Straight to the Vein
May 8, 2016
Green Room (2016).
D/W: Jeremy Saulnier. DP: Sean Porter. Starring: Patrick Stewart/Anton Yelchin/Imogen Poots/Alia Shawkat/Joe Cole/Callum Turner/Mark Webber/Eric Edelstein/Macon Blair.
Unlike The Witch‘s subtle historical horror, the new film Green Room plugs you into an amp and drags you along for a wild ride. After doing a festival circuit the film was bought by A24 prior to its Toronto and Sundance appearances. A good piece of horror fun, Green Room is perfect antidote to the big studio tent-poles who are slowly removing personal horror from violence.
Green Room centers on a heavy rock band that flies under the radar, shirking social media in the name of true music. Stealing gas and living literally hand to mouth they reluctantly take a gig to make some extra cash to finish up their tour. Off the group then goes and arrives at a Neo-Natzi esq type club. After their set they discover a stabbing victim in the green room and become embroiled in a cat/mouse trap with the owner as they attempt to wait for the police to arrive.
Cinematographer by trade, director/writer Jeremy Saulnier handles Green Room with confidence. His 2013 film, Blue Ruin, garnered festival buzz premiering at Cannes. Here the trick is clearly keeping his characters and his audience in the dark. The film keeps a good pace and the cat/mouse story line works because there is never an attempt to explain (other than basics) why the events must occur. The unexplained breeds the panic of the group. The few reasons given are not the most inventive, but the core of Green Room is certainly the wrong place/wrong time of the group and it works.
The club owner/head honcho Darcy is played by veteran Patrick Stewart. With his eerily calm delivery of most lines he seems like a cat ready to pounce whose temper every now and then betrays him. Stewart’s general good aura gives the cult/Neo-Natzi group a weight that helps the film. The band has good chemistry with each other with Anton Yelchin’s Pat inadvertently becoming the lead. His simpering boyishness is a good contrast to the bullies in the club yet echoes cult side kick Gabe (Macon Blair) ineptitude at the physical. Imogen Poots hair and non showering look seems to have finally found its place with her performance as Amber. Her exasperation translates well.
Ultimately Green Room gives the gratuitous violence of the horror genre some shape and form. There is some inventive use of duck tape that is quite nauseating. The film is full of turns so will keep your heartbeat going and has a great final countdown sequence that is not without humor. It does not have the style of The Witch or even the performances of 10 Cloverfield Lane, but it has a fresh energy that allows its characters to keep fighting. A solid horror flick probably best watched at night, take it from someone who saw it at 11 AM!
Jeepers Creepers
April 20, 2016
The Witch (2016).
D/W: Robert Eggers. DP: Jarin Blaschke. Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy/Ralph Ineson/Kate Dickie/Harvey Scrimshaw/Ellie Grainger/Jonas Dawson.
Much chatted about The Witch has finally hit theatres after its premiere back in 2015 at the Sundance Film Festival. Picked up by Universal for release here in the UK and by A24 in the US, the film has become the horror film of the year. Let’s get one thing straight first. As someone who avoids what is normally lumped into the genre label of horror, this film barely cuts it. Modern notions of horror lend me to think of slashers, which has created franchises like the Saw films. Rather The Witch is old fashioned suspense, nail bites, and the right dose of fright that makes it memorable.
The Witch is written and directed by newcomer Robert Eggers who hails from a costume and production design background. This is immediately clear from the color palette and textures that Eggers knows how to build mood. His film centers on a family of banished Puritans who are forced to build a new farm outside of the safety of their New World plantation settlement after the father’s, William (Ralph Ineson), religious teachings are deemed too much. Working his children in God’s name his eldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) turns the family into turmoil when her baby brother is snatched on her watch. The mother Katherine (Kate Dickie), stricken with grief, begins a slow unraveling that pits religion against the supernatural.
Cloaked in a reliance and service to God, the family also speaks in an Old English tongue that evidently was taken or adapted from primary source texts prior to the famed Salem Witch Trials. Immediately this lends the film a storybook quality, but one of nightmares rather than fairy tales. The woods next to the farm are seen mostly in long shot or close up and deemed forbidden to the children. This is not the land of Harry Potter’s Forbidden Forest rather its one that warps the senses and brings original sin into the light.
Young English actress Taylor-Joy is a captivating center for the film. At moments her modernness cracks to the surface, but overall she handles the Old English well. Dickie and Ineson, both graduates of the world of HBO’s Game of Thrones, are balanced well in the script. Neither faith seems too disturbing when placed in relief to the other and the family’s imminent survival.
The unilateral belief of original sin is the crux of The Witch. Thomasin, with her ‘appearances of womanhood,’ appears to somehow invite the witch of the woods into being or is certainly blamed for it. The congruence of womanhood/sin/Satan/temptation is at play, but the film roots in unnervingly realistic and ritualistic ways that allow the imagination to see more than the eye. Its why the original Halloween still works. For the first half an hour the audience experience a stalking. It is all in the pacing and The Witch creeps along without revealing much. Trust me, we would not like it if it did.
Down In The Bunker
March 24, 2016
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016).
D: Dan Trachtenberg. DP: Jeff Cutter. W: Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken, and Damien Chazelle. Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead/John Goodman/John Gallagher Jr.
I will admit I am negligent when it comes to the horror genre. However, I would not classify 10 Cloverfield Lane or its tangential predecessor, 2008’s Cloverfield, as horror, more as thriller with a splash of extraterrestrial destruction sauce. Regardless of the genre debate, go and see it.
10 Cloverfield Lane is tangential to Cloverfield as it appears to be happening within the same attack on earth. So Cloverfield is set in Manhattan and this new film is set in rural Louisiana. With a nice shot of the New Orleans Crescent City Connection to open the film we aren’t given any dialogue until after Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) crashes her car en route to somewhere after leaving her fiancé. She awakens with her hurt leg chained to a wall to discover she is a bunker built by Howard (John Goodman). Nothing more, no spoilers here!
Once again yes it’s a thriller genre film (often deemed something like a B-film), but 10 Cloverfield Lane is also a piece of great scene study. With only three actors in a small-ish space the world must live and breath within its characters. Much like last year’s Room, little backstory is given so the dynamics must be played out in the trio. Trust and reveal see-saw their way into a gripping film that rarely needs to use music or effects to build suspense. Tight close-ups are well balanced and there is an excellent placement of music that builds ironic humor without camp.
Lead Mary Elizabeth Winstead has been steadily working, but she stole my heart in James Ponsoldt’s 2012 Smashed. A film about an alcoholic couple who breaks up when one partner tries to get clean. Here she is a naturally believable spunk who is a perfect balance of think on her feet smart both physically and mentality. Given that the audience has hardly any backstory on her you immediately must join her for her ride as she unravels the bunker and questions Goodman’s Howard. Goodman’s open demeanor and physical presence are never over done, a nice change from his warm loud goofs he usually plays. Emmet, played by HBO’s The Newsroom‘s John Gallagher Jr., rounds out the group really well.
The fundamental structural difference between these Cloverfield films is that the first was built on what is now termed: found footage. Shot as if the characters were filming from their own camera with breaks in story and scenes to mimic their home video experience. In Cloverfield this is effective as it gives the disaster/invasion film a new and visceral audience experience. For obvious reasons this would not work with 10 Cloverfield Lane, but also despite the name the film’s focus is rooted on human to human destruction within a “safe” environment rather than running from the big bad. Or is it?
Something Wicked This Way Comes…
October 21, 2015
Crimson Peak (2015).
D: Guillermo del Toro. DP: Dan Lausten. W: Guillermo del Toro & Matthew Robbins. Starring: Mia Waskikowska/Jessica Chastain/Tom Hiddleston/Charle Hunnam/Jim Beaver/Burn Gorman.
Halloween is nearly here and timed to the holiday comes spook master Guillermo del Toro’s newest film Crimson Peak. His first directorial effort since 2013’s Pacific Rim, the Mexican director has been involved with other projects in many ways. His departure from Warner Brother’s The Hobbit Trilogy was discussed at length in a recent profile in The New Yorker. He brings to this new film the same visual style that was so glorious in his 2006 film Pan’s Labyrinth and won the film three Oscars (cinematography, art direction, and make-up).
Crimson Peak is visual splendor. Set in the vague time of the turn of the last century the film follows Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) who as a child is visited by her mother’s ghost who warns her of Crimson Peak. Once of age Edith turns to writing, ghosts included, but is quickly enchanted by the arrival of the tall, dark and English Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston). After her father’s untimely death, Edith marries Thomas and embarks to his home to live with his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain).
Without giving much away the film’s tone of Gothic horror is as rich and red as the clay that Thomas peddles from his estate. Wasikowska’s Edith feels like Anne of Green Gables, too sharp for her time and easily seduced by puff sleeves and romance, and that is a compliment. Australian Wasikowska whose Alice in Wonderland days are soon to resurface, brings a stylish innocence that works for the heroine of a dark tale. Although not as emotionally demanding as her fine performance in 2011’s Jane Eyre she is great here, her blond tresses working in stark contrast to Chastain’s auburn ones. Originally Emma Stone was cast who would not have fit though Benedict Cumberbatch could have made a good Thomas.
The trio have good chemistry that revolves around Hiddleston’s ability to dazzle in the dark. Known for his role as Loki in the Thor and Avengers films, Hiddleston has the right balance of danger and sex. Yet his hair could have been better, seems trivial, but it’s too reminiscent of Loki. The few flaws in Crimson Peak lie with Chastain and Charlie Hunnam. Her stiff and diabolical Lucille lacks complexity and unfortunately she is never quite able to nail her English accent. Chastain’s Edith is rather too two note, up or down, hot or cold. Del Toro is said to have been inspired by Italian horror master Mario Bava. I see echoes of Black Sunday here, but Chastain is no Barbara Steele. Visually she looks the part, but it never quite takes off. Hunnam is simply too clean and earnest, his snooping is fine, but obvious.
Crimson Peak‘s greatest achievement is the Sharpe estate. Nearly sinking into the red clay of the land the house is so dilapidated the distinctions between outside and in is blurred. Snow comes through the house as bugs live and die. It’s Disney’s Haunted Mansion, but for adults. The ghosts themselves are part vision and corpse. Del Toro’s masterful hand is breathtaking and subtle. He builds worlds not creatures. To think of his what his Hobbit films would have been like is to think of the dream so intricate and beautiful you cannot remember it.
The Master Has a New Project
February 14, 2015
Check out the new trailer for Guillermo Del Toro’s new film.