Dir - Rafaël Cherkaski
Overall: MEH
This no-budget debut from actor-turned-filmmaker Rafaël Cherkaski follows in a tradition of primitive and disturbing mockumentaries, (ala Man Bites Dog, Be My Cat: A Film for Anne, and The Last Horror Movie, to name but a few), where a demented individual is either documented or documents themselves in an increasingly unhinged plunge into deadly depravity. Descent Into Darkness, (Sorgoi Prakov), makes a noble attempt to one-up its forebearers with some extreme nastiness in the third act that is not for the squeamish, but the majority of the film follows a curious path that does not reveal itself until past the halfway point. It begins as an awkward comedy of sorts where Cherkaski himself embarks on a heart-shaped "European dream" project on a map, filming everything with either a handheld camera or one mounted to his head which makes him look like a goofy, grinning, foreign tourist stereotype that allows for people to be amused by his antics. The problem is that his slow psychological breakdown is never convincing. He starts off as a wacky yet harmless fellow enjoying the Paris nightlife and even getting laid voluntarily, only to get annoyed by a few minor instances before snapping into a homeless, vile, sadistic, and murderous madman. It works as a found footage property since the montage editing can be explained because Cherkaski's troubled protagonist is putting it all together on the fly, but it is difficult to see a point to any of it, let alone buy into it.
Dir - Aharon Keshales/Navot Papushado
Overall: GOOD
For their second joint writer/director collaboration Big Bad Wolves, (Mi mefakhed mehaze'ev hara), Israeli filmmakers Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado concoct a nasty revenge movie that is seeping in dry black comedy, something that makes its more unflinching moments easier to stomach. A serial killer who targets children is on the loose, prompting one of the victim's fathers and a cocksure detective to take matters into their own hands when putting all of their elaborate efforts into a lone suspect who pleads his innocence. The plot follows a foreseeable pattern in some respects as audience members will be able to correctly deduce how much more out of hand the inherently out of hand situation will get, but Keshales and Papushado's script throws an agreeable amount of bleak curve balls into the mix. They also keep the tone equally dire and funny, always allowing for a line of dialog or a narrative detail to creep in that keeps this far enough removed from torture porn. It is a story where the inhuman deeds of one monster pushes others down an adjacent path disguised by virtue, the victims becoming the perpetrators. It is not a refreshing angle to take, (we have all seen variations of the same elongated torture scene here done many times and with similar motives), but the fact that Keshales and Papushado keep the viewer in the dark just as much as the desperate, frustrated, and broken "good guys" are gives the film a necessary and disturbing layer to crank up.
Dir - Thunder Levin
Overall: MEH
The hallmark of the Asylum mockbuster production company and a film that launched an overstaying-its-welcome franchise of increased stupidity, the initial Sharknado comes surprisingly close to being a "real" B-movie. This is in spite of how gimmicky the premise is and of course how notoriously rushed and penny-pinching the production is, a flagship entry in Aslyum's model of getting it done with D-rent actors, shooting twelve pages of script a day, working everyone nearly twenty-four hours straight, and throwing some special effects in that only look a cut or two above Birdemic: Shock and Terror. Against all odds and as opposed to future sequels, the Twister meets Jaws tone is played straight here, everyone on screen who is just trying to maintain their SAG insurance remarkably also maintaining their dignity in the disaster scenario. Director Thunder Levin, (presumably his real name), even manages to pull off one or two aesthetically low-rent yet almost white-knuckled set pieces, like when Ian Ziering's deadbeat dad with a heart of gold decides to detour with his family and rescue a school buss full of marooned kids and Robbie Rist from The Brady Bunch. The character's internal drama is just there to give them something to say, enhancing the tongue-in-cheek schlock value without stopping the laughable momentum. It is not so much a "so bad its good" movie as it is just a "eh, whatever" waste of eighty-five minutes that could have been even more idiotic and goofy, (see future installments).
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