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mike_film09
Reviews
The Power (2021)
Really wanted to like this but ended up hating it
Yes, there are worse horror movies out there, but there are few where such a promising idea - the setting being the UK miners' strike of 1974, which plunged whole areas into darkness for lack of electricity - has been so wastefully ditched for a slack possession-style tale with little resonance.
There are good things: the main actress is accomplished, the photography classy. But there's little story to speak of, hence the need for the main character's part to 'self-generate' any drama there is.
One of the producers, Lizzie Francke, has a great track record especially for the UK (remember the transgressive Donkey Punch, which, um, punched well above its weight?). This film doesn't add to it.
I'm not even saying avoid the film. If you're a horror fan, you've seen it all done better. If you like Brit movies, maybe you might get something from it. But it definitely won't be what's promised by Shudder.
Saint Maud (2019)
Not nearly as good as everyone says
At the time of writing, every headline about this movie is filled with superlatives. Well, I don't want to diss a rare well-made British movie but actually, it's quite bad and I'll bet that you're disappointed with it.
Why? Without spoilers, it's fair to say this an anti-hero movie, where we are watching the central character do things that are increasingly awful. Normally anti-hero movies, from The Joker back to (part of) Silence of the Lambs, at least make their anti-heroes interesting. But the central character here is profoundly UNinteresting: stupid, deluded and socially inept. So there's that.
Then there's the fact that the central relationship between nurse and patient is poorly dramatised. Most of the character-related material comes from others who pop up coincidentally (eg while the anti-heroine is walking on the seafront). So the movie's key relationship never really works dramatically.
The key to the movie's current success, I think, is that the movie is heavily pretentious, and critics love that. They can fashion whole reviews on the gap between story and meaning. But I don't think mainstream audiences are in the same place at all. And you might find this yourself if you're unwise enough to pay money to see it. So, despite being in a minority of one (so far) I'm just saying be warned.
P.S. If you want a horror movie about a carer, try 'Livide': it's got more genuine creepiness in its little finger than exists in all of 'Saint Maud'.
The Westerner: Jeff (1960)
Some of the best writing and directing I've ever seen - despite tiny budget & schedule
Quite brilliant opening episode of Peckinpah's own series may have just about fitted into the Western TV pigeonhole when it went out in 1960, but to those who know his later films, the series - and this episode in particular - prefigures his work to come. There are flickers of familiar moments: when Brit pugulist Denny kills a bar drunk with one punch, everyone else jumps forward to steal the dead guy's boots and clothes - something that also happened after the opening gunfight in The Wild Bunch.
What mainly stands out here, though, is the incredible writing, directing and playing of the central 'love' story, between Dave and his ex-, the beautiful Jeff. I've literally never seen TV as well judged as the quiet moments when they sit together, talking of the past. It boggles the mind that something this good was a) commissioned, then b) cancelled. It also demands a restoration, so we don't have to see it on fuzzy old YouTube. Surely there are enough Peckinpah fans out there to justify a restoration and release?
The Wretched (2019)
Don't pay money to see this
Yup, it's difficult to come up with new horror ideas. Yup, we should bear in mind that making any film is surprisingly hard work. But all the same, this film really isn't worth your time and yet has been wildly overrated by some.
You can easily find a better one to waste 90 minutes on. If you insist on seeing it, though, get ready for a tedious set up, a token introduction to the supernatural thing and workaday bloodletting at best. In short, it should have been a lot better.
Assassin (1973)
Not bad, straightforward 70s thriller
As this movie has never been released in any form, this has to be a review-by-distant-memory.
A reluctant assassin (Ian Hendry from Get Carter) is hired to shoot a politician (Frank Windsor). Along the way he has a one-night stand with a young woman (Verna Harvey).
It's not long, it's fairly cinematic and it hasn't been seen in public for near-on 40 years, which is a pity.
Despite an explicit shooting at one point, I recall its mood being sombre (rather than Bourne-style action) but it's oddly affecting and I hope someday that it's rediscovered for a decent release. At which point I'll find if my long-distance memory was up to the job of reviewing it...
Polaroid (2019)
Surprisingly not bad at all
There's a trick to watching 'Polaroid': ignore or fast forward through its staid prologue. I'm guessing but it looks as if this was filmed after the rest of it, maybe to extend its running time. That would explain why it's so poorly written with its 'on the nose' dialogue.
The rest of the film is certainly PG-13 but don't hold that against it (personally, I don't want to watch A Serbian Film every night of the week). Prologue apart, it's well-made, with a effortlessly charismatic lead (Kathryn Prescott) and that Final Destination sense of fate closing in on its characters. There's even some twists in the plot I didn't see coming.
Other reviews say that its scares are a bit tame. That's true but again, hardly a fatal criticism; most horrors these days have predictable jump scares and poor CGI monsters. Can't really take against this movie when a critically-adulated horror like The Ritual does exactly the same.
So by all means avoid if you don't like tame horrors but you'll be missing a perfectly acceptable mild horror movie if you do - that prologue apart.
The Possession of Hannah Grace (2018)
Better than expected
Judging this film by its cover, you'd expect this to be a typical exorcism-based horror. And if you watch the first scene (instead of fast-forwarding through it, as I'd recommend) you'd probably think, 'how boring, it's all the usual cliches'. But after that point the film starts getting better and better, leading me to suspect that the tease opening was added later by literal-minded producers as a crude come-on.
What follows is not totally original, admittedly (The Autopsy of Jane Doe and Last Shift tread similar ground) but I found this as good as either of them. There's also a nod to the Danish horror NightWatch from several years ago. But this is a well-paced creepy horror set in a city morgue, with a sympathetic central character and a scary 'thing' stalking her. It's not a classic but it's good stuff. Everyone involved deserves plenty more work (not something I always feel after a movie).
P.S. Once you turn the lights back on and let your heartbeat return to normal, the 'Making of' featurette with the actress who plays the scary thing is rather fun.
Ghost Stories (2017)
Very, very derivative but just about worth a look
Okay, I get it. It's difficult being original. And it's even harder in a genre like horror. But still...
I won't include the obvious spoilers, the main one relating to a famous crime/heist movie. Or for any reader of this review who recalls Silence of the Lambs, you'll even hear familiar snippets of dialogue from that movie in Ghost Stories - not as quotes but as, well, dialogue.
So why is this even worth watching? Two reasons: one is its creepy, oppressive atmosphere, beautifully realised by its Director of Photography. When a working men's club appears it's as if you can even *smell* the place and I can't recall a movie doing this so well for quite a while. [Actually, I can: the glacially slow but utterly terrifying Italian horror, 'Across the River']
Second reason is a remarkable performance from Alex Lawther, which pretty well steals the movie.
Overall: one to rent, not one to buy. And if you can make a bet on Lawther winning an acting Oscar one day, you might even get your money back.
A View from a Hill (2005)
M R James still waits for a decent adaptation
Having seen the 1970's TV adaptations of M R James (goodish then; less so now) I was interested to see a couple of the more recent ones. Alas, they managed not only to be as staid as the worst moments of the 1970s ones but so relentlessly unimaginative they do James's ghost stories a real disservice.
In 'A View from A Hill', one of James's most chilling stories, the central character explores a haunted hill, site of ancient hangings. In this TV film the director attempts to evoke its morbid atmosphere with serial killer-style subjective camera shots (cf. Black Christmas and a hundred other slashers) and quick-cut half-seen movement - the latter ok for one shot but quickly irritating, rather than frightening. What should have been a creepy sequence is entirely too crude, too literal, and simply doesn't work. I won't belabour the point further - but nothing in the film rises above this level.
For those who want to experience a cinema version of M R James's truly creepy slow-burn atmospherics, which no-one has really managed so far, I'd recommend the Italian 'Across the River'. True, it can't supply James's distinctive Englishness, but its central character - a naturalist in search of night-time creatures, using fixed cameras - is a pretty good equivalent to James's peripatetic antiquaries in search of ancient texts. And like in James, the mysterious creatures which haunt abandoned village turn out to be immensely vengeful and vicious.
[Note: these remarks exclude Night of the Demon, which although based on a James story, does not reflect the world of his stories - however good it is.]