Out now: 78/52, Thelma, The Florida Project Reviews

Still in cinemas around the UK are some more films that I saw at the London Film Festival including Psycho documentary 78/52, Scandi-sort-of-horror Thelma and Sean Baker's Tangerine follow-up The Florida Project.

My review of 78/52 is up at Starburst Magazine here and this is is a snippet from the review:

"Director Alexandre O. Philippe takes the approach of honing in on one famous sequence; the Psycho shower scene. Hitchcock’s most famous set piece is put under the microscope, subjected to rigorous analysis, and (excuse the pun) showered with praise by a gaggle of talking heads including critics, directors, actors, editors and professors. Philippe has assembled an impressive list of some of the master of suspense’s biggest fans and all are eager to pore over the minute details of the sequence that has 78 cuts and 52 camera setups (hence the title)."

Also out is Joachim Trier's oddball horror film Thelma which I also reviewed at Starburst Magazine here. Here's the synopsis of the film from my review:

"The titular character is a young woman who has arrived in the city to study biology at university, for the first time living away from her rural-living religious parents. While Thelma makes friends and enjoys her new found independence, her strict parents are frequently phoning to check up on her. When Thelma meets classmate Anya, something awakens in her that is not just about her sexuality, but might also be supernatural."

Finally, The Florida Project is also out at the moment and though I have not reviewed this elsewhere, I have to highly recommend it now. The film mainly follows a child that lives in a motel down the road from Florida's Disneyworld theme park. She lives in poverty with her weed-smoking, foul-mouthed and irresponsible mother. 

I found this film incredibly depressing. What interests me is that many critics have gone on about the joy of the film. Seeing the story through the eyes of this young carefree girl makes it all seem so much more innocent and magical than it really is. What The Florida Project really deals with is inequality on a terrible scale, but also the way that some people fail to help themselves time and again. 

It angered me. It made me think of some old friends of mine. Friends that can barely make ends meet, but still manage to take drugs even though they now have children. People that I find it hard to call friends now even though I know damn well how hard their lives are. 

I think The Florida Project  is a brilliant film and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it pretty much everyday since I saw it two weeks ago. I found it very hard not to judge some characters and by the end, it left me thinking even more about someone close to me who works in social services. It's definitely not a barrel of laughs and I found it hard to see the joy that so many others saw in it. But it is brilliant, and strangely beautiful, with some of the best performances of the year across the board and a perfectly tragic open ending. See it if you can.

More from the London Film Festival 2017 
 

A Dark Song Review

A Dark Song seems to be floating around the place recently with a limited release. If you want to see Steve Oram as you've never seen him before, give it a chance.

Here's the gist of it:

Sophia (Catherine Walker) lost her son three years ago and is now determined to make contact with him by hiring alcoholic occultist Joseph Solomon (Steve Oram). When we meet Sophia, she is forking out a large amount of cash for a secluded old house in the Welsh countryside and asking the letting agent for privacy. Soon, Mr Solomon (as he is strictly to be called) arrives and the torturous process of invocation can begin. Sophia has been prepped for the difficulties that lie ahead, but is fully committed to submitting to Mr Solomon’s authority and abuse as he has assured her that she will be able to speak to her son again.

Read more of my review at Starburst Magazine here.

And here's the trailer;



 

Prevenge Review

Prevenge is out in cinemas as we speak. No doubt it will be available in other formats very soon as I don't think it is getting a very wide release. If you're thinking about watching it in a London cinema this week, or you are reading this at some undisclosed point in the future and considering watching the DVD, then check out my review below from the London Film Festival...

Alice Lowe writes, directs and stars as the pregnant Ruth, mourning the man who got her knocked up and hell bent on taking some revenge on the people she considers responsible for her lover’s death. While the baby girl inside her eggs her on by talking to Ruth and urging her to kill, Ruth must balance the ordinary challenges of pregnancy, while simultaneously ticking off names on her kill list and taking out anyone who gets in her way.

Prevenge plays on every mother’s fears of bringing a baby into the world. While Lowe was really pregnant as she took on the lead role, she might have poured out her major concerns about the world around her, but she still maintains a wicked sense of humour. Prevenge is a slasher film with a pitch black sense of humour, finding the mirth in murder and undercutting expectations of what society expects of a pregnant woman at every opportunity.

To read the whole review of Prevenge, please head to Starburst Magazine.

Here's the trailer:

More from the London Film Festival 2016. 

Blair Witch Review: Does Adam Wingard's Sequel Match the Original?

You've got to wonder where the parents of Heather and James Donahue are, and what exactly they think they're doing. We didn't see them before their daughter got lost in The Blair Witch Project and now they've only gone and let their son James wander off in search of his sister 20 years later. Surely one of the parents might have advised against this madness.

And so Blair Witch begins with director Adam Wingard (The Guest, You’re Next) taking us back into the haunted woods of Burkitsville as another group of camera-carrying crazies go in search of the elusive Elly Kedward. This time there’s six doomed younglings; James Donahue was four when Heather disappeared, Lisa wants to make a documentary on James’ ill-advised search for his missing sister, and their friends Peter and Ashley are just along for moral support (and to handily up the body count and prove that in horror, black guys are still first on the kill list). The four friends are then joined by oddballs Lane (darknet666) and Talia who uploaded footage to YouTube that they claim to have found on a tape in the woods. The shaky camera video appears to show a female figure in a house just like the one at the end of Heather’s original project. Is Heather still alive after all these years, or is the Blair Witch up to her old tricks again?

No points if you guess the answer, but prepare for another bumpy ride on you’re way to the climax. Blair Witch ditches much of the ambiguity of the original film. There’s no room for any real debate over what exactly happens to this bunch of terrified youths. Anyone still fuming that they sat through The Blair Witch Project and never got a single shot of the Blair Witch can rest assured that there is definitely something to see here. Thankfully, not too much though. Wingard is smart enough to know a little goes a long way and milks the most suspense possible from his characters’ shaky cameras and inability to confront the Blair Witch face to face. The sound design is also racked up a notch, sometimes a little too much as it sounds like the black smoke monster from Lost might have found its way into the woods of Maryland.

Though the Donahue kids’ parents could have done much more to stop at least their second child from heading into the woods, at least James and his buddies are much more prepared for their camping trip than Heather, Mike and Josh were back in 1994. This new crop of tech-savvy millenials have Walkie-talkies, GPS, wearable cameras, a drone camera, lots of lights, food and just more cameras than you can shake a spooky stick-man at. Unfortunately, they obviously didn't watch that footage filmed by Heather and Josh carefully enough as they don't seem to realise that it's all bloody useless when faced with the power of the Blair Witch.

And if you thought she was too passive in the original, or  maybe you don't believe that there was a curse and that everything can be explained rationally in the footage from Heather’s project, prepare to think again. In Blair Witch, the late Elly Kedward really unleashes her powers. She messes with their technology, messes with time and space, magics that old house from out of nowhere again and even throws in a few new tricks that are best left unspoiled. Wingard leaves you in no doubt that the Blair Witch exists and she's pretty much as terrifying as she ever was.

Fans of the original have to endure a little catch-up exposition to fill newcomers in on the legend of the Blair Witch, but at least a little more is added to the mythology. Rustin Parr’s house is also expanded with previously unseen elements providing one particularly claustrophobic moment. However, it's what goes down in the house that really gives the sweat glands a workout as familiar beats (people standing in corners, apologies, unseen attackers) get new and thrilling updates.

For those sick to death of found footage films, this offers little to win you over. There’s more cameras and camera technology so a slightly more varied visual experience than many other similar films. And the old charge of ‘why would they still be filming in this situation?’ is at least partially answered by having the characters wear their cameras on their head requiring them to not have to think about filming when the shit really hits the fan in the final act. These cameras also provide Peep Show style interactions as the characters talk to each other but gaze directly into the cameras. This pays dividends when two characters can only see each other's torch-lit faces while the space behind them remains in total, terrifying darkness.

So Blair Witch is scary, but it's not as ingenious and won't be as influential as the original. It's mostly a shame that Wingard didn't use the ‘method directing’ tactics of original directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick. Clearly some of the scenes were unpleasant to film, but the actors in this film got off lucky. Though there is less ambiguity in Blair Witch, there’s a higher body count and more hysteria to make up for it. It's just a shame that there isn't anything as iconic, moving and ‘real’ as Heather’s final apology in the project that started it all. Still, Blair Witch fans won't be disappointed and newbies will learn that the woods of Burkitsville can be scarier than Crystal Lake, Elm Street and Haddonfield put together. Go back to bed Paranormal Activity, the Blair Witch is back with a vengeance and as terrifying as ever.

Here's the trailer:

Now go buy my book on the original please! 

More on Blair Witch and the original:

Blair Witch trailer investigation

 

Quoted in Blair Witch Article on BBC Culture

 

Reviews of my book on The Blair Witch Project

 

15 Things You Probably Didn't Know about The Blair Witch Project

 

The Blair Witch Project and Top 10 Found Footage Films

Blair Witch trailer investigation

So Adam Wingard, what have you been up to down in the woods today? The director of You're Next and The Guest has finally put his cards on the table. His movie The Woods is now officially titled Blair Witch and IS a sequel to the original 1999 found footage horror.

The trailer takes us straight back into what looks like psycho hermit Rustin Parr's house way out in the woods of Burkitsville where the Blair Witch is known to lurk. If you don't know the backstory of the Blair Witch, (what do you live under a rock?) then check out the original film's website and the mythology section here.

The found footage point-of-view shot shows a frantic rush around the old house, before it is revealed that this is footage from YouTube which a guy called James is watching. The footage was uploaded by another guy who found a tape in the Black Hills woods. There is the distorted sound of screaming and at 11 seconds into the trailer, there is a person visible in the footage. That's all I can tell you about that.

But then James states to whoever is now filming him, 'I think that might be my sister'. I'm not the only one who immediately thinks.... 'You're sister???' Heather Donahue? Did Heather have a little brother in the original movie? I don't think it was ever mentioned, but then this girl's voice, who I assume is the off-camera camera operator filming this guy says, 'You really think you're sister could still be out there after all these years?' That's 17 years by the way if we're counting and assuming this sequel takes place in the present day.

Yikes! Please tell me Heather is still out there. I know the actress Heather Donahue has been busy growing weed and then writing books about it, but that means she's surely available for a cameo. God that would be a interesting development in the story... maybe.

So the Wikipedia page for the film states that this guy's name is James Donahue, so it definitely is supposed to be Heather's brother, but I don't know if this is 100% confirmed. It looks like James and his five college buddies head out into the woods to search for Heather after finding this YouTube footage. They know the legends, they know about the curse, they know about Elly Kedward a.k.a. The Blair Witch.

So then shit hits the fan as you would expect. Those creepy stick men; they're back and they're bigger. The kids start walking in circles again. Somebody (probably) kicks a map in the creek.

There is a shot of one of the girls with a camera in hand, suggesting that there must be at least two characters that will be carrying cameras, and in the great words of Cloverfield's Hud 'documenting everything'.  I wondered when I first watched this trailer if the film was all going to be found footage. The shot 7 seconds into the trailer suggests that either these college kids have a nice drone for capturing aerial shots (doubt it, though that would be awesome), or the film won't be all found footage, or it's just a nice shot to insert in the trailer but it won't be in the movie. I'm going with that last one.

Well anyway, then the kids start turning on each other and the woods start turning on them as the (hopefully still) invisible witch works her magic on them all. Looks like this film will have a lot more going on in it than the original. I suspect it will be gorier, more graphic and have more than just traipsing around in circles and arguing going on. There's a shot in the trailer that looks as though nature will attack them more than it ever did in the original. I'm talking Evil Dead style trees. And then there's the shots that remind me of The Descent with one of the girls crawling through a whole load of shite to escape from somewhere.

I hope they don't dare show us the Blair Witch and I hope this film keeps up the ambiguity. I'd love it if there was a link back to the original with Heather appearing in some form, but it needs to be ambiguous and it needs to be done well.

Also in the trailer: we have a person standing in the corner facing the wall, hand prints all over the spooky house and the voice of someone apologising. It sounds more like a bloody remake than a sequel when you put it like that.

More than anything, I hope this honours the original by limiting the gore, having no CGI whatsoever and being bloody scary. I don't want to see the witch, I don't want to know exactly what happens at the end and I don't want this to turn into a franchise that goes on and on and on with new batches of disposable teens. I'm already concerned that some of the six characters in the film are simply there to allow for a bigger body count.

I loved Adam Wingard's The Guest so I'm optimistic that this will have some good stuff in it. But I suspect that Wingard probably didn't go into original directors Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick's 'method directing' techniques and I think that is a huge shame. It will show in the performances, the cinematography and the dialogue and it will make Blair Witch a hell of a lot less believable than The Blair Witch Project is.

What do you think Blair Witch fans? Talk to me... I'm here for you! And please buy my book on The Blair Witch Project.

Here's the Blair Witch trailer:

Blair Witch Sequel Trailer is here!

Blair Witch fans... it's here! After waiting 17 years and ignoring a pretty poor sequel (Book of Shadows) that already came and went, The Blair Witch Project looks like it might be finally getting the sequel it deserves. Formally titles The Woods, it's now been made official. This is a Blair Witch sequel, and frankly it looks wicked!

Here's the trailer:

The Conjuring 2 Review

James Wan returns to horror after conjuring Paul Walker back from the grave in Fast and Furious 7. People loved The Conjuring, so it's no surprise to see a sequel. But as someone who found the original film a little bit average, I was surprised to find The Conjuring 2 so scary. It's great to have Wan back working in the genre that made him! Here's a snippet of my review:

"Never play with Ouija boards. Unfortunately, the kids in the 1977-set The Conjuring 2 will have been too young to see The Exorcist, so inevitably they unleash a demonic force in their home when they mess with a homemade hotline to unfriendly spirits. Janet Hodgson lives with her single mother and three siblings in a rundown house in Enfield. When Janet starts to go bump in the night by being lifted out of her bed and planted downstairs in the living room, paranormal investigators the Warrens travel to England to see if they can help.
 
This isn't supposed to be your average haunting. The fact that the Hodgson family are poor and English is supposed to make a difference. But actually, they still live in a typical house with large bedrooms full of things to smash, a living room with a spooky rocking chair in the corner, and the all-important set of stairs that can creak whenever anything (supernatural or otherwise) steps on them. The accents might be different and the walls could do with a lick of paint, but this is still your average haunted house movie..."

To read more of this review of The Conjuring 2, head to Starburst Magazine now!

Watch the trailer below:




More recent reviews from I Love That Film:

Mon Roi

Green Room

Son of Saul

Louder Than Bombs

Hardcore Henry

Attack of the Werewolves - Blu-Ray Review

Feel pity for the low budget horror comedy.  Not only does it have to be scary, but it also has to make you laugh; it’s not easy to do either.  Evil Dead 2 nailed it where many others have failed.  Shaun of the Dead hits the funny bone, has a nice bit of gore but doesn’t try to scare you.  An American Werewolf in London balances mirth with mayhem like a professional but in general, horror comedies tread a too thin line between making us feel fear and making us chuckle; one is just bound to cancel the other out.

Following successful efforts of the last few years such as Tucker & Dale vs Evil, Rubber and Cabin in the Woods, comes a Spanish entry into the comedy-horror hybrid genre.  Re-titled from the original Lobos de Arga into Game of Werewolves (why?) and then finally to Attack of the Werewolves (does what is says on the tin), this film is almost as confused as the people tasked with giving it an English title.

Beginning promisingly with an explicit graphic novel style introduction featuring plenty of sex and death, the film then flashes forward to commence with the story of Tomás (Gorka Otxoa).  The animated opening sets up a small rural village and a gypsy curse that befell it a hundred years ago due to some raunchy hanky-panky and gratuitous murder.  In the present, Tomás is a writer from the village of Arga who left when he was fifteen to live in Madrid and is now returning for a celebration in his honour.  On arrival, Tomás learns that he has actually been invited back to the village so the locals can spill his blood and finally lift the curse.

The early scenes are slow and sadly humourless before the pace picks up, the sinister locals show their true colours and the film transforms into a jolly romp featuring more werewolves than you can shake a stick at (or throw a stick for, as one character tries to do).  The film fails spectacularly to approach scary but the comedy does emerge as the quirky characters find themselves under increasing threat.

The interplay between Tomás, his literary agent Mario and his old best friend Calisto is occasionally very funny with the relationships being strained even as the werewolves multiply. Their methods for dealing with the dangerous situation are comical at best, and silly at worst, but do raise frequent smiles. Watch out for a great scene involving alcohol, severed fingers and a dog. 

The introduction of new characters comes a little late in the game but one in particular, the Guardia Civil (Luis Zahera) manages to make a memorable entrance and despite limited screen time, gets the big laughs. It’s a shame he wasn’t introduced earlier.

The make up and effects are refreshingly old-school with the werewolves being quite impressive creations and the inventive gore being very effective. The transformations are skilfully shot and edited resulting in a package that often looks better than its budget deserves.

It’s just a shame the film takes a while to get going and the gag rate is so hit and miss. With a title like Attack of the Werewolves you know what to expect and if you’re just after a bunch of old-school hairy beasts that aren’t created through hideously bad CGI or turning into bare-chested pretty boys like Taylor Lautner every five minutes, then this might just be the film for your Saturday night with a six-pack. Then again it’s Spanish and subtitled so you might want to take it easy on that six-pack.

A Night in the Woods DVD Review

Fed up of found footage films?  Wish they would just stay lost in the woods?  Well this British Blair Witch from director Richard Parry isn’t going to do much to get you back on board as it’s more likely to leave your stomach churning from another shaky-cam extravaganza.  

That said, if you enjoyed the last couple of Paranormal Activity films or any other number of lazily shot and scripted found footage horrors from the atrocious The Devil Inside to 2010’s marginally better The Last Exorcism, you could do worse than this well-acted little shocker.

While A Night in the Woods adds nothing to the already saturated found footage sub-genre like, say, the super powered capers of Chronicle, it does have a vaguely interesting threesome of lead characters, admirably played by capable actors who improvised much of the dialogue.  We first meet brash American Brody (Monsters’ Scoot McNairy) and his beautiful British girlfriend Kerry (Anna Skellern) as they prepare for a camping trip to Dartmoor’s Wistman’s Woods, stopping off along the way to pick up Kerry’s cousin Leo (Andrew Hawley).

The character dynamics are the most interesting element of the film and it feels as though more thrills, twists and turns and a far greater sense of dread could have been gleaned from the odd love triangle that develops between a boy, his girl and her cousin.  Yes that sounds weird but there are surprises in store as to the motivations of some of the characters and even who one claims to be.

Brody is amiable and amusing as the American belittling Britain’s Stonehenge in favour of his own country’s Grand Canyon and taking an instant dislike to the lothario Leo for reasons that become increasingly clear.  But as the woods grow darker and the night gets longer, it is clear that Leo isn’t the only one with things to hide.

The found footage technique is justified continuously by dialogue between the characters.  Kerry complains about Brody’s need to film everything.  Leo has even brought his own camera along for the trip allowing perspective to shift between the two characters’ cameras and finally to Kerry as she takes one of the cameras herself.  They watch previously filmed footage on laptops and an iPod, giving the film a clever way of showing revealing flashbacks about the characters.  It has to be said that this is actually not a bad looking film (for found footage) with the opening half particularly having some very attractive cinematography from DOP Simon Dennis.

It’s just a shame that it all descends into sub-Blair Witch running around in the woods, screaming hysterically, and getting bumped over the head by unseen forces, perhaps local legend ‘The Huntsman’.  These found footage films work best when a light on the camera illuminates the dark night, heavy breathing can be heard from the camera operator, and someone can be heard screaming in the distance. But when so many other films have done this to death, these scenes now drag and become quickly repetitive.  

It’s a blessing found footage films are so short as this one, like so many before it, fills most of the last twenty of its eighty minutes with shaky camera footage of the trees blurring past as a girl screams from behind the camera.  The first half’s interesting character relationships give way to something much less exciting but still a cut above many of the other found footage horrors of recent years.

See it if you like this sort of thing and you’re not looking for anything fresh, but if you’ve had enough of found footage, you’ll probably wish they never picked up the camera in the first place.