Dir - David Freyne
Overall: MEH
While pessimism is often an inherent trait in horror, it becomes quite exhausting in David Freyne's debut The Cured; yet another goddamn zombie movie where the nature of humanity is thrown up against hopelessly dour circumstances. In all fairness, Freyne's angle here is a unique one in that he presents a world where the 28 Days Later styled, aggressive "zombie" virus is actually cured, only the caveat is that the once infected are treated as lepers by the rest of the society, causing a violent uprising to stand-in for real world, "us vs. them" marginalization. All of this sounds fine and even intelligent on paper, but things quickly become obnoxious as it is all based on shaky, illogical footing where the discrimination seems preposterously uncalled for and exaggerated. To make matters worse, Freyne utilizes hacky genre tropes, most egregiously with predictable, deafeningly loud, monster noise jump scares and characters leaving long pauses to let each other dramatically contemplate their dialog before exhibiting asinine behavior in the messy, final act. The presentation is heady and bleak enough to disguise its poorly thought out details with the humor kept to an almost non-existent minimum and lots of gut-wrenching crying to go about, but the whole thing collapses easily.
Dir - Juliana Rojas/Marco Dutra
Overall: GOOD
Imperfect
yet commendable for its bold choices and unique presentation of dark fairy tale subject matter, writer/director duo Juliana Rojas and
Marco Dutra's latest full-length collaboration Good Manners, (As Boas Maneiras),
is one of the most interesting, live action Disney homages disgusted as
a horror film that one is likely to see. Structured in two parts, it
reveals its cards very slowly, unveiling more stylistic layers as it
goes on which throw in everything from conventional monster movie,
lesbian romance, and burst into song musical in as least likely of a
manner as possible. The first half is comparatively the strongest as it
offers up the most surprises, focusing on the natural bonding between
hired caretaker Isabél Zuaa and estranged-from-her-wealthy-family,
mother-to-be Marjorie Estiano. When things jump ahead, it becomes
more foreseeable where it will all lead, but the emotional core at the
story remains gripping, which focuses in no spoon-feeding terms on the
loyalty of unconditional love. The performances are excellent all
around and Rojas and Dutra bathe the movie in vibrant colors as well as a
heightened aesthetic that never becomes distracting. Save a few minor
plot holes in the end and some unfortunately terrible CGI, it is an
excellent, refreshing work that has both its heart and genre admiration
in the right places.
Dir - Herman Yau
Overall: MEH
It is no wonder that Herman Yau's The Sleep Curse, (Shi mian), is allegedly the movie that broke actor Anthony Wong from doing any future horror films as it is a laughably misguided mess all of the way through. Even during the initial set up which sees Wong arguing about not being granted the funds to pursue a sleep deprivation experiment, Yau proves to be working within a schlock framework. Yet once the narrative detours into a half-hour long flashback sequence for the second act, the momentum suffers exponentially from there as it then proceeds to bounce between two different timelines at irregular intervals. The production values are noticeably cheap; like early 90s straight-to-video cheap except with occasional bouts of terrible CGI and modern day, screechy jump scares that would be annoying if not for how hilariously stupid they are. Tonally, the real life World War II atrocities sit very awkwardly with whatever else Yau was going for here, especially considering that the last twenty minutes busts out cartoon level violence and preposterous shock-value tactics, though granted neither of these are new to the director's earlier gore spectacles. We witness Wong removing a corpse's face for no reason in order to take out his brain, feasting on his love interest's arm, and most ridiculous of all, cutting a bad guy's penis off and shoving it in said bad guy's mouth before decapitating him. At a hundred and two minutes, it is an egregious experience to sit through, but if trash fans are willing to cherry pick a handful of bloody, outrageous moments to laugh at, it at least has you covered there.
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