Dir - Paul Hyett
Overall: MEH
For his directorial follow-up to the unwatchable piece of absolute shit The Seasoning House, visual effects/make-up artist Paul Hyett switches gears with the shameless, gimmicky B-movie Howl. The set-up is simple and the structure formulaic of a bunch of people trapped in a single location who have to stop arguing with each other in order to survive being besieged by viscous beasts. So in other words, a zombie movie except with werewolves. Though the unoriginality is not a detriment in and of itself, Mark Huckerby and Nick Ostler's script is full of lame-brain plotting, terrible, uninterrupted monologues, and unlikable characters, many of whom are obnoxious assholes and/or morons for the mere dramatic sake of it. On the plus and only unique side, the creature design relies more on practical makeup than CGI, making an interesting lycanthropian look that is more demon and Neanderthal than conventional wolfman. The tone is too miserable and the characters too one-note and annoying to make the intended humor connect, but for fans of dopey schlock who also enjoy cool monsters, this might be worth sitting through.
Dir - Urmas E. Liiv
Overall: MEH
The first non-documentary film from Estonian writer/director Urmas E. Liiv, Ghost Mountaineer, (Must alpinist), tells a fictionalized account of an alleged true story involving a group of students trekking through the Siberian mountain ranges only to end up in a remote Buryate village where things get vaguely sinister. The first act is set up more in a documentary fashion with the characters providing narration over photographs and the like, but all of that is oddly abandoned once they emerge from the mountains and things settle into murky waters where aloof supernatural elements, Soviet-era politics, suspicion, and aggression all co-mingle in an incoherent fashion. Several things are alluded to throughout the film, (some mystical and some not), but Liiv never establishes the extent of the stakes and much of the cultural hospitality troubles that the characters find themselves in come off as equally unclear. It is a frustrating watch from a narrative perspective, but the performances are solid and Ants Martin Vahur's cinematography is captivating, capturing both the expansive beauty and horror of the harsh winter terrain.
Dir - Alejandro Amenábar
Overall: MEH
Writer/director Alejandro Amenábar's long-awaited, quasi-return to supernatural horror in Regression is well acted and consistently eerie, yet it is also surprisingly formulaic and disappointing coming from such a high-caliber filmmaker. Set in 1990 at the tail end of the Satanic panic heyday, the story is a conglomerate of several documented cases that have either been proven or widely accepted to be hoaxes, with Amenábar crafting a psychological thriller where regression therapy as well as traumatized imaginations weave dangerous results. All of the performances are up to par with Ethan Hawke being excellent as always as a headstrong detective and Emma Watson ideally cast as the young, would-be victim. The problem lies in the presentation which is deadly serious besides being essentially nothing more than melancholic schlock. To Amenábar's credit, the used of hooded figures with cartoonishly creepy, painted faces conducting black masses full of baby sacrifices, child molestation, and cannibalism is meant to be cliched as it all stems from sensationalized reports, but the plotting is too textbook to deliver any profound, real world revelations.
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