and uneven, (plus too stylistically cartoonish to be even remotely creepy), its redeemable qualities render it far from a waste.
No comments:
Post a Comment