2019 - November
RANKING ALL FILMS:
01. Hereditary (2018) 4/4
02. Time of Miracles (1990) 3.5/4
03. Doctor Sleep (2019) 3/4
04. Tales from the Lodge (2019) 3/4
05. The Diary of Diana Budisavljevic (2019) 3/4
06. The Body (2018) 2.5/4
07. Ghost Stories (2017) 1.5/4
08. Powaqqatsi (1988) 1.5/4
09. Flesh & Blood (2018) 1/4
01. Hereditary (2018) 4/4
02. Time of Miracles (1990) 3.5/4
03. Doctor Sleep (2019) 3/4
04. Tales from the Lodge (2019) 3/4
05. The Diary of Diana Budisavljevic (2019) 3/4
06. The Body (2018) 2.5/4
07. Ghost Stories (2017) 1.5/4
08. Powaqqatsi (1988) 1.5/4
09. Flesh & Blood (2018) 1/4
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- DirectorJeremy DysonAndy NymanStarsSamuel BottomleyDeborah WastellAmy DoyleAfter receiving a file with details of three unexplained cases of apparitions, skeptical professor Phillip Goodman embarks on a terrifying trip.01-11-2019
It's a rule now that all horror films featuring a paranormal investigator must begin with a sequence showing them unmasking a fake psychic. "Ghost Stories", a handsomely mounted but enormously flawed portmanteau throwback begins just like that with our lead, the James Randi-like professional debunker going by the name Professor Goodman (Andy Nyman), pulling off a dramatic stage invasion to show how a fake psychic "communicates with the dead". This is all part of Goodman's very successful debunking TV show an episode of which is dedicated to Goodman's idol Charles Cameron (Leonard Byrne), a 1970s TV debunker himself, who mysteriously disappeared more than 40 years ago. Then, one night, Goodman receives a mysterious audiotape from a man claiming to be Cameron, now a fully-fledged believer in the supernatural, who issues a challenge to Goodman. He's to look into three cases Cameron couldn't disprove which Cameron claims will turn Goodman into a believer too. Goodman accepts and thus we are launched into the titular ghost stories.
Each of these stories is framed by Goodman interviewing the man it happened to which quickly becomes the first of the many issues I had with "Ghost Stories". Namely, we see the protagonist of each story alive and well before the story even begins and thus the suspense of the story itself is deflated before it even began. We know they'll get away from the terrors haunting them unharmed (at least physically) which prevents us from ever becoming truly afraid and our interest in the stories becomes rather academic.
The first story concerns Tony (Paul Whitehouse), an asylum night guard haunted by a ghost of a little girl. The second, Simon (Alex Lawther), a frightened teenager who steals his father's car only to run over the Devil himself. And the third Mike (Martin Freeman), an arrogant businessman who is bothered by a poltergeist on the night of his son's birth. All three stories have the same basic problems. The first is that none of the three characters is in the least bit likeable making us unable to sympathise with their plights or care for their wellbeing thus further deflating the suspense of the movie. This is no fault of the three actors, all of whom give excellent performances, but rather of the script which seems utterly uninterested in fleshing these three guys out beyond their most basic descriptions. The second, and perhaps biggest problem of "Ghost Stories", is that all three stories rely on the exact same kind of slow-burn scares which quickly become old and frankly predictable. Yes, I've seen enough horror films in my life to know that the creepy child will appear the third time the flashlight flickers. And I've already seen "Halloween", so I know that the threat will appear behind the protagonist in the vast area of the screen left out of focus. Because of the slow-burn nature of the scares, all three stories drag on endlessly, especially the final one in which the only scare is built up for almost 10 minutes only to disappoint with a poor CG-rendered ghost and a cheap jump scare reveal. The final flaw shared by all three stories is that they have no endings whatsoever. All of them are one-gag tales never developed further beyond their basic premise. All three end as soon as the monster is revealed often without tying up any loose ends.
So, what do all three of these stories ultimately build up to? Well, I won't spoil the big twist of "Ghost Stories", but suffice to say you'll probably guess it well before the film ends. It is a preposterous, poorly set-up, and ultimately entirely unsatisfying twist which I've seen done better in far worse films.
Now, don't get me wrong. "Ghost Stories" has its merits. The performances, for one, are uniformly top-notch, especially the ones from Martin Freeman, who is obviously having a lot of fun starring as the snide businessman, and Paul Whitehouse who gives a wonderful display of vulnerability and inner sadness as the seemingly gruff night guard. Also excellent is the cinematography Ole Bratt Birkeland who does a superb job evoking the feel of those old 70s Amicus films. Also notable is Haim Frank Ilfman's gloriously over the top score which was probably the high point of the film for me.
But the script fails the talented cast and crew. It is too conceited, bland, predictable, and threadbare to truly ever deliver any scares or laughs. The most it got out of me was a few knowing grins, mostly from the second story which came closest to being remotely entertaining. The rest of the film is a dire exercise in style without any substance. Ghosts this film has but it is notably short on story.
1.5/4 - DirectorAri AsterStarsToni ColletteMilly ShapiroGabriel ByrneA grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.03-11-2018
"First there's the smell of something wrong," says Annie (Toni Collette) when describing the loss of her daughter (Milly Shapiro). And that's precisely what "Hereditary", Ari Aster's astounding directorial debut evokes best. That disquieting feeling that something is about to happen, that something is not quite right. It is a superb portrait of a family torn apart by thing unspoken, merely felt, sensed, intuited and Aster makes damn well sure we feel, sense, intuit it as well which is what makes "Hereditary" one of the most powerful films of the decade. Its atmosphere which creeps under your skin and lulls you into a sense of unease is so expertly executed that you often forget you're watching a film. I was often reminded of Kenneth Lonergan's equally brilliant "Manchester by the Sea" in that both films managed to build a suffocating yet realistic atmosphere through long takes, carefully designed camera moves, and a lot of silence.
From the very first moments of the film, it is clear something is wrong with the Grahams. Annie, the mother, who obsessively recreates her own environments as miniatures which she can control and understand, seems unable to emote at her own mother's funeral. Charlie, the daughter, sleeps far away from her home, in a treehouse and refuses to communicate with anyone. Peter (Alex Wolff), the son, moves quietly, carefully as if trying to avoid an unavoidable conflict. While the father, Steve (Gabriel Byrne) tries to bring everyone together. There is something, however, keeping this family apart. We don't know what it is yet but neither do they and that inability to confront their problems makes them grow further and further apart.
Annie attends a grief support group. She talks about her mother with a curious detachment, recounting her life story but never talking about the person, as if she's remembering a film she saw on the telly a while back. The son avoids his mother and when they do talk he does so curtly and with carefully chosen words. The unspoken conflict seems to be between the two of them. The daughter, as if forgotten by the world, wanders around her school alone. She cuts off the head of a dead pigeon. While the rest of the family are curiously detached from one another, she seems detached from the whole world, as if possessed by a deep sadness. The father, like someone who's weathered a hell of a storm, stoically arbitrates between the others, at times acting like he's trying to bring them close together and sometimes like he's trying to keep them apart. For their own safety, perhaps. He chooses not to tell Annie about her mother's grave being desecrated. He clearly thinks she couldn't handle it. He's probably right.
Then a further tragedy occurs. While out at a party with her brother, Charlie is killed in a car accident. Like fire to the fuel, the death of the daughter activates the minefield of repressed emotions between the remaining three. Peter, ridden with guilt and haunted by his late sister, withdraws further into himself. Annie, unable to let go, pushes her son further and further away by laying all the blame for Charlie's death on him mainly in order to deny her own sense of guilt for making Charlie go to the party in the first place. Looking for a way to get her daughter back, she becomes involved with Joan (Ann Dowd), a friend from the grief support group who claims to be able to contact the dead. Meanwhile, it is the father who threatens to explode first as he grows weary of his increasingly dysfunctional family. The rising tension takes its toll on the man who chooses to shoulder all the responsibility.
Before you ask, yes, "Hereditary" is a horror film. But to me (and I believe to Ari Aster as well) the true horror in it is the destruction of a family by their own repressed traumas. By the time genre elements such as cultists and demons showed up, I was already well and truly chilled to the bone not by ancient curses but by the frailty of the human psyche.
Aster carefully constructs every element within this film like Annie does with her miniatures. Most of the shots in the film are wide and perpendicular in relation to the actors giving the film a feel of cold detachment like the one that exists within the family. Cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski bathes the film in cold colours further hammering the point that all true human warmth is gone in the Graham household. Like the final piece of the puzzle comes the subdued, minimalist score by Colin Stetson whose work here is as brilliant as that of Klaus Schulze on Gerald Kargl's 1983 masterpiece "Angst".
The performances are, of course, sublime with the main cast of four managing to perfectly create the illusion of a quartet each of whom is playing a different tune. They each give their characters a rich inner life while making their outer shells as cold as possible. Toni Collette portrays a mental breakdown better than anyone I've seen since Gena Rowlands in "A Woman Under the Influence".
In other words, "Hereditary" is so well constructed and executed that even though its finale is preposterous I wouldn't change a second of it. The atmosphere is so thick, affecting, and suffocating that it sucks you deep into a world you never wanted to experience. It is telling that the most profound film about family dynamics and human relationships of this decade is a horror film, a genre often mischaracterised as lofty and infantile. Ari Aster's "Hereditary" is one of those films that will in a few years be looked upon as an unrivalled masterpiece in much the same way "The Shining" or "Rosemary's Baby" are. And still, I see great things ahead for Aster and I believe he will find a way to better even a film as "perfect" as this.
4/4 - DirectorAbigail BlackmoreStarsMackenzie CrookDustin Demri-BurnsLaura FraserFriends gather at a lodge to commemorate a friend, who drowned in a lake nearby 3 years ago. They tell each other scary stories and suddenly find themselves in one.11-11-2019
Abigail Blackmore's feature-length debut "Tales from the Lodge" is being advertised as a portmanteau film, but it's not. Sure, it has stories within it, but they make up only a small portion of the film's runtime and are far less important than the people telling them and what these stories tell us about them. In this film, the framing story is the one that matters, the rest is the icing on the cake.
The film tells the story of five college friends who meet up at a small lodge in the woods to mark the passing of the sixth member of their group, Jonesy (Adam Straughan) who committed suicide at that very spot. The five still keep in touch and are very much a part of each other's lives, but that doesn't mean there aren't dirty little secrets between them just itching to get out. Four of the friends are paired up into married couples, the more stable of the two being that between Russell (Johnny Vegas), a good-time loving jokester and Emma (Sophie Thompson), the sensible, down-to-Earth one of the group. The extremes of their personalities nicely balance each other and the dynamic of their relationship rests on that equilibrium. The less stable of the two is the marriage between the rash and curt Martha (Laura Fraser) and the sickly woos Joe (Mackenzie Crook). It is evident he'd be lost without her to anchor and push him while at the same time she's tired of being the lone spiritus movens in the relationship.
Conflict arises when the fifth friend, the single charmer Paul (Dustin Demri-Burns) brings his new, supermodel-type girlfriend Miki (Kelly Wenham) to what the rest of the group take to be a private gathering. Especially annoyed is Martha who seems to be taking out her frustrations on Miki. To ease the situation, they begin telling stories and this is where the anthology aspect of the film comes in. The stories are brief, usually without a definite ending and serve (in actually quite a well-done manner) not to entertain the audience but to inform us more about the personalities and secret desires and fears of the people telling them. Paul's short tale about a woman he found dead on his car betrays his shallowness and disinterest in other people's feelings, Martha's story about an undersexed woman (Nicola Stephenson) whose weakling of a husband (Cavan Clerkin) is possessed by a ghost who turns him into a sex beast mirrors her feelings about her own relationship with Joe whose nightmare is all about his feelings of loneliness and fear of death. Russell, on the other hand, ever the funny one, tells a very clever (and entertaining) zombie spoof which is all about his love for his children. Finally, Emma, being the grounded one, retells the horrors of her childbirth allowing herself one moment of weakness before continuing to be the rock everyone relies on. Meanwhile, the main storyline continues with tensions between the five slowly rising as the question of Jonesy's suicide is brought up.
So, as you can see, "Tales from the Lodge" is not really a portmanteau film. It merely uses the format occasionally in a clever and innovative way to enrich the main story. The tales themselves, thus, are not really great as standalone pieces. But they don't have to be. Some are more developed than others. Martha's sex-ghost story and Russell's zombie apocalypse could easily be released as short films and no one would be any the wiser, while Paul's story ends with him stating he doesn't care what happened next but that his Mercedes was alright. Interestingly enough, Abigail Blackmore, the film's overall director, allowed the actors telling the stories to direct them as well which is a clever little experiment which doesn't show on screen as much as it perhaps could have but still allows each story to have its own style and aesthetic which is perhaps enough. I must say that Laura Fraser comes across as the most skilled director of the cast but Johnny Vegas' home-movie trash aesthetic gave me the most laughs.
Now for the main story. Overall, I really enjoyed "Tales from the Lodge" first for its performances. The six-member lead cast is uniformly excellent especially Vegas who surprised me with the amount of vulnerability and warmth he showed as Russell. Also commendable is Blackmore's tight direction which neatly balances between horror and comedy and the cinematography by David Mackie who manages to evoke a spooky atmosphere on a budget. The film does, however, have its fair share of flaws, the biggest of which is thin characterisation. Blackmore should have spent more time working on fleshing out the film's characters who in the finished product tend to come across as quite one-dimensional. Martha and Joe, especially, never manage to rise above their stereotypes (the bitchy one and the weak one, respectively) even though compelling motivations are given for each of their's behaviours. Also problematic are the film's fairly predictable third-act twists which I called as the film was beginning. Anyone who's seen more than one film about friends alone in the woods will know where "Tales from the Lodge" is going.
Never-the-less, though, I enjoyed the trip and this is one of those films where I feel that the good outweighs the bad. I enjoyed Blackmore's toying with the portmanteau format, I enjoyed the performances, and I had quite a few laughs along the way. While "Tales from the Lodge" may not be a film for the ages, I am truly excited to see Ms Blackmore's next one as she is going straight on my list of debutants to watch out for.
3/4 - DirectorGoran PaskaljevicStarsPredrag 'Miki' ManojlovicDragan MaksimovicMirjana KaranovicIn September 1945, a fire burns down the school and the new Communist authorities get into the church, hang the flag of the Communist Party, and paint over frescoes--which miraculously restore themselves.11-11-2019
3.5/4 - DirectorGodfrey ReggioStarsChristie BrinkleyDavid BrinkleyPatrick DisantoAn exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.12-11-2019
1.5/4 - DirectorPaul DavisStarsTom BatemanRebecca RittenhouseAurora PerrineauA sophisticated hitman with a cynical view on modern society finds his work made more difficult when he has to transport a body on Halloween night, but everyone is enamored by what they think is his killer costume.14-11-2019
What's the best time of year to lug around a dead body? Halloween, of course. Amongst the sea of zombies, vampires, bloody slasher queens, and Freddies & Jasons, no one will pay attention to you and your dead friend. Well, at least that's what Wilkes (Tom Bateman), a chillingly calm, collected, and able hitman with a proclivity for philosophical discourse and wearing an obligatory smart suit thought. Tasked with getting a freshly murdered target from point A to point B in a set timeframe he sets off on a trip across town, but a pretty harsh Halloween trick leaves him stranded and he hitches a ride with a group of computer designers who are impressed with his "costume" and insist he joins them for a drink. Soon, though, fortunes reverse and the geeks figure out the dead body Wilkes is dragging behind is actually a dead body, steal it and find themselves on the run from the T-1000 like hitman.
It would be very easy indeed to completely pan "The Body". Its premise alone is ludicrously far-fetched and clumsily set-up. I'll buy it that the geeks believe the corpse is fake at first. But they have to be far stupider than they are to continue believing it even after they see it bleed, shake, and moan, especially considering the corpse's bare feet are sticking out and are fairly obviously real (a directorial decision I find, simply put, confounding). It is also never convincingly explained why these guys take the dead body with them while running from the hitman. Some mentions of a reward are made but this is such a ridiculous notion I shan't even pretend to consider it. The storyline itself is utterly predictable. The script is full of recognisable set-pieces and characters stereotypical to such a point you can even guess the order in which they will be killed. The only unusual thing that ever happens is the budding love that develops between the hitman and Maggie (Rebecca Rittenhouse), a death-obsessed girl he meets at the party. However, this fairly original and clever development which could have nudged "The Body" into a very interesting area indeed, is ruined by a twist too many at which point I pretty much lost interest for anything but the fairly well-executed kills, far gorier and more inventive than anything you'll see in your dime-a-dozen PG-13 horror films of today.
However, there is definitely something about this film that is absorbing and ultimately quite entertaining and it is that it mercifully never seems to take itself too seriously and allows us quite a few moments of levity along the way which managed to keep my attention and while this may seem like faint praise it's no easy task and it is something commendable. It also gave me a few honest laughs even though its self-aware sense of humour is already old-hat in the horror genre.
Also quite good is Bateman who, although remaining fairly one-note throughout, manages to be convincingly creepy and threatening in what could have easily been a fairly dull part. The rest of the cast also does a fine job with their parts even though none of them has anything close to a three-dimensional character to play. They do, however, manage to land the gags and remain fairly entertaining. The only outright annoying aspect of "The Body" are the moments of virtue-signalling via occasional and wildly out of place references to female liberation, racial profiling, and mansplaining which come across as incredibly eye-poking and jarring in an otherwise lightweight movie.
Even with all its flaws, "The Body", an entertaining, no-frills horror/comedy manages to hit its low-set bars with likeable panache. Like I said it gave me some laughs and some thrills and for what it is, I can't fault it. It's far from a masterpiece or even something you'll remember by the next day, but if it's raining outside or you have a headache "The Body" will waste your time in a pleasant manner.
2.5/4 - DirectorDana BudisavljevicStarsAlma PricaBiserka IpsaIgor SamoborThe story of Diana Budisavljevic, who embarked on a campaign of rescuing more than 10,000 children from the Ustasha camps in Nazi-occupied Croatia. A dramatized retelling mixed with archival material and interviews with survivors.17-11-2019
Diana Budisavljevic saved more than 15000 children from the horrors of the Ustasha run death camps. Under constant threat of death, persecution, detainment, and prying eyes of the Croatian puppet state, she persevered in her selfless humanitarian efforts. Diana Budisavljevic is the Yugoslav Oscar Schindler, a hero, a shining beacon in the darkest of times. So, why hasn't there been a film about her life before now? Well, I can understand why one wasn't made in the 90s considering that Ms Budisavljevic's life story carries with it a profoundly anti-fascist and anti-Ustasha sentiment which would have been inconvenient for the Croatian heads of state, who at the time were essentially reviving everything Ms Budisavljevic was fighting against. But that no film was made in the period between the 60s and the 80s when Yugoslav cinema was at its strongest is inexcusable. It is however not inexplicable considering that Ms Budisavljevic was not a renowned figure at the time as she was neither a member of the Communist Party or of the working class.
Either way, the film has been made now by one of her descendants, documentary filmmaker Dana Budisavljevic and it has premiered in all the former republics of Yugoslavia with success and acclaim. For doing a great and worthy job of spreading Diana Budisavljevic's story and message I must commend it and that in and of itself is no small accomplishment. The audience I saw it with was audibly moved by what they saw and were largely in tears by the time the movie was over. That alone makes "The Diary of Diana Budisavljevic" a must-see movie. However, the question of whether it is truly a cinematic experience is the one that has been bothering me from the moment I left the theatre. Had I seen this film on television I wouldn't have given a second thought to applauding its treatment of the story and deft narrative mixing of documentary scenes and reenactments, but projected in a movie theatre it somehow seems an awkward fit. Like a 1.33 film stretched to widescreen and there, on the big screen, it simply pales in comparison with more recent Holocaust dramas such as "Son of Saul", "Ida", and even Goran Paskaljevic's "When Day Breaks".
What "The Diary of Diana Budisavljevic" sorely lacks is a sense of an experience which to me is the edge films have over other arts. "Son of Saul" is a great example of this, a film which uses cinematic methods as old as the art itself makes you feel like you are there, in Auschwitz yourself, following a Sonderkommando on his daily routine. "Ida", on the other hand, took a different approach and allowed us to experience, as A.O. Scott put it, "a cosmos of guilt, violence and pain" through Pawlikowski's carefully built atmosphere and Agata Trzebuchowska wonderfully understated performance.
In comparison, "The Diary of Diana Budisavljevic" is a clinical exercise sorely lacking in emotion and a sense of empathy. Of course we will react emotionally to archival footage of dying, undernourished children. Of course we will feel sympathy watching survivors relate their stories. Of course we will feel anger at all those citizens of Zagreb throwing their hands in the air saluting the occupying Nazi forces. But beyond these almost instinctive reactions and the admiration for Ms Budisavljevic, the movie evoked nothing else in me. I never felt its reenactions were anything more than coldly informative. Historical facts related to us in a manner other than narration. They contain no artistic flourishes nor any attempts to truly bring to life this amazing story. The filmmakers might as well have had someone narrate over archival footage.
Now, quite a lot of this can be put down to a lack of budget. The shots are always curiously framed in such a way they only reveal selected parts of buildings and cityscapes. The costumes look more theatrical than realistic. The black-and-white photography helps but only so much to cover up the overall cheapness. But I won't hold this against the filmmakers. What I will hold against them is a lack of ambition. Most of the reenactments are curt dialogue scenes between Diana Budisavljevic and various country officials with varying degrees of sympathy for her cause. These scenes, highly expositional in nature, feel more like watching CCTV footage of Red Cross meetings then an artistic rendering of a dramatic event and that's truly what I want to see when I go to a theatre. An artist's vision of a story which will move me or excite me or enrage me not by showing me horrific images but by making me sympathise with its characters and their plights. "The Diary of Diana Budisavljevic" fails in that regard as its characters remain cyphers and their plights only talked about rather than depicted. This is not the fault of the wonderful cast, especially the understated and overall impressive Alma Prica in the title role, but the director Dana Budisavljevic who approaches these reenactments with the impersonal, distant eye of a well-trained TV documentarian.
Thus the documentary portions of the film fare better. The interviews with four Holocaust survivors saved by Diana Budisavljevic are emotional and informative without ever feeling sentimental or on-the-nose. Consisting mainly of footage of the survivors returning to the real-life locations of the concentration camps, they reveal the horrors they saw not so much through their words but through the expressions on their faces and the profound sadness in the eyes as they revisit the places which still haunt their nightmares. The one-shot I found especially moving was of an old woman remembering sick children dying around her in Jasenovac as she carefully arranges the dead tree branches lying on the window of her former cell. It feels in that one shot that the old woman has travelled back in time and is reliving the worst days of her life and the tidying up is her way to find order in a world of chaos.
So "The Diary of Diana Budisavljevic" fails as an artistic vision, but as an informative documentary on an extraordinary woman, it works quite satisfactorily. For that reason alone, I feel I must recommend it but don't go see it at the cinema, wait and watch it on television where it truly belongs. I must, however, praise the excellent moody cinematography by Jasenko Rasol which gives the film a film noir atmosphere reminiscent of the one created by Goran Trbuljak in the films of Zoran Tadic.
3/4 - DirectorMike FlanaganStarsEwan McGregorRebecca FergusonKyliegh CurranYears following the events of The Shining (1980), a now-adult Dan Torrance must protect a young girl with similar powers from a cult known as The True Knot, who prey on children with powers to remain immortal.17-11-2019
Abra Stone (Kyliegh Curran) is one of those gifted children from the works of Stephen King. You know the kind. Precocious and haunted by a kind of unexplained mystical darkness. You've seen the type in "Carrie", you've seen her in "Firestarter" and now she shows up again, although in a more positive light in "Doctor Sleep" where she possesses a form of ESP known in the Kingverse as the shining which allows her to communicate with other gifted people through telepathy, read minds, predict futures, enter consciousnesses, teleport and god knows what else as the film doesn't quite show us the limits of her powers. Well, as it turns out, Abra is only one of many such gifted children all of whom are preyed upon by an evil cult known as The True Knot (it's never explained why they are known as The True Knot) consisting of evil vampire-like creatures who feed on a kind of steam that projects out of these gifted children's mouths as they brutally murder them. Abra witnesses one such murder in her dreams of a young boy named Bradley Trevor (Jacob Tremblay) and sets upon a mission to stop The True Knot. But The True Knot become aware of her and decide to feed on her steam. Needing help fighting the good fight, Abra calls on her special friend (no, not that kind of special friend), fellow shiner Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor), the sole surviving member of the Torrance family we saw terrorised by ghosts in the famous Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece "The Shining".
Yes, "Doctor Sleep" is one of those tenous sequels which feel more like standalone stories into which characters and universes from other, more successful, stories have been implanted. Could this film have worked without Dan and all "The Shining" references? Yes, absolutely. But it is to the credit of the capable cast of "Doctor Sleep" and the deft direction of Mike Flanagan that I was never annoyed by this cynical, money-grubbing welding of stories. In fact, I enjoyed it more as a standalone movie than a sequel it was advertised as.
How come? Well for one the story is actually quite engaging. Sure it feels like a cocktail of "Firestarter" and Kathryn Bigelow's 1987 cult masterpiece "Near Dark", but I found its fantasy-laden atmosphere and willingness to treat even the most absurd elements with the utmost seriousness endearing. I also liked the film's characters who, although they never exhibit a third dimension and remain firmly on the good-evil scale, I found myself caring for by the end of the movie. It also helps that the villains are extremely effective. Rebecca Ferguson is especially chilling as Rose the Hat, the hippyish leader of the True Knot cult and possibly the finest horror movie antagonist I've seen in ages. The rest of the cast is excellent as well especially Ewan McGregor who gives a character who could have easily become preachy or soppy true relatability, the young Kyliegh Curran who is a far better child lead than Drew Barrymore ever was, and Emily Alyn Lind who capably and extremely creepily plays the film's secondary villain.
Mike Flanagan, a director I've very much had a love-hate relationship in that I found all of his previous film overly talky and underwhelming but absolutely loved his take on "The Haunting of Hill House", directs "Doctor Sleep" with newfound confidence. I was impressed with the easiness with which he switches between elements which seem almost like they belong in a fairytale and brutally realistic horror. The murder of Bradley Trevor especially is a gruelling, harrowing sequence which seems to go on forever and manages to be genuinely moving and horrifying without ever feeling exploitative or gratuitously graphic. Like in "The Haunting of Hill House" he gives the film a slow-burn atmosphere and the complex, literary world of Stephen King enough time to reveal all its magical potential (his works have always worked best in miniseries format for that very reason) without ever allowing the film to sag or become repetitive. The story progresses constantly just at a slower, more meditative pace than we're used to. So if I ever meet Mr Flanagan I'll have to give him a friendly pat on the back and a special commendation for allowing me to take a breath and relax into the film's spooky atmosphere unlike Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer whose extremely forgettable and dull "Pet Sematary" zoomed past at such a speed I found myself missing story beats while blinking.
Also well executed is the recreation of the Overlook Hotel. I really enjoyed myself recognising all the locations from Kubrick's masterpiece as Ewan McGregor wandered through the familiar hallways.
In conclusion, I enjoyed "Doctor Sleep" a lot more than I thought I would. I enjoyed it for the excellent performances, truly threatening villains, and a wild imagination willing to go far, far over-the-top brought effectively to life by Mike Flanagan who's never been on better form than these past two years. Of course, this is no masterpiece and it's certainly not on par with "The Shining". Among its flaws, I'd count thin characterisation, lack of depth and substance, and a kind of money-grubbing shamelessness only post-Marvel Hollywood can exhibit. If it weren't such faint praise I'd end this review by proclaiming "Doctor Sleep" to be the best Stephen King adaptation since "Secret Window", instead I'll merely say it's the most imaginative and entertaining studio picture out right now.
3/4 - DirectorPatrick LussierStarsDermot MulroneyDiana SilversTembi LockeKimberly, a teenager suffering from agoraphobia, has not left the house since her mother's unsolved murder. On the eve of Thanksgiving, she begins to suspect that the safe harbor of home and her doting father may be a dangerous mirage.30-11-2019
It has often been said that great works of art are the ones that make you wonder, ask questions, rethink accepted truths. Of course, that is not the only criterium for great art because if it were, "Flesh & Blood" would be one of the greatest cinematic works of art of all time. Here is a movie that made me wonder and question myself all the way throughout its 90-minute runtime. It made me wonder who the hell is this film made for, who on Earth could find any enjoyment in it, it made me question my ability to pick films to watch, and it made me sad about the millions of dollars that went into this project. So many starving kids could have been fed with that money.
Most importantly, however, it made me ask myself how does Patrick Lussier, probably the greatest hack of modern cinema, convince an otherwise relatively sensible producer like Jason Blum to fund one of his atrocities. His latest film, "Trick" was a shockingly bland cliche-storm, but his previous endeavour, "Flesh & Blood" is even worse. It is a film so dull, hideously inept, and laughably ill-conceived that some of it made me audibly groan.
Let's start from the ridiculous and threadbare premise. After the death of her mother, 20-year old Kimberly (Diana Silvers) develops agoraphobia and becomes a shut-in in her family home. However, through a series of circumstances only possible in a film as badly written as this one, she discovers her seemingly loving father (Dermot Mulroney) is actually murdering young girls who resemble her mother. What is she to do? Well, nothing original in the least. From the moment Kimberly spots a necklace her father's just given her on the photo of a recently murdered girl to the moment her father lunges at her with a box-cutter saying the immortal line "You're in big trouble!" (a line so horribly cliched the only worse alternative imaginable could be "Here comes daddy") "Flesh & Blood", in typical Lussier fashion, plods through every cliche like a textbook. More agonisingly it does it at a snail's pace which helps extend a premise which could have, at best, been a fairly poor 25-minute episode of "Tales from the Crypt" into an almost unbearable 90-minute concentration challenge.
Also typical of Lussier is the way the film develops in a completely straightforward fashion. Completely devoid of twists and turns everything young Kimberly suspects in the first 10 minutes turns out to be true by the 30th and everything past that is merely a prolonged chase scene through an average-sized house with only about three possible places to hide. To allow Kimberly to escape her murderous drill-wielding daddy, the filmmakers resort to some of the least convincing methods I've ever seen. One of the most egregious ones comes as kill-daddy discovers Kimberly hiding in the house's crawl-space. He's just about to get her when the phone rings. I kid you not, smack in the middle of a chase scene, the man drops his power tool and goes to answer it. This is only one in a series of moments in this film that boggle my mind.
More awfulness comes courtesy of screenwriter Louis Ackerman whose dialogue ranges from embarrassingly cliched (see paragraph three), incomprehensible (all the characters do quite a lot of rambling I couldn't follow), to sickeningly saccharine (the film begins with pre-death-of-wife papa declaring "I just would never want to lose you two. You're the loves of my life." Cue terrible piano music. Cue retching in the back rows.). Ackerman also fails to draw any convincing or interesting characters all of whom are stereotypes with a distinct taste of cardboard.
Finally, there's the cast whom I am somewhat reticent to lay blame on considering they were given a terrible script to do and no one to do it with. However, I must mention that this film makes Dermot Mulroney 2018's poster boy for bad acting. As wooden the floor Kimberly hides under he spends the entire film grimacing, grinning, and shouting delivering a performance so achingly terrible I at times couldn't bear to watch him out of sheer embarrassment. It has been a long time since I've had a chance to witness a performance so misjudged, inept, and lead-footed. In comparison, debutant Diana Silvers fares much, much better but her awkward, stilted manner before the camera and lack of clear emotion aren't going to make her a star any time soon.
"Flesh & Blood" is one of those films that no one comes out of unharmed. I will be damned if I ever give Lussier another chance and I've certainly lost any respect I might have had for Dermot Mulroney's acting capabilities. It is also one of those movies that make me think of Richard Roeper's immortal line: "The best thing I can say about this film is it's mostly in focus." Otherwise, it's pure garbage!
1/4