Dir - Joe DeBoer/Kyle McConaghy
Overall: GOOD
For their second full-length collaboration Dead Mail, the joint writer/director team of Joe DeBoer and Kyle McConaghy travel back into the 1980's dingy, wood-paneled suburbs to tell a kidnapping tale gone awry. The presentation is ambitious for such a small-scale outing. There is no star power, the locations are minimal in amount, and the lone effects shot of a basement catching on fire seems to have been done practically. At the same time, we are given the second act first, the first act second, and the third act where it conventionally belongs, letting the audience witness things first before finding out how they happened. While this alleviates much of the tension, it seems to be done on purpose so that the focus will not be on your average white-knuckled thriller moments, but instead on its downtrodden characters. We meet three different distraught men, one who has fallen on hard times and lives in a halfway house, one who has grand ambitions about being a synthesizer designer with no financial means to achieve such ambitions, and another whose loneliness is so severe that he becomes the story's unwilling villain. The pieces are not all properly fleshed out, but it succeeds in most other areas and serves as an impressive work that is void of most tropey pratfalls.
Overall: MEH
Though it collapses under a barrage of "stupid people in horror movies" tropes as well as the good ole fashioned idea that so long as what is happening on screen is technically hair-raising, all manner of plausibility can be recklessly jettisoned, the latest from English filmmaker Matthew Butler-Hart is bound to please, (very), forgiving viewers who just want high-octane mayhem of the found footage variety. Dagr deserves points for its singular premise where two feisty YouTube ladies embark on an elaborate con to pose as caterers for a commercial shoot out in the middle of nowhere, a spacious house where a lot of crows caw around to be precise. The set up is enjoyable, mostly due to the wonderful performances from Ellie Duckles and Riz Moritz as the patriarchy-fighting influencer duo who are genuinely funny and likeable despite their questionable behavior. There is hardly any creepiness until the third act, (even of the suggested variety), but once things go, they go hard. The final extended "What the fuck is going on?" chase sequence shifts the tone completely, but it is only worth the wait if one can look past a staggering amount of little to major details that do not add up. Characters stop to look at camera footage when horrifying things are practically snipping at their heels, they "hide" out in the pitch black woods with full-tilt lights shining on their faces so that we and their pursuers can see them, and of course the otherworldly footage is grippingly edited together for our popcorn-munching consumption. Ignore its many lazy flaws though, and a good time will be had.
Dir - Benjamin Wong
Overall: MEH
This full-length debut from writer/director Benjamin Wong is one of the more sincere and well-intended genre films to emerge in recent times, channeling all-too-real struggles through a dark fairy tale lens. At least that is one way to look at Ba, (Vietnamese for "father"), in order to forgive its narrative shortcomings, which range from glaring to minor. It may be too ambitious of a project to take on as a first feature, with a minimal budget and tight running time only allowing for so much plausibility to enter into a story with a lot on its plate. Lawrence Kao and Kai Cech are a homeless father and daughter duo who are getting by merely on their loving rapport with each other when a mysterious box with a lot of money and a card with instructions shows up, seemingly with no strings attached. The cash is too alluring of a hook for someone in such desperation to refuse and of course it also proves to be too good to be true, setting in motion a unique supernatural payback scheme that Kao has no choice but to be hoodwinked into. Many of the details do not add up in order to move things along, yet several of them still prove interesting, even if they would be more effective in a fleshed-out context. The performances are all strong, (it is always nice to see a former genre mainstay like Brian Thompson getting work this long into his career), but this is still imprecise as a whole.
Overall: MEH
This full-length debut from writer/director Benjamin Wong is one of the more sincere and well-intended genre films to emerge in recent times, channeling all-too-real struggles through a dark fairy tale lens. At least that is one way to look at Ba, (Vietnamese for "father"), in order to forgive its narrative shortcomings, which range from glaring to minor. It may be too ambitious of a project to take on as a first feature, with a minimal budget and tight running time only allowing for so much plausibility to enter into a story with a lot on its plate. Lawrence Kao and Kai Cech are a homeless father and daughter duo who are getting by merely on their loving rapport with each other when a mysterious box with a lot of money and a card with instructions shows up, seemingly with no strings attached. The cash is too alluring of a hook for someone in such desperation to refuse and of course it also proves to be too good to be true, setting in motion a unique supernatural payback scheme that Kao has no choice but to be hoodwinked into. Many of the details do not add up in order to move things along, yet several of them still prove interesting, even if they would be more effective in a fleshed-out context. The performances are all strong, (it is always nice to see a former genre mainstay like Brian Thompson getting work this long into his career), but this is still imprecise as a whole.
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