2020 - April
RANKING ALL FILMS:
01. Force Majeure (2014) 4/4
02. The Train in Snow (1976) 3.5/4
03. The Aura (2005) 3.5/4
04. Saw (2004) 3/4
05. The State of the Dead (2002) 3/4
06. Nine Queens (2000) 3/4
07. Sea Fever (2019) 3/4
08. Containment (2015) 3/4
09. Saw III (2006) 3/4
10. Saw VI (2009) 3/4
11. The Ruins (2008) 2.5/4
12. Tower Block (2012) 2.5/4
13. Nine Dead (2010) 2/4
14. Saw IV (2007) 2/4
15. Mindhunters (2004) 1.5/4
16. Jigsaw (2017) 1.5/4
17. Saw V (2008) 1.5/4
18. Saw II (2005) 1.5/4
19. Sweet Dreams (1994) 1.5/4
20. Saw: The Final Chapter (2010) 1/4
21. D-Tox (2002) 1/4
01. Force Majeure (2014) 4/4
02. The Train in Snow (1976) 3.5/4
03. The Aura (2005) 3.5/4
04. Saw (2004) 3/4
05. The State of the Dead (2002) 3/4
06. Nine Queens (2000) 3/4
07. Sea Fever (2019) 3/4
08. Containment (2015) 3/4
09. Saw III (2006) 3/4
10. Saw VI (2009) 3/4
11. The Ruins (2008) 2.5/4
12. Tower Block (2012) 2.5/4
13. Nine Dead (2010) 2/4
14. Saw IV (2007) 2/4
15. Mindhunters (2004) 1.5/4
16. Jigsaw (2017) 1.5/4
17. Saw V (2008) 1.5/4
18. Saw II (2005) 1.5/4
19. Sweet Dreams (1994) 1.5/4
20. Saw: The Final Chapter (2010) 1/4
21. D-Tox (2002) 1/4
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- DirectorVladimir ZivkovicStarsDragana MirkovicVelimir 'Bata' ZivojinovicNebojsa BakocevicDeni, a young woman working in McDonalds, has dreams of fame. When a producer discovers her singing talent he gets her into the game. However, she soon feels overburdened. Fortunately, the ghost of Elvis is there to help her.13-04-2020
1.5/4 - DirectorMate ReljaStarsSlavko StimacGordana InkretZeljko MalcicOne class of school children from a small village make the trip to Zagreb. Teacher gets sick and the class is forced to go home without him. During their journey the train gets stuck in a snowstorm.14-04-2020
3.5/4 - DirectorDjordje KadijevicStarsJovan Janicijevic-BurdusAnka ZupancDusan JanicijevicIn a Serbian village on Christmas Day in 1943, the Chetniks accept two downed American pilots and give them hospitality. However, finding out that the Germans are looking for pilots, the Chetniks change attitude towards them, disarming and shutting them off, but the pilots were able to escape. Palming off the corpses of two other killed prisoners to the Germans, who have since captured the real pilots, the Chetniks make local people enraged, despite their captain's attempts to cover up this wrongdoing, done on a public holiday.15-04-2020
(RE-WATCH) - DirectorZivojin PavlovicDinko TucakovicStarsRadko PolicNebojsa GlogovacKatina IvanovaWhen the war in Yugoslavia breaks out, an army officer who's ethnic Slovenian yet still believes in Yugoslavia, decides to move to Belgrade. The country continues to fall apart and so does his family failing to find acceptance there.16-04-2020
"The State of the Dead" begins with a superb crane shot starting on an imam calling the faithful to prayer and ending up on a loud wedding party merrily singing an ode to Yugoslavia underneath. It is one of the most effective and memorable visual portrayals of what the idea of Yugoslavia was all about, unity, tolerance, and brotherhood. Then a caption spoils the idyllic image. "Sarajevo 1990". Anyone versed in the history of Eastern Europe will immediately know that the wedding celebrations will soon be replaced by a bloody massacre and that any notions of future happiness are mere wishful dreams. The film is full of these kinds of wildly memorable moments and fleeting images. Some are subtle and harrowing such as the scene in which a soon-to-be-retired officer sings a rousing song about Tito, a dead leader of a country which no longer exists, while others are somewhat comically overblown and, perhaps a tad too on-the-nose, such as the scene in which a naked man wearing a traditional Serbian hat urinates all over a pretty Croatian girl. But even when it is ridiculously over-the-top, "The State of the Dead" is always memorable and upsetting and considering it is the last film of the great Yugoslav filmmaker Zivojin Pavlovic, a man who could be truthfully called a chronicler of the Yugoslav everymen, one would expect no less. In his venerated filmography he's covered all walks of life from political exiles to Communist commissars and vagabonds. His films tend to follow no strict narrative thread but are rather portraits of despair. In this fashion, "The State of the Dead" is a family portrait of four people who, broken by the War, each go in their separate ways.
The patriarch of the family is Janez Kranjc (Radko Polic), a strict military man, blindly faithful to Yugoslavia, a quickly disappearing country which he scrambles to keep ahold of. When Slovenia, his homeland, declares itself independent of Yugoslavia he uproots his family and moves to Belgrade where he hopes the Yugoslav idea still survives. But no matter how tightly he shuts his eyes and hopes, Yugoslavia is no more. Unwilling to accept this fact, Janez finds himself unable to find his footing in this new world. Rejected by the Serbs for being too Slovenian and rejected by the Slovenians for being too Yugoslavian, he is swiftly retired. Disliked by his family who quietly blames him for their fast-dissolving lives, Janez turns to drink. In a metaphorical sense, Janez represents the death of the old ideals, the so-called old guard, soldiers ready to fight for Yugoslavia but unwilling to break it apart for their benefit. Most of them wound up like Janez, abandoned and starving in what was once their country but was now becoming an unfamiliar capitalist wasteland.
Meanwhile, his son Gorazd (Nebojsa Glogovac) proves himself far more adaptable. Rejecting his father's ideals and guidance like all petulant teenagers do, Gorazd becomes involved in the newly-emerging Belgrade mob scene where he quickly raises through the ranks. He represents the new breed, most of whom were indeed sons of the old guard, the highly-respected generals and statesmen, who adapted to the new way of thinking and abused the state of emergency in war-torn Yugoslavia to engage in all kinds of illegal activities for immeasurable profit. However, Gorazd is no worse than his father and is like him largely a victim of circumstance. Unable to find love or understanding from his father and faced with a cold, unfeeling, uncertain world, Gorazd embraces the first person who offers him a helping hand and who promises him stability. Unfortunately, that person happens to be a gangster. As a final act of rebellion, and a kind of a metaphorical patricide, Gorazd changes his Slovenian name to a distinctly Serbian Goran and forever parts company with his father.
Caught between the old world and the new world is the mother, Ristana (Katina Ivanova), who like all mother figures hopes for calm and strives for unity in her family. But like all people trying to reconcile two opposing storms, her endless efforts lead her only to madness. Believing herself to be infected, impure, she perhaps represents Yugoslavia itself, torn up by the new guard and the old guard each pulling her to their sides unable to find common ground. Her mental illness forces her daughter Tatjana (Milena Pavlovic), a tough, feisty yet wildly misguided woman to assume the role of mother. Inexperienced but well-meaning, she, in the end, fails to keep the family from falling apart.
"The State of the Dead" is far from Zivojin Pavlovic's best film but it is never-the-less an emotionally charged and powerfully metaphorical family drama reminiscent of the works of Luchino Visconti or even Yosujiro Ozu. By focusing on the break-up of a small family unit, Pavlovic manages to paint all the attitudes, reasonings, and feelings that led to the break-up of Yugoslavia and that eventually formed the countries that resulted from that break-up. The film is based on a play by Sinisa Kovacevic and the theatrical influence is strongly felt. This amount of literary metaphors are rare in a movie but Pavlovic and his excellent cast manage to integrate them seamlessly. However, they fail to do the same with the large amounts of dialogue which are ported over directly from the stage. These long and sometimes overly-literary scenes tend to bog the film down and create an uneven rhythm. The film often stops dead in its tracks to allow its characters to soliloquize and telegraph the author's ideas even though the film's most effective moments are purely visual (such as the excellent opening shot or a harrowing scene in which we follow a woman (Dusica Zegarec) hoping to find her son among a sea of refugees wandering around the Belgrade bus station).
The cast, however, is this film's greatest asset. Radko Polic, in particular, is superb giving easily his finest performance to date as the man lashing out at this family because of his own sense of inadequacy and inability to reconcile his ideals with the new world being created around him. Polic beautifully encapsulates Janez's righteous rage, his helplessness, and his despair. Also superb are Nebojsa Glogovac as the angry son raging against his father and Milena Pavlovic as the daughter trying to be a maternal figure in the true mother's absence. However, only Katina Ivanova's heartbreakingly emotional turn as the mother unable to mentally cope with the break-up of her little family can go shoulder-to-shoulder with Polic's performance. Also worth mentioning is a brief but striking turn from Elizabeta Popovic as a Croatian ballerina turned porn star because the new world doesn't respect such flighty things as art and because in order to survive in the new world you have to sell your soul. Those who won't or can't such as Janez or Ristana become social exiles, drunks, and objects of mockery, while those who can and do such as Gorazd and the ballerina eventually become a part of a seedy, bleak, hopeless underbelly, agents of their own destruction.
"The State of the Dead" often feels stagey and is frequently burdened by its languorous and prosaic dialogue scenes, but its ideas are poignant and timely and its metaphors striking and memorable. On a technical side, it is directed with great care and understanding by Zivojin Pavlovic and features several truly stand-out performances from its reputable cast. Occasionally, a bad sound effect or a garnish cut will betray its cheapness and troubled production (Pavlovic died after principal photography was completed and Dinko Tucakovic had to oversee the editing process) but none of those
prove particularly distracting.
3/4 - DirectorDavid BetonJames NunnStarsSheridan SmithJamie Thomas KingJack O'ConnellSeveral months after witnessing a murder, residents of Tower Block 31 find themselves being picked off by a sniper, pitting those lucky enough to be alive into a battle for survival.19-04-2020
While not, technically speaking, a disaster movie, "Tower Block" employs the same basic premise of one, pitting a varietous group of people stuck in the same life-threatening situation against a faceless threat, forcing them to work through their differences and join forces in order to survive. Except, instead of a fire or a tornado or a swarm of bees, the protagonists of "Tower Block" are pitted against a mysterious sniper picking them off one by one as soon as they happen to come close to one of the many windows in the slum tower block they live in. However, this is not all, as even the insides of the building are booby-trapped and behind every door, there could be a gun waiting to go off and kill an unsuspecting tenant.
If we can't in all good faith call "Tower Block" a disaster film, then we can surely call it a problem-solving film as most of its runtime is taken up by our leads figuring out clever ways around these simple yet effective threats. The elevator has been disabled? Well, let's climb down the shaft. Our phones aren't working? Let's attract the police's attention some other way. We can't leave by the front door? Let's climb down the side of the building. The solutions are as extreme as the problems and therein lies the fun of this simplistic and paper-thin, yet quite entertaining and effective little film. The directing pair of James Nunn and Ronnie Thompson does a fine job building up suspense and paying it off with fast and incredibly brutal kills which make up what they lack in gore and jump-scares through shock-value and effective budget filmmaking. There are no eye-catching effects or millions of dollars thrown at the screen here, just several neat ideas effectively executed.
Still, you can't sustain a 90-minute movie on 20-minutes worth of shock. A large part of what makes disaster movies effective is human drama. Sadly, "Tower Block" never quite reaches the melodramatic levels of "Towering Inferno" or "The Poseidon Adventure" and in the end fails to engage the audience on a truly emotional level, mostly because its leads are either downright unlikeable or, at the very least, unburdened by characterization. The film is stocked up by tried-and-tested stereotypes from the old sergeant-major-type (Ralph Brown) to the suicidal alcoholic looking for a reason to live (Russell Tovey). Despite the brazen unoriginality of their parts, all the performances are admirable not because they reveal some hidden depths of the human condition but because they are utterly convincing when they really shouldn't be. In that sense, Sheridan Smith, always a reliably engaging and energetic screen presence, ends up looking the best. Given a part with no distinguishing characteristics, no backstory, and very little personality beyond "get-up-and-go", she manages to stand out as the film's only likeable and identifiable presence. The rest of the cast is similarly very good, especially Jack O'Connell as the local drug pusher Kurtis, moving effortlessly between threatening behaviour and jokey lightness. Kurtis is utterly forgettable as a character but Jack O'Connell's performance stuck in my memory.
What the cast can't generate is a sense of imminent danger. The filmmakers try to generate it through what appears to be indiscriminate killing off of the main cast. At first, it appears that no one's safe until you begin to understand the definite logic behind their method. Sure, at first they kill off characters you'd bet your right arm would survive the film such as children, but it becomes very clear very soon that these are all characters with a very minor impact on the plot and that the leads, such as Smith and O'Connell are entirely safe. Some smarter disaster films manage to undermine this feeling, but it must be said that a lot of them suffer from what can only be termed the "star immortality problem". Even in the best examples of the genre such as "Towering Inferno" you just know Paul Newman isn't getting killed. But in that film, there are many other well-profiled characters whom you can't be sure won't die. In "Tower Block", there are no such characters. Only the minor and cardboardy roles buy the farm, the rest are stuck in the high-rise until the credits roll. Realising this undermined a lot of suspense for me.
Overall, "Tower Block" has a lot of obvious issues. The characters are flat and largely uninteresting and unlikeable, the suspense is harmed by the fact you can easily guess who dies and who doesn't, and there are so many logical issues with the plot it would be hard to address them all in a succinct review. However, it is hard to deny there's fun to be had with it and while the whole is definitely lesser than the sum of its parts, taken one by one some of the action set-pieces in this film are quite exhilarating. The film also possesses a wry sense of humour and never takes itself so seriously that you can't suspend your disbelief and enjoy it as B-schlock. "Tower Block" is far from a great film but it does possess some good performances, entertaining set-pieces, and some effective and economical direction. It didn't satisfy my more refined demands but on a very basic level, it is an entertaining and diverting way to spend some 90-or-so minutes.
2.5/4 - DirectorChris CarrRoland HolmesNeil Mcenery-WestStarsLee RossSheila ReidGabriel SeniorWhat happens when an epidemic breaks out, but you're kept in the dark? Anything can happen. Slowly the residents realize that they will all die unless they come together.19-04-2020
"Containment" is a British film about a group of people stuck in a high-rise who learn they must band together to fight against an invisible enemy in order to stay alive. If this sounds remarkably a lot like the 2012 film "Tower Block", you're right. Neil Mcenery-West's "Containment" plays out very much the same as "Tower Block" but with several key differences which make West's film a superior creature. "Tower Block" was a very flawed film which never-the-less kept me entertained even though I found myself forgetting most of it an hour after it was over. "Containment", on the other hand, is a far more disturbing film. One which manages to fix "Tower Block's" biggest issue and that is the lack of real human drama. And whereas "Tower Block" revolved largely around problem-solving issues and seemed to be put-together entirely out of action set-pieces, all of the tension and horror in "Containment" comes from the way its characters react in the stressful situation they find themselves in.
The situation is as follows: a mysterious virus is spreading among the residents of the high-rise who wake up one morning to find themselves sealed up in their apartments. If they attempt to leave, they're shot by a sniper perched on the roof opposite theirs. Meanwhile, people in those faceless, ominous-looking hazmat suits are scouring the building and taking away anyone who's sick. This is as much as our characters know and it is as much as we ever find out. It is a very smart decision on behalf of the filmmakers (both financially and otherwise) not to deal with the outside world and to focus the plot of their film entirely on how a small group of people react to the given situation.
While we learn little about our main characters in way of backstory, Mcenery-West allows them to gradually reveal their true colours as the film goes on. We have Mark (Lee Ross), a depressed wanna-be sculptor who acts as the audience surrogate. Then there's Sally (Louise Brealey), the selfless nurse, Aiden (Billy Postlethwaite), the know-it-all conspiracy theorist, and Enid (Sheila Reid), the batty old alcoholic next door whose insight and experience prove far more philosophical than anyone had hoped for. Finally, there's the mercurial Sergei (Andrew Leung), an energetic man with severe anger management issues who's the ticking bomb of the group. I won't argue that these are the most original or insightful characters, but Mcenery-West very cleverly uses them to illustrate the various attitudes and reactions people display in extreme situations and how these very uncontrolled reactions tend to lead to their demise.
Most of the film takes place in a single apartment but the tension rarely lets up and there's a dreary, doom-laden atmosphere which permeates throughout the film. These are facilitated through Arthur Mulhern's sickly-greenish cinematography, as well as Graham Hadfield's pumping electro score. However, it is the cast who effectively generate the tension in the film through believable conflicts and an utterly believable portrayal of the mistrust growing within the group. It is telling that the virus barely shows up in the film and that all the scares and chills come from its characters. I find that commendable.
Another commendable performance comes from Pippa Nixon as Hazel, one of the Hazmat suit people captured by the group. Inexperienced and over-her-head, Hazel tries to talk her way out of captivity but logic and reason had already left the high-rise by that point. I found the Hazel subplot the most captivating and striking aspect of the film.
Finally, I must say that in the age of COVID-19, "Containment" feels oddly prescient, not just because it revolves around an epidemic but because I'm sure that, just like the characters in the film, the entire world now feels like they woke up in some sort of a containment fighting an invisible enemy. But as we've grown to learn, that invisible enemy isn't the virus but human weakness, frailty, selfishness, and, most of all, fear. However, even if the whole Coronavirus situation hadn't happened, "Containment" would have been a film well worth seeing. Even though it is not particularly original it is frightfully well-executed and raises all the right questions. While it is not exactly the modern-day equivalent of Camus' "Plague" it is a neat little chiller which will get under your skin and, like a virus, stay there for a while.
3/4 - DirectorNeasa HardimanStarsHermione CorfieldDag MalmbergJack HickeyThe crew of a West of Ireland trawler, marooned at sea, struggle for their lives against a growing parasite in their water supply.20-04-2020
A crew of a small fishing boat is terrorised by a flesh-eating parasite in what can best be described as "Alien"-on-the-sea. "Sea Fever", however, is one of the better "Alien"-esque creature features on the strength of its performances, atmosphere, and several heartfelt dramatic moments.
Our lead is Siobhan (Hermione Corfield), a withdrawn and antisocial marine biologist who boards a fishing trawler in order to study "anomalies". However, not even she could have predicted the anomaly that would soon befall her and the trawler's six-person crew after a squid-like, blue-glowing creature grabs a hold of the ship and infects its water supply with a flesh-eating parasite. The crew is led by the captain Gerald (Dougray Scott) and his wife Freya (Connie Nielsen), a caring couple who, having lost their daughter, have now created a surrogate family out of their crew. Then there's Johnny (Jack Hickey), the resident bad boy, his tough and sea-wethered mother Ciara (Olwen Fouéré), the rookie Sudi (Elie Bouakaze), and a brilliant Syrian engineer Omid (Ardalan Esmaili) who can fix just about everything. Like in "Alien" their reactions to the threat account for a large amount of drama and suspense as tensions rise with the body count. The characters, while certainly stereotypical, are far more believable than in other similar films and director/writer Neasa Hardiman gives them more than enough time to develop both as individuals and as a seemingly happy crew.
The performances are all-round excellent from the always excellent Dougray Scott and Connie Nielsen as a tough but loving couple to the relative newcomer Ardalan Esmaili. However, it is unexpectedly Hermione Corfield who gives the film its emotional centre and whose well-rounded and utterly believable performance impresses the most.
It is, never-the-less, hard for any well-versed movie watcher not to recognise many of the situations and scenes which crop up in "Sea Fever". There's the obligatory visit to the "other ship" where our leads find everyone on board dead, there's a scene in which everyone gets tested for the parasite which is almost beat-for-beat the same as the famous testing scene from "The Thing", and like in "Alien", there's a lengthy dinner scene which culminates in the shocking (and explosive) reveal of the true extent of the parasitic infection. These scenes are, truth be told, well-executed and I would have been inclined to give them a pass had "Sea Fever" been made in the 1980s. But seeing that so many other films have over the years copied those scenes in exactly the same manner this film does, it did bother me that director/writer
Neasa Hardiman didn't do anything new with them. Because of a lack of commentary which would betray a certain amount of self-awareness, those scenes, no matter how well done, become cliched and tend to fall flat.
Another issue lies in the way certain scenes are edited. Occasionally, due to the fast cutting style which kicks in whenever something dramatic happens, it is easy to miss what exactly had happened. Several times during the film I was confused as to whether "the squid" had grabbed one of the main characters or the character had simply slipped on the wet floor. This problem, although relatively minor, irritated me and lessened my enjoyment of this otherwise quite good film.
But even though some of its parts are lesser than others, the whole that is "Sea Fever" is still undoubtedly enjoyable and thrilling. Its intelligent and heartfelt treatment of its characters, well-executed horror scenes, and some nice work from cinematographer Ruairí O'Brien and composer Christoffer Franzén make it a sea-journey well worth taking. I was also pleasantly surprised that director/writer Neasa Hardiman didn't feel the necessity to shove some heavy-handed ecological message down our throats like Larry Fessenden did in his horrible "The Last Winter", but rather satisfied herself in telling us the story and then letting us reach our own conclusions.
3/4 - DirectorCarter SmithStarsShawn AshmoreJena MaloneJonathan TuckerA leisurely Mexican holiday takes a turn for the worse when a group of friends and a fellow tourist embark on a remote archaeological dig in the jungle, where something evil lives among the ruins.20-04-2020
There's a stereotype in horror films of "the bad place", a location which if you enter you'll most likely not come out of alive. If you take a closer look, you'll notice that most horror films have that "bad place" whether its the deserted planet in "Alien" or the caves in "The Descent" or even Reagan's room in "The Exorcist". Geographically limiting the threat of your film may seem like a bad idea but if done right, it creates a kind of shorthand for the audience, a useful tool in building suspense. You establish that the more time your characters spend there, the lower their chances of survival are.
In "The Ruins", the bad place is so prominent in the plot that it is even the title of the film. An ancient Mayan pyramid, over-grown with vines. The first time we see it, towering over a small clearing in a Mexican jungle, ominously framed so it looms over our characters, we know there will be trouble. And trouble there is, but, at first, the film tries to play it like the pyramid is a safe haven for our protagonists. As they reach the pyramid, a group of gun-toting Mayans show-up on horses and begin shooting at them, even killing of them. The remaining five take refuge on top of the pyramid, only for the real threat to reveal itself.
The protagonists are two American couples made up of the sporty Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) and his fun-loving girlfriend Amy (Jena Malone) and the more serious Eric (Shawn Ashmore) and his equally sensible girlfriend Stacy (Laura Ramsey). While on holiday in Mexico, they run into Mathias (Joe Anderson) and his friend Dimitri (Dimitri Baveas) who invite the couples to join them on a trek to an ancient Mayan ruin where Mathias' brother is leading an archaeological dig. The couples agree and off they go.
The characters, at first, seem to represent the horror movie cliches perfectly. But screenwriter Scott B. Smith soon deconstructs these cliches and that is the aspect of the film I enjoyed the most. No, "The Ruin" is not a quasi-spoof in the vein of "Scream", but it subtly and inventively subverts your expectations. Let's take the character's individual roles within the horror narrative in account. Stacy, for instance, is built up to be the sensible final girl. She's well-prepared for the hike, has a harmonious relationship with her boyfriend, is faithful to him, and is overall the most sensible and likeable member of the group. However, in the face of the threat, Stacy is the first to lose her mind. Likewise, Amy is built up to be your standard horror cannon fodder with her promiscuous behaviour, heavy drinking, and laissez-faire attitude towards life. She constantly argues with her boyfriend and is implied to be cheating on him. Never-the-less, Amy becomes the most reliable member of the group and slowly but surely grows into the role of final girl left unoccupied by Stacy. Their relationships also go in opposite directions than you might expect with Amy and Jeff's tumultuous relationship being proved the stronger one. And speaking of Jeff, even though he's at first built up to be a movie jock, it turns out he's a med student and a pretty sensible chap all round.
The threat, meanwhile, is pretty original if nothing else. It is a sentient, killer vine which has engulfed the pyramid and is intending to do the same with our leads. Unable to escape its clutches due to the Mayans surrounding the pyramid, our leads have to face the evil vine head-on and it proves to be a more interesting fight than it seems. With the vine slowly revealing more and more fantastical abilities which I won't spoil, its threat grows ever more prescient. It never quite reaches the levels of the titular "Alien" or the cavemen from "The Descent", but as far as creeping villains go, you can't go far wrong with a sentient vine.
"The Ruins" is a smart film boasting several good performances (most notably from Jonathan Tucker) but it isn't without significant flaws. For one, its refusal to address the piling up questions leads to a lot of logical issues. I wasn't expecting a full biological report on the origin of the vine species, but I would have appreciated at least a hint at what exactly the relationship between the Mayans and the vine is and whether the vine is a natural occurrence or some sort of plant from outer space a la "Little Shop of Horrors".
Another problem "The Ruins" runs into is a somewhat languorous pace. This improves as the film goes on and the threat becomes more and more imminent, but the first act of the film drags almost intolerably with its lengthy scenes of our couples lounging around the pool and having sex in their hotel rooms. Even clocking in at around 95-minutes, "The Ruins" could stand to lose some 15 minutes of its runtime which considering its thin plot isn't surprising. Director Carter Smith's pared-down visual style doesn't do much to help out the drawn-out scenes and, at several points of this film, I found myself thinking that it would have been a better 50-minute "Twilight Zone" episode than a feature-length movie.
But even though its first act is tedious to get through and the film doesn't make as much sense as it should, "The Ruins" is a pretty neat and surprisingly savvy horror film with good performances and an unusual, creepy villain.
2.5/4 - DirectorRuben ÖstlundStarsJohannes KuhnkeLisa Loven KongsliClara WettergrenA family vacationing in the French Alps is confronted with a devastating avalanche.20-04-2020
"Force Majeure" begins with a short scene in which an unseen photographer coerces a family into posing for a photo. They reluctantly agree and eventually pose in what turns out to be a phot good enough to frame and prominently display. A photo showing an ideal family, a young, good-looking and loving father and mother and their two small, cute children. A boy and a girl. But just like the photo was carefully posed, so is their perfection merely superficial.
Holidays in movies rarely end well. This, however, is not entirely a film invention. People on holiday are trapped together, first by the fact that they have to share a hotel room smaller than their house and with fewer places to hide, and secondly by the fact that they are in a relatively unfamiliar place, surrounded by strangers. Families on holiday are so turned towards each other that hidden conflicts are bound to erupt. They live in each other's pockets for seven faithful days and by the time the holiday is done, everyone will dig out everyone else's dirty lint.
Trouble arises in our perfect family on the second day of the holiday. After a lovely day on the Alps' slopes Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke), Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli), and their young children sit down for lunch at an open-air restaurant with a picturesque view of the mountain. As they are about to be served, a series of explosions are heard. Nothing to worry about, these explosions happen every day, every few hours actually. They are there to cause controlled avalanches which maintain a low build-up of snow on the slopes. After the explosions, one of these avalanches occurs and the restaurant patrons stand up to look at the beautiful snow-white haze barreling down the mountain. Ebba is a little uneasy, however. "Tomas! Is it safe?" But Tomas, videoing the avalanche with his beloved iPhone reassures her. "It's controlled. They know what they're doing." But the avalanche keeps growing and eventually it becomes clear it will hit the restaurant. As the open-air terrace becomes filled with white smoke, and restaurant patrons start panicking, Tomas' children begin screaming "Daddy!" But daddy, in a moment of panic, only grabs his wallet and phone and runs for his life leaving Ebba and the kids to fend for themselves.
The avalanche doesn't hit the restaurant. It was, after all, controlled. The white smoke that panicked the restaurant patrons was just that, smoke, and after a few moments of confusion, everyone realises they're safe, laughs it all off, and returns to their tables. Everyone, that is, except for Tomas and Ebba. Tomas is clearly deeply ashamed at what he did and attempts sheepishly to forget about what just happened. But Ebba simply can't let it go. Disappointed in her husband, she keeps bringing the avalanche up first during a dinner date with her new-found friend and then during a cosy evening with Tomas' best friend Mats (Kristofer Hivju). Mats tries to find excuses for Tomas' behaviour such as it being a split-second reaction or maybe he planned to come back later on and dig them out. But both Ebba and Tomas realise the problem is that it was not a logical reaction but an instinct. In other words, when things get tough, Tomas' instinct is to save himself.
It is easy to accuse of Tomas of being a bad father or not taking care of his family. After all, his first duty must be towards his family, right? His actions were undoubtedly cowardly, but as Mats rightly brings up, cowardice is a natural reaction and overburdened by heroic portrayals of men under stressful circumstances, we have grown to expect the extraordinary from entirely ordinary people. But Tomas and Ebba have other problems than just Tomas' diminished manliness. Ebba, realising Tomas' primary instincts are to protect himself, for the first time in their relationship begins reconsidering what it is that she needs. Meanwhile, Tomas who is just as surprised as she is to learn that he is more important to himself than his family has to reconcile his own disgust at his failure as a father figure and his newfound selfishness which he may be secretly growing to enjoy. As Tomas and Ebba slowly grow apart, questions arise whether they will be able to save their marriage or whether a split-second instinctual reaction has destroyed all the pretences they had about their "perfect family". Just as the rift between the two of them grows, so does a rift between the parents and their neglected children who are starting to feel the fallout of their parents' crumbling relationship but of whose emotional pains their parents take little account.
"Force Majeure" is not a simple film. It raises questions which have no easy answers and its director/writer Ruben Östlund never pretends to have them. Are the expectations we place on fathers realistic? How easy is to break one man's macho ego? Does the unity of a family depend on an unspoken trust that each member of the family will think only of the others in a time of need? But most of all, if an avalanche was approaching you, what would you do? Run or help get everyone else to safety?
While it has all the insights and depth of a Bergman-esque drama, Ruben Östlund shoots "Force Majeure" like a black comedy. By allowing scenes to last far longer than they conventionally would, he exposes the hilariousness of the awkward silences following potentially life-altering moments. The long, drawn-out scene in which Tomas attempts to get back to the table after abandoning his family to the avalanche is painfully hilarious. The film is also full of seemingly pointless shots of ski lifts going up and down over pure white backgrounds or skiers being dragged up and down over slopes. But while looking at these images of tiny humans against gigantic and unforgiving landscapes, it is hard not to reflect on the utter absurdity of this concept we call civilisation. By dragging out silences, lingering on long-shots of ski lifts, and filling out the soundtrack of the film with creaks and sounds of wenches, bullies, and boots on snow, Östlund makes us painfully aware that the drama we are watching unfolds within a larger context and that it is in a sense, so minor and insignificant in the face of the cold, white nothingness surrounding our characters.
Ruben Östlund's film is as starkly original and profoundly moving as anything I've seen in this century. At turns hilarious and provoking, "Force Majeure" is superb on every level, from its two strong central performances to the excellent cinematography by Fredrik Wenzel who always seems to frame the characters so that they appear like little dolls in a giant dollhouse. Also memorable is Kristofer Hivju as Tomas' manly-man best friend Mats who is so offended by the mere suggestion that he might act the same way as Tomas that he begins losing sleep over it. Mats, tough and protective, is both what Tomas should be and what drives him to act the way he shouldn't because his striving towards machoism are what is stopping him from facing his own cowardice head-on and saving his marriage.
4/4 - DirectorFabián BielinskyStarsRicardo DarínGastón PaulsGraciela TenenbaumTwo con artists try to swindle a stamp collector by selling him a sheet of counterfeit rare stamps (the "nine queens").20-04-2020
Two men meet by chance at a gas station in the early hours of the morning. Both are con men. Juan, young and inexperienced (Gastón Pauls), and Marcos, older and as cunning as a fox who's just been appointed professor of cunning etc. etc. (Ricardo Darín). Taking a liking for the younger man, and bored of working alone, Marcos offers Juan a short time partnership. They'll play a few two-hander tricks around town, earn some money, split it half-way. Juan agrees and off they go. The first act of "Nine Queens" is just that, a series of two-hander tricks the men play on restaurant owners, old ladies, and a random woman in an elevator. The tricks are nothing special but clever in their own class. Sleights of hand, marked 100 dollar bills, and some old-fashioned charm pay off in small but ever-increasing increments as Marcos shares some of his philosophy with Juan. Referring to the things he gets through illegal means: "Of course, I can buy them... But I can also not buy them. As everybody else would do... if they could." But he's not a thief and he's adamant about that. Thieves are lower class crooks. "I don't kill people. I don't use a piece. Anyone can do that." But Juan isn't completely taken by Marcos' philosophy. He's only in it for the short run, he says. All he wants is enough money to pay off his father's debt that's all. And he's not too sure about Marcos' unconsciousness, especially after he cons a sweet old lady out of a 100 dollars. But Marcos is not to be swayed: "Let me get this straight. Gas station clerks are OK. But trusting old ladies - never! Then why don't you give her back her money and set up a grocery store? What's wrong with you? How can you work the streets with such a conscience?" But is it Marcos' lack of conscience that will cause trouble? It seems strange from the off that Marcos and Juan just happen to run into each other one early morning in Buenos Aires. Is Marcos simply taken by the young man's talent or does he have bigger things in store? One thing's for sure, Juan will have to keep an eye on him. Especially when the plot starts.
The second act kicks off the main plot revolving around the sale of the titular nine queens, a set of nine rare stamps which Marcos' old pal, the forger Sandler (Oscar Nuñez) has "recreated". Marcos and Juan decide to sell the stamps for large profit to a visiting businessman (Ignasi Abadal) but luck doesn't seem to be on their side. Problems keep arising from Marcos' tough sister (Leticia Brédice) out for revenge to a pair of motorcycle thieves who make off with the stamps. Problems which need solving and fast, as the dynamic duo have only 24 hours to make the sale before the businessman leaves Argentina for good.
I must say, I enjoyed the first act a lot more than the other two, mainly on the strength of the two lead performances. Their interplay coupled with some well-written dialogue and ever-changing situations they find themselves in could have made for a truly fascinating two-hander film had director/writer Fabián Bielinsky satisfied himself with focusing on the story of an older and more experienced con-men teaching a younger chap some tricks of the trade. But in this post-"Lock Stock" world, a lightning-fast, twisty thriller is expected and "Nine Queens" soon starts treading familiar territory with its con-within-a-con plotline. However, its plot is neither as clever nor twisty as it seems to think it is. "Lock Stock" had only a couple of years earlier proven that it is possible to completely turn the film's central premise on its head every ten minutes and still maintain tension and excitement. "Nine Queens" is not that fast and not that exciting. Going farther back in the genre's history, "Nine Queens" is clearly influenced by David Mamet's "House of Games", but that film's plot was much more cleverly and intricately assembled. I guessed the twist ending of "Nine Queens" well before its central plot had even begun. It is true to say that the bane of all con movies is that the audience expects a twist but even taking that into account, this film's twist is very easy to spot.
But even though "Nine Queens" wouldn't satisfy anyone on the look-out for a whip-smart, twist-laden, exciting con-thriller, it is never-the-less a wonderfully acted and diverting comedy whose main attractions are two superb leads and some memorable dialogue. Had it had the guts to be even crazier, faster and funnier (like, say, the films of Alex de la Iglesia) or the brains to be like an intricate Chinese puzzle box (like the aforementioned films of David Mamet) I'm sure that with Ricardo Darin and Gaston Pauls we would have had the modern "Sting". As it stands, "Nine Queens" is a fun but ultimately forgettable thriller/comedy.
3/4 - DirectorChris ShadleyStarsMelissa Joan HartWilliam Lee ScottJohn TerryNine strangers are kidnapped and forced to figure out the connection they have to each other as one has to die every ten minutes.20-04-2020
"Nine Dead" is an excellent reminder of just how all-consumingly influential the "Saw" franchise once was. With its moralising plotlines, preaching villain, and traps which pitted seemingly civilised people against each other in a fight to survive, it spawned more rip-offs then sequels and that's quite an achievement. "Nine Dead" is one of the more derivative, yet also more enjoyable of what one could generously term the "Saw"-lite franchise.
The plot is as follows. Nine people have been kidnapped and trapped in a room. A hooded man (John Terry) then poses them a question. "Why are you here"? Every ten minutes he returns and if his victims haven't figured it out yet, he shoots one of them dead. Soon, the nine prisoners begin spilling secrets in a frantic scramble to figure out which of their many sins have back to haunt them. Considering the group includes a paedophile, a gangster, a crooked cop, and a professional robber, this is quite a difficult and time-consuming job.
These kinds of films rest on two things and two things alone. How arresting the premise is and how tense the scenes between the kills are. I'm not awfully ashamed to admit I'm a sucker for these kinds of plots. First of all, the low-budget forces the filmmakers to explore their characters and focus their plots on the important story beats. There are no extraneous action sequences, gratuitous gore, or distracting subplots. Also, I find mysteries from the past very exciting. So, I found the plot, while extremely simplistic, also quite engrossing. There are numerous stumbles in logic along the way, mostly concerning that age-old problem of "how does the killer know all of this". Also problematic is how easily and suddenly the characters leap at right conclusions. But putting those not minor quibbles aside, I was interested throughout in how this situation would be resolved. As a fan of both "Saw" and "An Inspector Calls", this particular brand of moralising suits me well. The tension is also sufficiently well built. I was never "on the edge of my seat" or "biting my nails to the bone", but there were several effectively intense scenes and even though the film was never in any way scary, it worked fine as a B-grade psychological thriller. So, as far as its own objectives are concerned, "Nine Dead" is successful. Within its "Saw"-inspired genre, it is one of the more competent and entertaining films.
However, this is not to say it is a good movie. Entertaining - sure. Engaging - at times. But it is too frequently plagued by its numerous flaws to be deemed anything but passable trash. Most prominently, the acting ranges from amateurish to downright appalling which, in a film this reliant on dialogue and character, is unforgivable. Most of the film's cast seems to believe that face-pulling equals emoting or that impersonating other, better performances will make theirs more effective. The former remark refers to William Lee Scott, playing the crooked cop, who moves his eyebrows up and down as much as his lips. I was, at times, more concerned that they would rip off from his face and fly away to Oz than whether he would be shot by the hooded killer. The latter refers to Chip Bent whose entire performances is one long impersonation of Benicio Del Toro in "Usual Suspects" down to the costume and broad movements. I wonder if Mr Del Toro could sue. I wonder if he'd even care. In the less egregious, amateurish category are Melissa Joan Hart, James C. Victor, and Edrick Browne who recite their lines like they're trying to win the school recitations competition. Only Marc Macaulay as the conflicted priest seems to exhibit some sort of emotion but what precisely that emotion is is at times hard to decipher. Even so, the only truly unwatchable performance in the film is Lawrence Turner's role as the paedophile. I have never such a broad and ridiculous characterisation in my life. With his overblown lisp, feminine gestures, and sleaze almost oozing from his moustache, I wished paedophiles were this obvious. They would certainly be easier to catch. With actors this bad, the script often gets botched and many potentially emotional moments wind up being laughable or somewhat confusing.
I won't even begin discussing character development or subtext because to give this film that much credit would be akin to daydreaming.
To sum "Nine Dead" up, in its subgenre of rip-offs it is alright. I had fun watching it and trying to solve the mystery along with the characters. But when viewed as a cinematic achievement, it is a pretty poor specimen. With its paper-thin logic and bad acting, this is the kind of film you'd enjoy catching on late-night cable but would rightly feel cheated if you were to pay for.
2/4 - DirectorJim GillespieStarsSylvester StalloneCharles S. DuttonPolly WalkerA lead detective being stalked by a serial killer is asked to check into a clinic treating law enforcement officials who can't face their jobs.21-04-2020
After his fiancee is murdered by a serial killer he was hunting, cowboy cop (actually cowboy fed) Jake Malloy (Sylvester Stallone) goes off the deep end. How do we know that? Well by his pale face, refusal to speak to his partner/best friend, and that Martin Riggs look in his eye whenever he sees a gun, of course. After one particularly thorough night of boozing, he attempts suicide and is sent off to a new-founded detox facility for cops in snowbound Wyoming led by the good-natured but tough-as-nails ex-cop-turned-psychiatrist known only as Doc (Kris Kristofferson). The other patients stuck there form the rest of the cast and consist of every cop cliche you can imagine. There's the trigger-happy cop (Robert Patrick), the old wise cop (Robert Prosky), the sassy Latina cop (Angela Alvarado), the disturbed rookie cop (Sean Patrick Flanery), the polite English cop (Christopher Fulford), the religious cop (Courtney B. Vance), and the undercover narc addicted to drugs cop (Jeffrey Wright). I had fun imagining this detox clinic as a kind of a movie cop version of Toontown. But back to the plot. Just when Malloy begins to relax into therapy, the cliche cops start dropping one by one and Malloy is now tasked with finding out who among them is the killer, a killer he rightly suspects is the same one who killed his fiance.
If you think this sounds familiar, you're right. It's the Sylvester Stallone version of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" with a little bit of "The Thing" thrown in for good measure. If, however, you think that sounds fun, you'd be wrong. Just as I was wrong. As much as I love both Agatha Christie and John Carpenter (and even Stallone in his better films), I couldn't find a smidgen of enjoyment in this awkward mess of a would-be thriller. That is because Jim Gillespie's "D-Tox" was a victim of that old movie boogeyman, studio interference. I have never seen a film this obviously recut. In fact, "D-Tox" through most of its 95-minute runtime feels like a re-cut of a re-cut of a re-cut, the rushed version which was created by having one of its two editors blindly mash the buttons of a Moviola hoping against hope something coherent would fall out the other end. It didn't. Scenes begin and end without any logic, some lasting for mere seconds while others run on and on without any reason. Characters show up without proper introductions and disappear without a mention. Relationships develop and sour in scenes which follow each other. And most annoyingly, every scene ends/begins with a crossfade.
This amateurish re-cutting explains the film's lack of a pace. Important plot points are rushed over in a matter of seconds or entirely missing, sometimes cuts skip over hours so that in one scene everyone is being locked into their rooms only to be released in the very next scene making the entire exercise entirely pointless. This lack of pace prevents this supposed thriller from having any sense of suspense or tension. It also makes it incredibly difficult to follow. There is a chase-on-the-snow scene near the end of act two during which, for the entire five or so minutes, I had no idea who was chasing whom or who any of the characters were. It is also impossible to keep track of where inside the facility anyone is since characters seem to be able to jump between rooms and enter and exit the facility between scenes without us ever knowing. The level of incompetence with which this film is put together makes "D-Tox" completely unwatchable.
What can't be explained away by bad editing are its other significant flaws. Most glaringly, all the characters are paper-thin movie cliches, so much so I found it impossible to guess who the killer was because all the characters are so unrealistic I kept hoping they were merely pretending. The talented all-star cast is entirely wasted on this awful screenplay. None of them has the chance to craft any kind of relatable or interesting characters and for the most of the film serve only as glorified extras. Even the actors who are allowed some screen time such as Stallone or Polly Walker as his nurse/love interest, come across as inconsistent and cliched. The screenplay further fails the film through its numerous logical fallacies and plot holes. The killer seems to be both omnipresent and all-powerful while the rest of the cast seem to be revelling in setting themselves up as red herrings.
Since the film does feature an interesting premise and is directed by Jim Gillespie, the man behind the enjoyable slasher "I Know What You Did Last Summer", I really wish there was something nice I could say about "D-Tox", but there isn't. Even on the technical side, the film is a wash-out. Gary Wissner's production design makes the film look like an "X-Files" bottle episode, a feeling not helped by Dean Semler's over-lit, cheap-looking cinematography. I was shocked this film cost 50 million USD to make. It looks like a straight-to-video release. Also underwhelming is John Powell's score which is as cliched as the events it is underscoring. The one good thing about "D-Tox" is that it is a film easy to sum up in a single word and that word is: unwatchable.
1/4 - DirectorFabián BielinskyStarsRicardo DarínManuel RodalDolores FonziA deluded taxidermist plans the perfect crime.21-04-2020
Esteban (Ricardo Darín) and his friend Sontag (Alejandro Awada) are waiting in line in a crowded bank. Esteban carefully observes as two security guards carry wads of cash into the bank vault. Sontag follows his eye line. "I'm waiting," says Esteban. "Waiting for what?" "For someone to do something." Esteban then launches into a fantasy plan. "See how he's got his back turned. You could just walk right up to him. He's not even looking." His friend pipes up with "But how do you get out?" But Esteban is not to be outwitted. "The old catwalks exit." He points to an ad leaned up against a wall. "They've never blocked that up. Easier to hide it. And nobody would remember it was there." Then a sly smile. "Except me." Sontag considers Esteban's plan. It's good. So why doesn't he do something about it? "It's just a game," Esteban explains. "I pay attention. I don't forget a single thing I see."
And that's Esteban's gift and his curse. For him, life's an observer's game. He's one of nature's sideliners. Even his job is essentially non-interfering. As a taxidermist, he only gets to the animal after the dirty work's been done. All that's left to do are the small repairs and his attention to detail pays off. But this makes Esteban frustrating company. His wife has just left him for just that reason. As everyone in his life keeps asking him "why don't you just do something".
Esteban and Sontag go on a hunting trip. Esteban is again just an observer. He refuses to shoot at animals, he says, but he's willing to take walks in the woods whilst Sontag goes about his business. That is until Sontag provokes him into action. "You've got to have a lot of balls to kill a deer, you know?" "The same kind you need to beat the shit out of your wife and ruin her life?" Sontag leaves in a huff and Esteban decides to prove himself a living human. He takes a rifle into his hands and marches off towards the woods. After a long search, he stumbles across a deer. A glorious animal, oblivious to his impending demise. Esteban takes aim. The deer is in his sight. He closes his eyes, gathers his courage, opens them. And the deer is gone. He looks left. Nothing. He looks right. Nothing. Something moves in the bushes. Esteban fires. When he goes closer he realises he's shot a man.
The man is one Carlos Dietrich (Manuel Rodal), a local hunter whose cabin Esteban and Sontag are staying in. Or rather were staying in. Sontag gets a call informing him his wife has attempted suicide and he leaves for Buenos Aires. Esteban, however, decides to stick around for a few more days. He counts on Deitrich's body not being discovered soon and being as studious as he is, he becomes obsessed with the man he killed. He befriends his wife, the much younger Diana (Dolores Fonzi), he takes a liking for Dietrich's dog and begins rifling through his papers. This is when he finds out Dietrich wasn't as straight forward as he seemed.
Apparently, Dietrich was just as studious as Esteban and had planned a large casino heist. But unlike Esteban, Dietrich wasn't playing. The heist is on and all the major players are assembling in the cabins around Esteban. But Esteban has all the papers and is the only person who knows the plan. All he has to do is decide if he wants to stay on the sidelines and observe the heist or take Deitrich's place as the leader.
"The Aura" was the last film directed and written by the late Fabián Bielinsky whose previous film "Nine Queens" was an intriguing debut. "The Aura" delivers on the promise of "Nine Queens" and even surpasses it. It is an unusual movie. Even though on the surface it may seem like a fast-paced, twisty heist film you'd expect from the man behind "Nine Queens" it is in fact a meditative character study. Sure, there's plenty of turns for thriller lovers to indulge themselves with and even a thrilling action sequence towards the end, but "The Aura" is at its heart a portrait of a man who'd spent his entire life watching finally being given the chance to join in. The big tension of "The Aura" is not whether the casino heist will work or not, but rather whether Esteban will grow into Deitrich or remain the withdrawn nobody he's been his entire life.
Ricardo Darín is, as usual, simply superb in a role which is the complete opposite of his part in "Nine Queens". Esteban spends most of the film quietly observing other people's actions. He's not proactive and he's not charismatic, but Darín makes him fascinating. His performance is a careful, intelligent study of concentration and economic performance. A single movement speaks louder than a hundred words. It is a performance in the same vein as Alec Guinness' masterful turn in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" and well-deserving of the comparison. The rest of the cast is also terrific, especially the two unusual gangsters who are part of Dietrich's heist crew. They are far subtler and less quirky than corresponding Tarantino characters but no less memorable.
After a flashy and fast-paced thriller such as "Nine Queens", Fabián Bielinsky proved himself here more than capable of crafting a slow-paced, meditative character study which was at the same time intellectually captivating and absolutely thrilling. It is not a perfect film. There is some needlessly heavy-handed symbolism in it and a lot of plot contrivances, but it is a fascinating film all the more so because Bielinsky never got a chance to top it. I am deeply saddened we never got to see his next movie as I'm sure it would have been better than "The Aura" just as "The Aura" is better than "Nine Queens". But, death interfered, and now all we have is the enormous promise evident in "The Aura" to fuel our imaginations.
"The Aura" is an unusual, compelling, intelligent, and superbly acted thriller with many original beats and only a few relatively minor flaws. And Bielinsky's meticulous direction, Darín's economical performance, and Checco Varese's picturesque cinematography make it a film well worth appreciating.
3.5/4 - DirectorRenny HarlinStarsVal KilmerLL Cool JChristian SlaterA group of FBI trainees are taken to a remote island for simulation training. However, once there, they realize that they are being hunted by a serial killer, who might be someone amidst them.21-04-2020
Two years after the horrendous "D-Tox" came another action-thriller variant on the "And Then There Were None" premise in the form of "Mindhunters", a numb-skull technothriller that at least shines in comparison with "D-Tox" in that it is at least coherently edited.
The film follows a group of eight wanna-be FBI profilers trapped on a remote island training facility by their tyrannical professor Jake Harris (Val Kilmer) for some sort of a serial killer simulation. However, the simulation turns to reality when the profilers start dropping one by one and are forced to find out which of them is the killer.
The premise is so old by now that I could set it to music but it is undeniable that there's a certain charm, appeal to it. I'm a sucker for these kinds of mysteries and just on the strength of the premise I was willing to give "Mindhunters" a fair shot despite being directed by Renny Harlin, an unreliable studio hack, whose greatest claim to fame is the not-that-bad first sequel to "Die Hard". Well, my good faith quickly dissipated as the film trodded along and grew more and more preposterous and cliched by the minute.
For one, our group of protagonists are utter and complete stereotypes. From the tough ex-cop to the sexy Latina and the whiny nerd, each and every one of them seems copied straight out of a how-to book on character types. But more problematic is the fact that none of them is in the least bit likeable. As soon as the killing starts, they begin turning on each other, wasting time on endless arguments, and engaging in psycho-babble dick-measuring contests which lead nowhere. If the filmmakers believed these tedious and badly-written scenes would pass as character development, they were sadly mistaken. Their only result is that by the 25-minute mark I began rooting for the killer. Spending time with these eight pretentious, arrogant, cardboardy excuses for characters was excruciating.
Another problem with this film is that the methods the killer uses to off his victims are so cartoonish and unrealistic that the film lost any sense of threat or tension. Since no real-life rules apply, we cannot even begin to attempt to work out the identity of the killer or who his next victim is going to be and that is precisely where most of the fun comes from in these kinds of films. From the very first kill, which involved a person freezing to death and then breaking like an ice statue in a matter of seconds, I understood I was in Wile E. Coyote-land and stopped caring about anything in the film on any realistic level.
Finally, there's an overall cheapness that plagues the film and makes it feel like a straight-to-DVD bargain-bin trash flick. For instance, there seems to be little logic in the casting. Our supposed profiling students average at around 35 years old yet they all treat professor Val Kilmer, who's only 45, as some sort of ancient sage. This is particularly jarring with Christian Slater whose interactions with Kilmer would be far more appropriate if they were with a far older man. Kilmer treats Slater like some sort of petulant kid and Slater looks up to him like he's his long-lost father figure and yet they look the same age. In order for Kilmer to have had a successful and revered field career in the FBI and then to have been retired and to have established himself as a fearsome and legendary professor, he'd have had to be at least in his mid-50s if not even older and yet Kilmer has seemingly been able to squeeze a lifetime of working experience in about a 20-year career.
Putting the final nails in this movie's credibility are the booming and horribly misplaced score from Tuomas Kantelinen and Robert Gantz's cheap-looking, overlit cinematography, a trademark of bad 2000s thrillers.
So, "Mindhunters" is a mindless, badly-written, cheap-looking thriller filled with annoying characters and over-the-top kills that make "Final Destination" seem tame in comparison. It is a terrible movie. Its only positive side is that it is not "D-Tox". This much can be said of "Mindhunters". It is watchable. The plot can be followed, the pace is consistent, and there don't appear to be huge chunks of the story missing. It is relatively competently put together and is mostly in focus. But when this is the only nice thing you can say about a movie, you're in trouble. Never-the-less, I do have to admit "Mindhunters" has a certain campy B-movie awfulness to it. At 16 years old, it is still too contemporary to really enjoy, but I suspect that in about 30 years time, this will be one of those movies kids of the future will put on to laugh at how corny the 2000s were. Until then, however, steer clear of "Mindhunters".
1.5/4 - DirectorJames WanStarsCary ElwesLeigh WhannellDanny GloverTwo strangers awaken in a room with no recollection of how they got there, and soon discover they're pawns in a deadly game perpetrated by a notorious serial killer.22-04-2020
Two men wake up chained in a filthy public toilet. They're dazed and can't remember how they got there. Then a creepy, disembodied voice lists off their "sins" and announced it wants to play a game. Of course, we're in "Saw"-land, more precisely, the very first "Saw" film written by Leigh Whannell and directed by James Wan which unwittingly began one of the most successful horror franchises in film history currently numbering eight films and counting. But unlike the gory sequels it inspired, the first "Saw" is a taut and twisted thriller distinguished by its economical brutality and unlike other thrillers from the period for which the reverse is usually true, it is a cheap movie so well shot and edited together that it looks expensive and stylish.
But back to the plot. The two men who waked up are Lawrence (Cary Elwes), a suave and collected doctor, and Adam (Leigh Whannell), a younger and more hysterical photographer. Although the "game" their captor wants to play pits them against each other by insisting Lawrence kill Adam in order for his wife and daughter to be spared, the two men will eventually have to learn to work together to escape the predicament they find themselves in.
But who is their captor? Lawrence suspects he's a mysterious serial killer nicknamed the Jigsaw Killer being hunted by an obsessed police detective (Danny Glover). The killer has thus far kidnapped three people and forced them to play increasingly gruesome games including a man forced to crawl through razor-wire to reach a door, another man covered in a flammable substance made to figure out a mathematical code by candlelight, and, most ironically, a woman with a bear trap on her head who has to find a key hidden in her cellmate's stomach. All these people are, by his judgement, "sinners" who've taken their lives for granted and wasted the gift they've been given. One was a drug addict, the other suicidal etc. In other words, the Jigsaw Killer's aim is to make his victims appreciate life by putting facing them with death. In later films, his motive will become a lot more moralising with his victims becoming explicitly bad people and his games a kind of purgatory. I suspect this change came when Jigsaw became a kind of series' protagonist and had to be made, if not exactly likeable, then at least righteous in much the same way as Pinhead was some decades earlier. This Jigsaw, however, is a lot more conflicting and operates within a kind of gray zone. On the one hand, his victims do emerge from his games with a newfound love for life. On the other, very few actually emerge.
But Jigsaw gets very little screentime in "Saw". He's mostly an unseen threat, lurking from the dark, or from underneath a red cloak. The focus is instead on our protagonists and that is a good choice. By allowing us to spend most of our time trapped with them, the filmmakers make us care more for their predicament and increase the tension. Although the situation they find themselves in is not nearly as dramatic as the games would later become, it is interesting and serves well to put these two characters in a tense and revealing conflict. Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell do a good job making these characters relatable and believable, but neither of them is truly well-rounded enough to ever become likeable. But never mind, this never affects the palpable tension in the film or the bleak, oppressive atmosphere. Less successful is the cop character played by Danny Glover who shows up too few times in the film for us to get to know him and whose subplot proves extraneous at best. But Glover does a fine job in the role, one of his last in which he still features some enthusiasm for the job he's doing.
I most admired the work of first-time director James Wan. Working with small means, he creates a pacy film which seamlessly overcomes its limitations. Despite the tiny budget and small production time, the film never looks cheap and its few action sequences are effective and stylishly done. The cinematography by David A. Armstrong is gritty and supports the "diseased" atmosphere of the rest of the film with its use of blues and greens. The camerawork does a great job of emulating our protagonists' emotional states with its alternatively calm, static shots to the wilder, handheld camerawork which kicks in whenever something dramatic is happening. I also have to commend Kevin Greutert's editing which is fast-paced without being chaotic and which utlises some flashy editing tricks such as speeding-up the footage and inserting photography to great effect.
"Saw" is not a great thriller but it is a good one. With its intriguing premise, good performances, and effective directing it is not hard to see why it became such a hit. It is a shame, however, that it has become so synonymous with the torture porn genre, as "Saw" is not a particularly gory or torture-filled film. Its thrills and chills are mostly psychological and other than the premise, it shares very little stylistic traits with its sequels who took more cues from "Saw II" and finally "Saw III" in the formation of their style than from this, more intelligent and less graphic thriller.
3/4 - DirectorDarren Lynn BousmanStarsDonnie WahlbergBeverley MitchellFranky GA detective and his team must rescue 8 people trapped in a factory by the twisted serial killer known as Jigsaw.23-04-2020
"Saw II" marks the true beginning of the "Saw" franchise. It is here that intelligence was replaced by brutality, careful atmosphere-building by shock value, and physical violence prevailed over mental torment. Unlike its progenitor, this is a messy, loud, unlikeable film notable by its grimy look, unlikeable characters, and numerous twists for twist's sake. So if you hate all those things about the "Saw" franchise lay your blame squarely on the shoulders of director/writer Darren Lynn Bousman, the man behind the similarly ugly and annoying "Repo! The Genetic Opera".
The plot of "Saw II" begins as 8 people wake up in a booby-trapped house. They have an hour before the "nerve gas" in their bloodstream kills them and the only way to survive is to play the various sick little games around the house in order to get vials of antidote. The games include a burning fiery furnace, a pit full of syringes, and a door with a gun on the other side. Meanwhile, a crooked, violent cop (Donnie Wahlberg) has finally arrested the elusive Jigsaw Killer (Tobin Bell) and must use every trick in the book to extract the location of the 8 people before the time runs out. What makes this task even more urgent for the cop is that his son (Erik Knudsen) is one of the people trapped inside the house.
I won't lie, the plot sounds promising even to me. But "Saw II" manages to hit every pitfall the first "Saw" avoided. First of all, I grew to appreciate James Wan's direction every minute I was subjected to his poor replacement, Darren Lynn Bousman's work. Bousman seems to be one of those directors who believe that tension and excitement rise the more you swing your camera around and the more often you cut. Even though most of the scenes in this film have a small group of characters in a single room I had a tough time keeping track where everyone was simply because Bousman's cutting was so fast and disorientating that he never gave me the time to catch my bearings before moving on to the next scene. In contrast, "Saw" had a much slower pace, allowing for long dialogue scenes between Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell in between more action-oriented moments. Director James Wan would only turn to handheld camera and fast cutting when the emotional level of a scene would require it. So, for instance, a quiet dialogue scene is edited to a slow pace and shot by a mostly steady camera. On the other hand, the scene in which Dr Lawrence cuts off his foot, a dramatic and exciting scene, is shot hand-held with many fast cuts. But Bousman is not interested in thinking his style through. Every scene is hacked up into a million shots whether it be a dramatic scene in which a woman has to dig through thousands of syringes or a tense but quiet dialogue scene between the cop and the Jigsaw Killer.
The film is also horribly ugly to look at. Sure, "Saw" had a green-hued grittiness to it, but "Saw II" overindulges itself in green-lights and dirt to the point that every wall is puke coloured and everyone needs a shower. Whereas the gritty look of the original contributed to its atmosphere of disease and rot, the ugliness of "Saw II" merely made me want to look away, and not in a good sense.
The biggest problem with this film, however, is that unlike in the original in which the two men trapped together learned to work together, here our eight leads never stop bickering. I can't stand it when films hinge around people shouting and swearing at each other and the dreadfully unlikeable creatures that pass for characters in "Saw II" never stop doing exactly that. From the moment they wake up to the last scene they're in, the characters continually push each other around, yell in each other's faces, and eventually decide to start killing each other. This wore on me very soon and by the half-way point, all I wanted for Christmas was for them just to stop already. It doesn't help that they're all uniformly unlikeable, detestable in fact, except for the cop's kid who's merely a nothing character. He doesn't get any kind of personality or character arc. He's merely there to connect the two plots. The bad writing makes it impossible for me to judge the performances. When everyone is required by the script to play their characters one-note you can't exactly blame them for doing that.
Is there anything good to be said about "Saw II". Well, its plot makes sense, kind of. Which is more than I usually dare ask of horror sequels. It also has a very good score from Charlie Clouser and a menacing turn from Tobin Bell as the villain. It is not the worst of horror sequels by far, but I had little fun watching it and I'm sure I'll forget all about it quite quickly. Except for the needle pit scene which was disturbing by default rather than due to it being well-executed, none of the other set-pieces is in the least bit memorable. This is perhaps "Saw II's" biggest fault.
1.5/4 - DirectorDarren Lynn BousmanStarsTobin BellShawnee SmithAngus MacfadyenJigsaw abducts a doctor in order to keep himself alive while he watches his new apprentice put an unlucky citizen named Jeff through a brutal test.24-04-2020
With "Saw III" Darren Lynn Bousman pulled off a minor miracle. And that is convincing me he can direct a fairly competent and exciting movie. After the debacles that were the annoying "Repo! The Genetic Opera" and the ugly and messy "Saw II", "Saw III" feels like a breath of fresh air in his otherwise cadaverous filmography. However, I have an inkling that this has less to do with him possessing some kind of hidden talent but rather with the fact he was not involved in writing "Saw III". That task was wisely left to the authors of the original and still best "Saw" movie, Leigh Whannell and James Wan who here craft a fragmentary but devious little tale of torture and redemption.
Now, "Saw III" is not some kind of a masterpiece. As a whole, it is often messy, frequently paper-thin, and always joyfully exploitative, but when the credits rolled I was amazed that I'd enjoyed far more of its parts then not and that I was, in the end, thoroughly hooked by its twisty plot and tickled pink by its preposterous but exhilarating finale. However, the thing that surprised me the most is how ambitious it was. Overambitious, in fact. While many would list this as one of its flaws, I have to commend its creators for it, because it essentially belongs to a sequel-ridden subgenre which seems to reward barren simplicity and copy-paste filmmaking. "Saw III" does, to be fair, take a lot of tropes and set-ups from its predecessors but weaves them cleverly and in unexpected ways into numerous engaging and well-put-together plot strands which in the end unexpectedly do tie up into a coherent if fantastical plot.
The two main plot strands of "Saw III" concern two captives of the mysterious Jigsaw Killer (Tobin Bell), a cancer-ridden man who kidnaps people he deems don't value their lives as much as they should, forces them to play potentially deadly games and thus makes them realise they want to live. The first of these captives is Jeff (Angus Macfadyen), a man consumed by the death of his son and unable to forgive the hit-and-run driver responsible. He spends his days fantasizing about killing him, cuddling with his son's old toys, and ignoring his living wife and daughter. Jigsaw kidnaps him and puts him in some sort of an abandoned abattoir where from room to room he finds various people involved in the death of his son. One is an eyewitness (Debra McCabe) who chose to run away rather than help, the other the judge (Barry Flatman) who gave the killer a ludicrously light sentence etc. Each of these people is tied up to a devilish contraption which threatens to kill them unless Jeff chooses to forgive them and save their lives. The eyewitness is tied up naked in a freezer room. The judge in a vat slowly filling up with pig intestines. The final contraption Jeff comes across is particularly nasty and memorable.
Yes, unlike the traps in "Saw II" which I found dull and unimaginative, the ones in "Saw III" are a major improvement. Sadistically clever, eye-catchingly designed, and above all memorably original, they will stick in your nightmares for many days to come. This part of the film is the most successful. The contraptions are great, the acting above standard for this kind of film. Angus McFadyen is particularly good as the silently suffering Jeff. Even if his character isn't nearly as well profiled as he should have been, I still believed in him completely, mainly because of McFadyen's serious and quietly expressive performance.
The other main plot strand follows Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh), a neurosurgeon who wakes up with one of those necklaces worn by Rutger Hauer and Mimi Rogers in "Wedlock", the kind that explode if you run too far away from the a certain point. Only that this necklace is also tied up to Jigsaw's heart monitor. You see, the old man is finally dying but wants desperately to live long enough to see Jeff finish the game. It is up to Lynn to keep him alive long enough or die. This, of course, ends up involving a gory but terrifyingly effective brain surgery scene. For that scene alone, I must commend the sound effects team. The sound of the power drill hitting Jigsaw's skull gave me goosebumps the way these kinds of scenes usually don't. When overdone to the point of ridicule such as in "BrainDead" or Japanese gore films, I find them repetitive and quite boring, but this scene got me. Mainly because Bousman gives it time to build up to its gruesome finale. Soomekh is a fine actress and does a good job portraying the arrogant surgeon, but Tobin Bell, of course, steals the show as the sinister and menacing Jigsaw. Sadly, the side is let down by an overly-broad and cartoonish performance from Shawnee Smith as his psychopathic helper Amanda.
The less-important plot strands concern a police investigation into the Jigsaw Killer, Amanda's backstory, and the fate of Adam (Leigh Whannell), the protagonist of the first "Saw" film last seen screaming in a dark and locked public toilet. And here we get to what impressed me the most about Darren Lynn Bousman's direction on this film and that is the fact he kept all these disparate and tonally inconsistent plot strands together and weaved them into a pacy and exciting film without ever losing tension or causing confusion when switching between stories. I am also happy to report that his garish visual style has been sanitised here. The cinematography by David A. Armstrong has lost that sickening puke-coloured quality, the editing from Kevin Greutert is no longer so fast-paced I can't follow even simple actions, and the camera actually stays calm and focused on the actors for most of the film. In fact, "Saw III" is much closer to James Wan's more elegant style than Darren Lynn Bousman's and that change alone ranks it far above the abysmal "Saw II".
With its fast (but rhythmically well organised) pace, brutal violence, good performances, and stylish direction, "Saw III" is a flawed but enjoyable film. However, it is its script which is unexpectedly purposeful and actually reaches a sensible and shocking finale that makes it a horror film worth seeing. I know that no one who doesn't like "Saw" movies will enjoy this film at all, but they kinda intrigue me with their Agatha Christie premises and gory (but never over-the-top) violence, so I found "Saw III" a thoroughly enjoyable experience.
3/4 - DirectorDarren Lynn BousmanStarsTobin BellScott PattersonLouis FerreiraDespite Jigsaw's death, and in order to save the lives of two of his colleagues, Lieutenant Rigg is forced to take part in a new game, which promises to test him to the limit.25-04-2020
I enjoy the "Saw" films, they're devious, twisty thriller clockworks in which (like in one of Jigsaw's traps) numerous moving parts, cogs and gears, work to deliver the final jab. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't (the score's 2:2 so far), but I always enjoy it, on a very surface level, sure, but I do have fun with it. Much like a regular jigsaw puzzle, "Saw" films are thin and cardboardy but are a fun way to pass two hours and in the end, you get to see a bigger picture which you may or may not like. I understand why a lot of people may not like these movies but this review is written from a perspective of (if not a fan then surely) an appreciative spectator. What can definitely be said for them, however, is that unlike other torture-porn horror franchises like "Hostel" or "Human Centipede" they try to build a stellar and engaging plot around their brutality which (thankfully) owes more to Michael Connelly then Herschell Lewis. So instead of maidens wandering into bloody dungeons, we get cops, FBI agents, and a deviously moralising killer.
"Saw IV" attempts to recreate the success of "Saw III", a complicated and ambitious thriller in which numerous plot strands eventually came together into a preposterous but oddly satisfying twist ending. Even the format is essentially the same with two seemingly disparate plot lines, one about a group of cops hunting the Jigsaw Killer, the other about one of his victims going through a "test". There's also a flashback subplot this time focusing on Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) himself. But "Saw IV" falls into many traps "Saw III" avoided.
The test subject this time 'round is Riggs (Lyriq Bent), a dedicated SWAT team officer whom Jigsaw is aiming to teach that he can't save everyone's lives. To that end, he makes Riggs go on a scavenger hunt of sorts which takes him from one trap to another. But those traps are designed for other people and all Riggs has to do is not help them and if he tries to get involved, things just get worse. The traps include a hair-pulling chair which in the end scalps its victim, an abused wife being made to kill her husband, the abuser, and a convoluted final trap involving a block of ice, an electric chair, and a hanging. Like the very similar plotline in "Saw III" in which a man had to choose whether he'll save or let die people responsible for the death of his son, this subplot is the most entertaining of all in "Saw IV". It follows the well-established formula of gruesome traps, fast-paced editing, and high emotional drama very faithfully and in the end hits all the marks though it sadly never aims above them. It is very familiar and often predictable but as entertaining as you'd expect a "Saw" film to be.
The second plot follows two FBI agents, the hothead Strahm (Scott Patterson) and his collected partner Perez (Athena Karkanis) as they follow the trail of bodies left behind Riggs' test and attempt to piece together all the clues which will lead them to Jigsaw. This particular subplot feels a lot like an afterthought since it brings nothing to the film except extending it to 95-minutes. Nothing of any interest happens to either Strahm or Perez and in the end, their involvement makes no difference in the larger picture. Patterson and Karkanis make for good leads and I'm sure that had the film focused more on them they would have been more than capable of carrying the film on their own, but in "Saw IV" they're merely glorified extras.
The final plot strand is presented as a series of flashbacks showing how meek engineer John Kramer became the fearsome Jigsaw Killer. Despite fine performances from Tobin Bell and Betsy Russell who played his wife, I enjoyed this storyline the least. It turns out the motive for all the horror we've witnessed so far comes down to some cheap amateur psychology and pretty much every drama cliche you've ever seen. Like the police procedural plotline, it brings nothing to the overall movie.
However, where "Saw IV" fails is in its finale when the disparate subplots remain disparate, an asinine and entirely illogical plot twist occurs, and a completely meaningless revelation about when the film is taking place is treated like some grand shock when all it in fact did was confuse me. Eventually, when I understood what had happened, I didn't care because, like most of "Saw IV's" plot points, it did nothing to affect the rest of the film. The more I watch "Saw" movies, the more I understand it is Leigh Whannell, the franchise creator, who is the only person that truly knows how to craft one of these films. The two films he wrote, "Saw" and "Saw III" worked like clockwork and were engaging, fun, and rewarding. The two he was only marginally involved with or wasn't involved with at all, "Saw II" and "Saw IV" fail to deliver.
On a technical side, "Saw IV" falls somewhere between parts two and three. It isn't quite as annoyingly ugly and choppy as two, but neither is it as exciting and stylish as three. Darren Lynn Bousman's direction often makes the film muddled and tough to follow, but he is saved by David A. Armstrong's gritty cinematography and Charlie Clouser's now iconic score. The pace doesn't gel together very well and the switching from one plotline to the other is often quite jarring and kills the tension in the film which is another problem that simply wasn't present in "Saw III".
Never-the-less, "Saw IV" is not a terrible film. There's fun to be had with it even though its twist ending is a complete ass-pull, and the various plotlines seem more like various films then parts of the same larger picture. Lyriq Bent is a good lead and Tobin Bell makes for a great villain as ever though we don't get to see much of him in his full evil genius mode here which is a shame. Overall, a diverting but ultimately not very satisfying experience.
2/4 - DirectorDavid HacklStarsScott PattersonCostas MandylorTobin BellFollowing Jigsaw's grisly demise, Mark Hoffman is commended as a hero, but Agent Strahm is suspicious, and delves into Hoffman's past. Meanwhile, another group of people are put through a series of gruesome tests.25-04-2020
So far, "Saw II" is the worst instalment in this seemingly never-ending franchise. Most of it focused on annoying, entirely unlikable characters bickering their way through bland traps. So it is interesting that "Saw V" takes up the same premise as "Saw II", a group of people going through a booby-trapped maze in order to be allowed to leave. It is almost as if the filmmakers decided to remake "Saw II" but do it right this time. Well, they were only partly successful.
Again, "Saw V" follows two plotlines and the five people in a maze is predictably the best one. This has been the case with all the "Saw" films from the very first one in which the plotline following Danny Glover's obsessive cop hunting down the Jigsaw Killer paled in comparison to the plotline everyone remembers focusing on the two men chained up in a filthy toilet. Exactly why, the producers of the "Saw" franchise refuse to simply focus on the plots that make their films famous but instead awkwardly force police procedural plotlines into the movies is beyond me. But, hey, here we go again!
Anyway. The maze plotline which like "Saw II" follows a group of people having to go through one trap at a time in order to survive, is actually quite well done and is a massive improvement over "Saw II". For one, the characters, although also terrible people, are never annoying. "Saw II" was a loud film and it seemed that in every scene the characters were either screaming, shouting, or beating each other up. The protagonists of "Saw V" approach their problems with a little bit more sense. Not enough, of course, so that the film is over in 10 minutes, as it could have been, but enough so that their ordeal becomes at least watchable. I credit this success to the excellent five-person cast consisting of Julie Benz, Greg Bryk, Meagan Good, Carlo Rota, and Laura Gordon giving some of the best performances of the franchise. I am honestly surprised at the level of commitment from some of them, especially Benz and Bryk who manage to give their characters a lot more... well, character, then the screenwriters did. Just having a great cast like this makes this plotline excellent but on top of that, I enjoyed the direction from David Hackl who, unlike his predecessor, Darren Lynn Bousman doesn't feel the need to cut every two seconds and includes static shots in this film allowing us to see the action and take in the outlay of the trap before all hell breaks loose. The traps themselves are, sadly, a little forgettable. There are no clever, over-the-top mechanisms this time 'round. They have been replaced by dirty bathtubs and nail bombs. Not quite "Saw" material but they do the job. The final twist is perhaps a little predictable but it packs a punch and has stayed with me ever since I first saw this film in 2008.
If they had only had the brains to focus the entire film on the maze plotline, "Saw V" could have been one of the best "Saw" films. But sadly the admirable efforts from the cast are rendered entirely pointless by the fact that their plot strand is awkwardly and entirely pointlessly intercut by what is easily the worst-written and acted plotline in the entire franchise. Yes, you heard me right. "Saw V" both improves and impairs on "Saw II". This plotline focuses on FBI agent Peter Strahm (Scott Patterson) trying to prove that detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) is the new Jigsaw Killer. Now, this plotline is immediately rendered pointless by the fact that we know Hoffman is the new Jigsaw Killer. We were told this explicitly in the previous film and we spend a good third of this one flashing back to him becoming the new Jigsaw Killer. So what exactly the point of following Strahm around trying to prove what we already know is, I have no idea. All I know is that every time the film cut from the maze plotline to the Strahm plotline I groaned with boredom. Add to that the terrible writing. Strahm spends the entirety of this film awkwardly muttering exposition to himself. "You provided him with the police files," he mutters to himself (more precisely, to us) at one point. At another, he explains "You helped him kidnap them". Well, thanks agent Strahm, but we kinda knew that already. All this constant muttering of exposition veers dangerously to breaking the fourth wall and in the end begins having a kind of Brechtian effect on the audience, except that "Saw V" is a film so shoddily constructed you don't want its machinery exposed. Finally, I had a huge problem in telling Strahm and Hoffman apart because the actors playing them look exactly the same. Two athletically built white guys in their 40s with slicked-back hair who talk in an affected whisper. You know your movie is in trouble when you can't tell your good guys from your bad guys. But honestly, who'd care to. Mandylor and Patterson give such dispirited, uninteresting and unconvincing performances I didn't much care to tell one apart from the other. They were both equally bad. Also, would someone tell American actors that not all cops speak in a hoarse stage whisper? That's one stereotype I'm particularly tired of.
Of course, Tobin Bell must be included in all "Saw" films so some boring flashbacks are thrown in at random moments in the film showing us how Jigsaw trained Hoffman to become his apprentice and eventual successor. Nothing of any interest happens in these flashbacks. Most of them consist of Tobin Bell spouting complete and utter nonsense which I guess was meant to be so oblique that some less discerning audience members could mistake it for philosophy. Nothing he says in this film is remotely profound or even interesting and most of it doesn't even make sense. Bell is always good as Jigsaw but he looked bored in this film and there is little chemistry between him and Mandylor. His scenes are so insignificant and half-arsed that they should have been cut out of respect for Bell's excellent performances in the previous four films.
If you were to put together all the maze scenes you'd get a very good 30-minute short. Exciting, clever, brutal in all the right places, and starring an excellent cast. The other 60 minutes of this film, however, are completely and utterly awful. The screenplay by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan is repetitive, boring, and covers the exact same ground "Saw IV" covered in its last 5 minutes, the performances from Mandylor and Patterson are unengaging and dull, and the direction is work-a-day at best. So, the very good 30-minutes are eventually dragged down and eaten up by the dreadful 60-minutes they're unfairly chained up to. In other words, "Saw V" is a film of two halves, but one of the halves is a cement block and the other half has offended the mob.
1.5/4 - DirectorKevin GreutertStarsTobin BellCostas MandylorMark RolstonAgent Strahm is dead, and FBI agent Erickson draws nearer to Hoffman. Meanwhile, a pair of insurance executives find themselves in another game set by Jigsaw.25-04-2020
Longterm franchise editor and one of the few people left from the artistic team that made the original "Saw" film, Kevin Greutert, was given a thankless task when handed the job of directing "Saw VI". He was to craft a pacy and engaging thriller around a plot we've already seen five other times and with fairly boring characters. To my utter astonishment, he succeeded.
The characters I'm referring to are, of course, carry-overs from the substandard fourth and fifth instalments the main of which is Mark Hoffman, a police detective and the new Jigsaw Killer hammily played by Costas Mandylor. With his slicked-bad oily hair, raspy whisper, and ill-fitting suit he's a more obvious villain than Jason Voorhees and yet people continue to believe him. This posed a problem in "Saw V" which followed an FBI agent trying to prove Hoffman was the Jigsaw Killer, something we already knew and thus didn't care much about. This time Greutert and screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan frame the story differently. Now we follow Hoffman as he juggles his two identities: being the Jigsaw Killer and hunting the Jigsaw Killer. This is a wise move on behalf of the filmmakers as it leads to a lot more suspense. While we know he's the Jigsaw Killer we don't know if he'll get caught. On the one side, he's now working with the FBI as the lead investigator on the Jigsaw case. He has managed to convince everyone the killer is Strahm, the hothead FBI agent he killed in "Saw V". Everyone that is except for Strahm's partner agent Perez (Athena Karkanis). Perez's persistent digging and attempts to clear her partner's name lead to a lot of trouble for Hoffman. On the other side, the Jigsaw legacy, which he believed was now his, has a new claimant in the form of Jill (Betsy Russell), the ex-wife of the original Jigsaw Killer, John Kramer (Tobin Bell). Named John's executor, Jill sets about setting a mysterious plan in motion behind Hoffman's back. What are her intentions? You'll have to see the film and find out.
The thriller storyline in "Saw VI" works better than usual but also features a lot of same old flaws we've seen in the previous films. Costas Mandylor is not a great actor. He has all the subtleness of a Herschell Lewis villain and plays Hoffman entirely one-note. I'm also not a huge fan of the Jill character. She's dreadfully underwritten and Betsy Russell fails to breathe any kind of life in her. The biggest problem with this plotline, however, is that with its repetitive flashbacks it distracts us from what we came to see. The horror plotline.
And what a plotline it is. As far as traps and melodrama go, "Saw VI" is easily the best film of the franchise. The main victim of the film is William (Peter Outerbridge), an entirely detestable fellow, a corrupt insurance executive who's denied more claims than he's approved. Having become used to choosing whether people live or die, he'll now have to do the same but to people, he knows in order to survive. Like so many before him, he wakes up in a kind of maze and in order to leave he must go through several rooms in which his co-workers are tied up to various killing machines. His secretary and his filing clerk, for instance, are both stood on trap doors with barbed wire around their necks and William has to choose who gets to live and who gets to die. However, the most memorable trap of the film involves six people on a carousel. I won't spoil the mechanics of the trap but suffice to say, only two can walk away alive. This plotline is simply the best "Saw" has to offer. The traps are diabolically inventive and memorably scary. The choices William has to make are terrifying. But the most impressive aspect of "Saw VI" is William himself. He begins the film as a totally reprehensible character but over the course of his "test" we see him change before our eyes. Has one of Jigsaw's games changed someone for the better? Peter Outerbridge gives a terrific performance exhibiting so much fear, pain and compassion in his eyes he made me almost root for this bastard. That alone is compliment enough. Outerbridge's performance is hands-down the best of the entire franchise.
So, again, we have a film of two halves, but this time 'round they balance each other out fairly well. "Saw VI" is not as well-put-together as "Saw III". The two plotlines don't quite fit as well, but unlike parts four and five which were overburdened by the constant cutting back and forth and whose plotlines tended to be boringg and inconsequntial, both of the plotlines in "Saw VI" are exciting and feature some truly great moments. The Hoffman story isn't quite as compelling as it could have been for the reasons I outlined above, but the William storyline is so good that it almost makes me forgive the film's other failings. If not the best of the "Saw" films, "Saw VI" is about as good as the series gets. Viciously entertaining, brutally gory, and memorably twisty, it is a strong installment in a franchise that's managing to find fresh air even this late in the game.
3/4 - DirectorKevin GreutertStarsTobin BellCostas MandylorBetsy RussellAs a deadly battle rages over Jigsaw's brutal legacy, a group of Jigsaw survivors gathers to seek the support of self-help guru and fellow survivor Bobby Dagen, a man whose own dark secrets unleash a new wave of terror.25-10-2020
"Saw: The Final Chapter" begins on a promise it doesn't deliver. Its title. Thus begins the myriad of disappointments and false promises that is this movie. The "Saw" franchise has thus had many jumps and falls in quality. The first "Saw" film was a taut, tense, clever thriller whilst the second one was ugly and plagued by annoying characters and forgettable traps. In a surprising improvement, "Saw III" was a pacy, exciting if preposterous thriller, but "Saw IV" and "Saw V" failed to recreate its complex plot and instead became confusing and increasingly dumb. "Saw VI" reversed the tide with its entertaining and effective horror elements, but as before, the improvement was short-lived and here comes "Saw: The Final Chapter", the only film in the "Saw" franchise that is outright awful. Nothing in it works from its cheap visuals to its nonsensical plot and even if it isn't the final chapter of the series it most certainly is the final nail in its coffin.
Again, we have two plotlines to follow, one a police procedural, the other a horror movie. Neither are particularly good or sensible. The police procedural plotline, however, is, in good old "Saw" tradition, the worse of the two. We're again lumbered with Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) as our villain. He's been the Jigsaw Killer for the past four films and his effectiveness has steadily decreased. Costas Mandylor's hammy performance and fake whispery voice grated on me since he first appeared, but now he just makes me laugh. Especially since this pudgy, overconfident man is here elevated to some kind of almighty status and is shown to be as omnipotent and omnipresent as Jason Voorhees himself. In one particularly laughable sequence, Hoffman successfully sneaks into a police station, goes on a killing spree, breaks into a holding cell, and all that without even being noticed. To be fair, this isn't all that strange since it seems that in the world this film is set in, a police station is only ever occupied by four officers at a time. Perhaps that's all the extras they could afford.
This time 'round, however, Hoffman has a serious rival. No, not in the killing department, but in the acting department. Costas Mandylor in "Saw: The Final Chapter" comes face to face with an actor almost as bad as he is and his name is Chad Donella. Chad plays Detective Gibson, an overconfident cop (there's a definite pattern here) who is obsessed with tracking down Hoffman. The two engage in an idiotic cat-and-mouse game involving digital recordings (which for some reason still look like bad VHS copies), exploding cars, and Walter White's mechanical machine gun. Donella makes for a truly awful protagonist with his bored line-delivery, flat characterisation and complete lack of charisma.
Also involved in this overly-complicated plotline is Jill (Betsy Russell) who tried to kill Hoffman in the previous film and failed (for who can kill Hoffman, the God of slick-haired evil cops). Now she approaches Gibson and tells him that in return for protection she'll testify against Hoffman, a deal Gibson eagerly accepts. Now, why exactly Gibson needs Jill's testimony I have no idea. Not only does Gibson possess recordings of Hoffman openly admitting he's Jigsaw, the man's been on the run for months, and the last time he was seen he burned down a building with three FBI agents inside. I'd love to see his defence in court.
The other plotline is only marginally better in that there's less mindless plot wrangling and more mindless killing. It follows Jigsaw's latest victim, Bobby (Sean Patrick Flanery), a man falsely claiming to have survived one of Jigsaw's games. Now, his lies will be made truths. Bobby wakes up in a dilapidated asylum. In each of the rooms in the asylum, one of his friends lies tied up to a diabolical machine. His goal is to reach his wife before the clock stops. Along the way, he tries to save his friends even though he doesn't have to. Unlike in the previous films, nothing is gained by saving or not saving these victims. All he really has to do is to get to the final room before the time runs out. The traps here are not particularly memorable. One has a man suspended over a caved-in floor. Another, a woman whose eyes will be poked out. The only inventive trap involves a decibel meter. The more the victim screams, the closer the deadly spikes come to her neck.
There's little to be said about this plotline. The traps are forgettable, the characters interchangeable, and nothing of interest is learned at the end. Any potential enjoyment to be had here is drained by the awful special effects, a problem never previously seen in a "Saw" film. Thus far, the practical effects have been excellent, but here they resemble previsualizations more than the final product. The practical effects are glaringly obvious and the CGI is PlayStation level bad. In the scene in which a victim has her eyes pierced by a spike, the spike looks like its disappearing into the skin rather than piercing it. In other words, there's no wound. Just a spike which ends at the eyes and some blood. This is unacceptable for a major movie and completely ruins any believability or shock factor. Eventually, all horror in "Saw: The Final Chapter" is undermined by the terrible decision to colour all blood in the film pink. Yes, you read that right. Everyone in this film bleeds bright neon pink blood. The result is hilarious. It's almost like watching a "Saw" film starring a bunch of peaches. You squeeze one and it bleeds pink. This utter and complete shamble just goes to show how much care went into this movie. None.
On top of this cake of awfulness, 3D comes like a rotted cherry on top. "Saw: The Final Chapter" was filmed in 3D and features all the cheesy gimmicks you'd expected. Blood squirts on the lense, spikes come out at the audience, and everything's in glorious focus making this film look like an overlit YouTube video. Brian Gedge's cinematography is unappealing and overly crisp and clean for a horror movie and all the 3D gags are pathetically funny. I gather director Kevin Greutert is ashamed of this film. He should be.
"Saw: The Final Chapter" has no redeeming features. It is a film which makes us pray it stays true to its title. After the refreshing and intelligent "Saw VI", this feels like a kick in the nuts. Everyone comes out of this with egg on their faces. Tobin Bell is again awkwardly shoehorned into a flashback to deliver his nonsensical philosophy. Sean Patrick Flanery looks embarrassed all the way through. And Betsy Russell spends the entire film posing for the camera like she's at a photoshoot. But since her character has about as much depth as a puddle after a light drizzle, I can't really blame her. Oh, and Cary Elwes, the star of "Saw" is back, but since he's only in about five minutes of this film, he needn't have bothered. Elwes is always fun to watch but even he, for some reason, affects a raspy whisper in this film. I don't know if there was a flu outbreak on set or has everyone been taking acting lessons from "Judge Dredd"-era Sylvester Stallone, but whatever the reason the effect is laughably annoying. "Saw: The Final Chapter" is a great movie to avoid. Badly written, badly acted, and bad all 'round, it is the worst "Saw" film ever made and is about as fun as being kidnapped by a pig-mask wearing heavy.
1/4 - DirectorMichael SpierigPeter SpierigStarsMatt PassmoreTobin BellCallum Keith RennieBodies are turning up around the city, each having met a uniquely gruesome demise. As the investigation proceeds, evidence points to one suspect: John Kramer, the man known as Jigsaw, who has been dead for over 10 years.26-04-2020
After seven dormant years, the "Saw" franchise is back. "Jigsaw", the eighth instalment in what is proving to be an indestructible franchise, may brand itself a "reimagining" but it is actually more of the exact same. The old formula is back intact, the old scare tactics, even the old villain. The only thing new in "Jigsaw" is that, for better or for worse, it has acquired some distinctly 2010s characteristics and stylistic choices. Other than that, the "Saw" franchise now feels like it's never gone away. And that is not a good thing.
Following the formula that has been with the series with day one, "Jigsaw" is split between two equal plotlines, one a police procedural, the other a horror movie. And just like before, the police procedural plotline feels cumbersome and cliched whilst the horror plotline is fun but insubstantial. The latter focuses on five people who wake up in an abandoned barn in the middle of nowhere. In order to get out alive, they must play a series of games and progress through the various rooms like rats in a maze. The games include a mock hanging, a silo filling up with grain, and a cone with blades. These plotlines often hinge on two things. Traps and characters and both are merely fine. The traps are inventive but compared to some of the highlights of the previous films, not particularly memorable. The violence is notably less gruesome in this film, but I didn't mind that, I just wish the traps were more menacing. The characters are also... fine. They are not annoying and don't bicker constantly like in "Saw II" but lack any substance or roundedness. Even now, minutes after finishing the film, I couldn't honestly describe any of them. Sure, I know what they look like, talk like, behave like. But what they're truly like, what their personalities are, I have no idea. I had fun following this plotline, but not nearly enough to justify sitting through the entire film. Especially since when the whole thing was over, I didn't feel the game had any particular point to make. Unlike the game in "Saw VI" which seemed to profoundly change the man playing it, the characters at the end of "Jigsaw" learn nothing and don't change. They just die. But with characters as bland as this, it would be foolish to expect them to be anything more than cannon fodder.
The police procedural plotline, again in good old-fashioned "Saw" style, is the weakest link. Ever since the very first (and best) "Saw" film, the sections focusing on cops unsuccessfully trying to capture the Jigsaw Killer have been the toughest to sit through. For one, we know they're not going to outwit him. Otherwise, there'd be no next film. But more damagingly, they're always overly complicated and tend to shoehorn twists at the end which merely make things even more confusing. "Jigsaw", in particular, features a twist so obvious and idiotic that it pretty much undermines the whole film. Another problem is the stereotypical characters which tend to lead these plotlines. This time 'round, our lead detective is Halloran (Callum Keith Rennie), a thoroughly detestable man, prone to violence, verbal and physical abusiveness, and misogynistic comments. Like so many "Saw" detectives before him, he's an overconfident jerk who struts about in a badly tailored suit spouting wisecracks in a raspy whisper. This affected manner of speaking is my number one pet peeve in cop movies. No one except for people fresh out of throat surgery talks like that. It is not appealing, not interesting and certainly not cool. It is merely annoying. Anyway, it is impossible to root for a character as utterly unlikeable as Halloran, so most of his plotline we simply observe his actions without any kind of emotional involvement which makes for very dull viewing indeed. It doesn't help that Rennie is not a particularly good actor and continually makes bad and often amateurish choices. His grinning, grimacing, and sneering performance is way too broad and cartoonish for my liking. There are other characters in this plotline such as a hot pathologist and his Jigsaw-obsessed assistant, but they're such thoroughly unimpressive and cardboardy characters played with complete lack of enthusiasm by bored jobbing actors, that they're not worth mentioning at all.
All of this is almost par for the course in a bad "Saw" movie. The only significant change introduced in this supposed reimagining is the visual style. Gone are the days of green-coloured cinematography and hand-held camera work. "Jigsaw" is noticeably sleeker and cleaner than previous films. The colour palette is now mostly blue-tinted, as is the norm for thrillers these days. The camera-work is smooth and creeping. The editing pace noticeably slower. As I didn't much love the ugly and overly-shaky look of the previous films, I don't mind this change. Ben Nott's cinematography is pleasant to look at and the Spierig Brothers direct the film competently. However, even the visual style suffers from a disease eating up "Jigsaw" from the inside and that disease is tiredness.
"Jigsaw" just feels tired. No one in this movie from the cast and the crew right down to the extras seems in the least committed to making this film anything new or interesting or exciting. Everyone's work is very prim and correct, but lacking in any imagination or gusto. I feel that the motto on the set was "keep your head down and do the work". Consequently, the film is listless and quite honestly dull. It is an unenthusiastic retread of the same old ground that every "Saw" film so far has covered. It is pleasant to look at and it passes the time but boy does it flit out of your brain as soon as the credits roll. It doesn't even have the decency to be memorably awful like "Saw: The Final Chapter". No, there's nothing memorable about "Jigsaw" at all.
1.5/4