Dir - Matthew Butler-Hart
Overall: MEH
Nothing comes together in British filmmaker Matthew Butler-Hart's The Isle, a modestly budgeted movie with committed performances and commendable production values yet little else. Period set, three sailors wash up on a small island off the cost of Scotland, an island that is seemingly only occupied by four people despite the appearance of various other abandoned buildings. A mystery unfolds at a snails pace, punctuated at irregular intervals by unimaginative jump scares, predictable horror beats, and expository flashbacks. The gritty location scenery is lovely, the cast nail their accents, and there is foreboding atmosphere a plenty, but the drama seems unearned due to the pedestrian nature of the script, (co-authored by Butler-Hart's wife Tori, who also stars). The film is as frightening as it is compelling, (meaning that it is neither), and it is one of those instances where the characters behave as if something dire is happening yet the audience is never properly convinced. At least Game of Thrones fans will appreciate Conleth Hill not in a bald cap doing good work as a curmudgeon villager who tries to warn against the deadly sirens that lure their victims to their doom, without saving everyone a lot of trouble by coming right out and saying that this is the threat of course.
Dir - Antoine Le
Overall: MEH
In director Antoine Le and writer Todd Klick's full-length debut Followed, a half-assed attempt is made to explain why it is one of the umpteenth found footage movies to use scary music and artificial ambience, which is more than can be said about many, many other films of such an ilk that regularly keep spewing down the pike. The movie is just as musty elsewhere, being yet another whose premise finds an obnoxious online personality that will put themselves and their crew in supernaturally-charged harm's way just so that their ad revenue and follower numbers stay on the incline. Klick's script wears its influences on its sleeve, (the haunted Los Angeles skid row hotel where it takes place is the Cecil Hotel, the serial killer mentioned there is Richard Ramirez, and the Korean woman who acts weird in an elevator and then winds up dead is Elisa Lam), plus Matthew Solomon's insufferable protagonist DropTheMike is interchangeable with Mr. Beast, PewDiePie, or Logan Paul. Sadly, nothing is done within the tired YouTuber + haunted location + found footage parameters to warrant this film's existence, as it is loaded with arbitrary spooky bits and has a plot twist that a two year old would be able to spot. Again, it makes an effort to not insult its audience with characters acting like morons who continue to point the camera at pants-shitting-inducing things while a musical soundtrack is added to completely miss the point of found footage, but since all of that stuff is still included, it is nowhere clever enough elsewhere to justify itself.
Dir - Darren Lynn Bousman
Overall: MEH
Never one to engage in subtly and always one to emphasize the motto of "suffering = horror", Saw creator Darren Lynn Bousman's St. Agatha is a relentlessly miserable watch that tries the viewer's patience. A glossy, well-shot, and well performed boarding house horror film that plays off of ageless motifs of pious and cartoonishly evil nuns brutalizing helpless women via all manner of psychological and physical torture, anyone going in will pick up the agenda within the first ten minutes. This results in roughly ninety minutes then of enduring, (as the dehumanized characters do), one ridiculous set piece after the other, knowing where it is all heading, knowing that no one will escape until the very end, and knowing that the abuse will rev up the entire time. As opposed to his earlier collaborations with James Wan, Bousman has a comparatively less schlocky touch from behind the lens. There are no screaming monster faces or hilarious flashback montages to cover every conceivable angle of an "Oh shit!" plot twist, per example. Make no mistake though, Bousman is not a "less is more" filmmaker by any stretch; he wants to shock, upset, and present something that is more merciless than scary, perhaps working with the thesis that both can be the same thing. It is up to the audience member to decide if such shenanigans are for them, but some might want to just read their bible or take a nap afterwards.
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