(2005)
Dir - John Fawcett
Overall: WOOF
Based off of the Simon Maginn novel Sheep which hopefully is not as dreadful, The Dark is a wretchedly formulaic and highly confused, supernatural horror trainwreck. It is bad enough that the movie plays like it is trying to check off every last "daughter goes missing, people going through old newspaper reels at a library, grungy kids who whisper cryptic dialog, old locals who can explain legends and spooky stuff, let's try and overcome something traumatic in our lives at the end, oh never mind it is a plot twist" trope. It is another thing that the script by Canadian playwright Stephen Massicotte comes off at least like the pages got mixed up and they decided to shoot it that way regardless. Things become increasingly off the rails as the film tries to deliver the ghost story goods near the last act, with random foreshadowing, reoccurring, (and awful), dialog, and sloppy editing all contributing to the disastrous whole. It is as far a cry from director John Fawcett's landmark Ginger Snaps as can be expected and even though Sean Bean amazingly does not die in this one, it is still a pretty embarrassing entry on his resume, as well as everyone else's involved.
(2008)
Dir - Paul Andrew Williams
Overall: GOOD
The sophomore effort from British writer/director Paul Andrew Williams swings for being over the top both in its humor and it's nastiness. There are many moments that pull this off, particularly in the first two thirds where a botched kidnapping consistently and hilariously goes more and more off the rails. It is in the last act where the movie indulges in full-on slasher parody that things regrettably get a bit lazy. The about-face, thematic shift is appreciated as is the fact that the mayhem never stops, but once an isolated farm house with a deformed maniac playing cat and mouse with everyone who trespasses on his land is introduced, it unfortunately goes through all of the standard motions. Even though everything is still played primarily for laughs, it still comes off a bit too dumb while riding such cliches to the ground. The cast who mostly yells "Fuck!" at each other a lot is pretty strong and Laura Rossi's blatantly Danny Elfman-inspired score sets the comedic tone right out of the gate. Even though the last horror movie section is less-inventive, the rest of it just gets by enough on its vulgar, bloody charm.
(2009)
Dir - Christian Alvart
Overall: MEH
Technically a German production with British producers and an international cast, Pandorum is visually impressive with expertly designed, grimy, lived-in sets and sufficient enough effects, but it is also as stock and generic of a science fiction film as has ever been made. Melding two scripts from Travis Milloy and director Christian Alvart together, it is a shame how disastrously mundane it is. Astronauts waking up from hyper-sleep on an arc vessel to try and relocate humanity and then having to deal with hostile aliens aboard as a basic premise is fighting quite an uphill battle to offer up anything remotely unique to such cliches and indeed, there are none. It is further unfortunate that the presentation is more obnoxious than not with loud, screechy monsters, unintelligible dialog often mumbled, grumbled, or whispered and at least one character, (Ben Foster), getting tossed and dropped around like a rag doll without even so much as a broken pinky toe to show for it. The dialog itself is as tripe as everything else and it is all spoken/screamed by people being macho and miserable simultaneously. As a strict, by the books and gritty, contemporary outer space action movie, it fits the mold a little too well.
No comments:
Post a Comment