Here, piggy-piggy

Pighunt

By J Fountain

Of all the giant killer pig movies, Pighunt is perhaps the best.  The reason: the film refuses to simply retread the clichés of Razorback (1984) [essentially a pop music video with a killer boar] and Chaw (2009) [essentially Jaws with a pig…and set on land, otherwise the pig would drown], and move in a different direction.  But first, let’s set the scene.  The movie opens with a hunter being chased by something and betting caught.  So far, so run-of-the-mill.  The credit sequence kicks in with some naïve paintings of a happy-land style liberation of Iraq.  This is actually an important underpinning for the film, so pay attention.  We then are introduced to young former soldier John Hickman (Travis Aaron Wade) and his sexy Asian girlfriend, Brook (Tina Huang), who we soon learn is the artist responsible for the painting.  John is the hunter’s nephew, and has decided to gather a group of his friends (none of whom really seem to get on) to go to his deceased uncle’s cabin in the woods and hunt some pigs.  It’s never really clear if he knows what has killed his uncle, but he does seem to have an ulterior motive. 

Joining him and Brook on the trip are loud-mouthed wannabe soldier Ben (Howard Johnson Jr), laconic Wayne (Ravij Shah) and lardy dog-lover Quincy (Trevor Bullock).  And Wolfgang the dog.  As a dogy-daddy myself, my heart sank when I saw that a dog was involved in the movie.  Things never end well for the dog in movies like this.  The group set out into the backwoods, stopping off at a stereotypical roadside convenience store for directions.  During this little break, the group meet Kukri-wielding hippy overlord Cimi and a couple of his drugged up beauties, and manage to kill a snake.  Once back on their journey, they pass through the territory of the local clan of inbred hillbilly rednecks, who are John’s former friends.  However, the meeting is brief as the city-folk drive straight through, sharing only suspicious glances with the locals. 

Once they reach the cabin, it seems as if John’s uncle was a little cracked; the place is festooned with skull, antlers, newspaper cuttings and various unpleasant phrases such as “Death Walks On All Fours” daubed on the walls.  Sensibly, the group decide to camp outside.  As the sun comes up, John and Brook are rudely awoken by two of the locals, Ricky and Jake.  It turns out that they and John share a rocky history; John gave Ricky a bad scar when they were children.  There is something of a rivalry between them.  While the men (save John) posture and swagger, and Brook suffers lecherous comments, Quincy tries to make friends and score some drugs at the same time. 

This is not a functional group.  Setting out to find the main wallowing ground of the wild pigs, things don’t go according to plan; a pig cripples Wayne, and relations deteriorate further when a crop of high quality marijuana plants are found on John’s property.  The deterioration of relations leads to a gunshot, and a very pissed of redneck.  Realising things have begun to spiral out of control, John decides to abort his mission of vengeance in favour of getting his friends home safely.  The group splits up…but those who survive will find themselves at the mercy of not just a giant, mutated pig, but also those who worship it…

 This is a great, entertaining movie.  From the opening shot of a sunrise, to the bloody finale, it doesn’t really stop moving for long.  Channelling the best of various exploitation movies from the 70s (indeed, a strong 70s vibe runs through the whole film), such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Death trap, both incidentally Tobe Hooper films, it doesn’t need the gimmicks of retrosploitation fare such as Deathproof and Planet Terror; it achieves it’s goals through an excellent verisimilitude, aided and abetted by wonderfully grimy cinematography, and expert direction. 

You can almost smell the rednecks, feel the mud in your eyes, and taste…well, taste the pig.  There is a fantastic musical sting that twangs into action whenever the heroes do, and it makes you want to yell “The South Will Rise Again”, even if you come from a middle-class British background.  Best if you don’t shout that, of course, or the neighbours may start to wonder what’s going on.  There is a subtext in the movie, perhaps more than one.  There is something in this film about the visceral nature of Man, and the fallacy in following the path of others.  More than that, there seems to be a comment about war.  Is this movie a metaphor for the war in the Middle East…no, but it wants to be.  There is something there, but it is so subtle as to be almost irrelevant.  That being said, the conflict between the three groups: city-folk, rednecks, and hippies, is well played.  Anyone who has seen Deliverance knows not to screw around with the locals, but hippies? 

There are some good performances in this film:  Travis Aaron Wade is excellent as the slightly distant, often lukewarm John; Tina Huang is excellent as the feisty and more than capable Brook, and Howard Johnson Jr is believable as a bravado-drunk loud-mouth out to prove himself a man.  Less remarkable are the rednecks, who seem to have fallen out of any number of “crazed-local” style films (with the exception of Nick Tagas and Jason Foster as Ricky and Jake, who are slight less broadly drawn). 

 The best thing about the film is, as has been said, that it refuses to bow down to established clichés.  What could have been a run of the mill giant pig movie with the whole hunter-prey dichotomy vacillating away at it’s centre does something more interesting: yes, the hunter-prey dynamic is there, but it is not focused on the pig.  The pig is merely the catalyst; the true dynamics of the piece are down to human interrelations and their failures.  Killing the pig won’t solves the problem, because the giant mutated killer pig isn’t the real problem: we are.  Many other movies have tried to present this philosophy and most fail because they flag the issues then try to drown the audience in their moralising and viewpoints.  Pig Hunt is not that blatant.  It is subtle in it’s voice.  Well, as subtle as a movie dealing with a giant mutated killer pig, psycho rednecks, and weird hippy-cults can be, anyway.

Zombitastic!

The Horde

A Review for Fan Girl Magazine

By J. Fountain.

Welcome to the wonderful world of head trauma.  La Horde is a French zombie film, but don’t let that put you off.  Gone of the days of the “Grapes Of Death” and Jess Franco’s other forays into horror: La Horde is the way forward.

 Opening with the body of an undercover cop being angrilly surveyed by his boss, the Jeff Bridges-a-like Jimenez (Aurelien Recoing), the movie starts slowly…for about 5 minutes.  We meet the rest of the police task force: Ouessem (Jean-Pierre Martins), a moustachioed DeNiro impersonator; Aurore (Claude Perron) grim action chick with a secret pregnancy;  and beardy nice-guy Tony (Antoine Oppenhiem).  Together they raid the partially deserted tenement lair of Nigerian gangster Adewale Markudi (Eriq Ebouaney) and his hair-trigger head-case of a brother, Bola (Doudou Masta).  For a crack team of super-cops, they screw this mission up in a big way, very quickly: Jimenez critically injured, after which he comes down with a terminal case of bulletitus dans la cranium, and the others captured. 

Meanwhile, Adewale’s guards are noticing that all is not right in the wider world: the city beyond is lit by flames and flashes, and in Adewale’s bathroom, a recently executed police informant is alive…ish, and hungry for blood. Taking about 150 bullets in the body and limbs just seems to annoy him, and he sets about dismantling Adewale’s crew.  With his teeth.  When the victims begin to reanimate, the survivors decide to decamp, crooks and cops together.  When they realise the city is ablaze, and the zombies are coming, Ouessem makes a deal with the devil, Adewale, to work togther to get out alive.  From the start, you know this deal is never going to see the dawn, but you do extend some hope that human nature can be overcome  for the greater good. 

It’s not long, however, before Bola and 80’s throwback Greco (Jo Prestia) are shoving spanners into the works.  While Aurore helps Tony, shot in the leg during Adewale’s interrogation of the cops, Ouess takes point as they begin to descend through the building.  Suddenly the building rocks with a nearby explosion, and the horde sweep between the two groups, separating Aurore and Tony from the others.  Greco, trapped on the wrong side of a fire-door vents his crazy martial-arts skills (stabbing zombies repeatedly with a flick-knife) before getting let back in.  Ouess is left with the three crooks, goaded by Bola and threatened by Greco, while Adewale stays to the agreement.  Cutting back to Aurore, we find her utilising every bit of equipment in a kitchen to batter a zombie-chick’s head.  Once dispatched by the judicious use of white-goods (a refridgeratior), she returns to Tony who reveals he has been bitten.  All this, and it’s only 40 minutes into the movie.  Ouess and Adewale’s group meet crazed Vietnam veteran Rene (Yves Pignot), who refers to the zombies as chinks and gooks.  Noticing Greco has also been bitten, Rene offers to help him out but cutting off the offending limb: this suggestion doesn’t go down well, and they decide to leave the problem for later…

 The Horde is a fantastic film, full of action and some great characters.  The two standout performances are Jo Prestia and Yves Pignot, both of whom bring a smile to the proceedings with their various kinds of crazy.  Ouess, being the nominal hero, is fine, but although most of the movie is essentially asking us to see through his eyes, he doesn’t have much of a personality.  We find that Adewale is more enticing as a leading man.  The interplay between Aurore and Tony discussing the backstory of the character’s pregnancy is perhaps the most important moment of the film, and it is well played by both actors.  Perron’s shift in character from slightly passive victim to grim survivor who will stop at nothing to save her unborn child is beautifully played and totally believable, and beside, she totally kicks zombie arse.  The other great character moments are between Adewale and his brother Bola.  The sibling rivalry is tense and layered, so you can feel the resentment on Bola’s behalf, but sympathise with Adewale’s brotherly love.  It helps that Jo Prestia gives a lovely “Iago”-like performance as he twists Bola against his brother.

The only complaint is that the zombies seem to arrive too quickly: although staged for maximum effect (the horde at the base of the building, their shadows stretching into the dark; a line of dead moving along the road from the distance) and they are indeed great shots, it just seems too soon.  The Horde seems to be homing in on this tenement only.  But, when that is the only complaint, things can’t be too bad.  The special effects are a mixture of practical and CGI; the practical works well, and the viscera is strewn around with abandon, while the CGI doesn’t quite work as well.  You’ll notice the more blatant use of CGI, and it will jar slightly.  However, you will forgive it, because they’ll be another crazy violent moment in a few seconds.  There seems to be a subtext in the film, probably one about colonial guilt, but it is so subsumed by the gore and the gunfire, it ceases to really matter.  The final moments of the movie are inevitable, but none the more shocking for that.

All in all, the movie screams out to be the first in a series, in the same vein as Romero’s work, because it is so gritty, so grim, and so full of zombie action, it would be a shame to leave this world of the Horde with a single movie.  A great film, that will leave you wanting to bash people’s heads against a concrete pillar screaming “I Am Nigerian!” for a few days.  And that’s not a bad thing.

Paradise Lost aka Turistas

(2006)

By John Fountain

Backpacking through Brazil, a group of pretty-young-things come a cropper when their bus overturns.  The group consists of firm-jawed-whinger Alex (Josh Duhamel), his pretty-and-petite sister Bea (Olivia Wilde), there generic-blonde friend Amy (Beau Garrett), dopey-British-brothers Finn (Desmond Askew) and Liam (Max Brown) and buxom-Aussie-beauty Pru (Melissa George).  After a little moaning and flirting, the group descend on the nearest beach and take advantage of the bar.  In turn, the locals take advantage of them.  Finn falls victim to a honey-trap prostitute, and the others are drugged. 

Two Swedish backpackers they have befriended and spirited away, and our heroes are divested of their bags and belongings.  Luckily for them, Bea and Pru have also chummed up with afro-headed local-boy Kiko (Agles Steib), who, after a misunderstanding with the locals, offers to take them somewhere safe.  Exactly how safe we learn when the Swedes are butchered in the jungle after trying to escape their captors.  It’s not long before we meet Kiki’s psychotic uncle Zamora (Miguel Lunardi) and his small team of nutters.  Zamora is crazy: we know this because we have witnessed him casually murder one of his own men while lecturing a small child in cod-philosophy. 

It turns out that Zamora is an organ-harvesting surgeon who has designs on our heroes offal.  As he operates, he spouts anti-colonialist rhetoric about how it is all payback for the whites raping his country.  That’s all fine, but it doesn’t explain why he is now wrist deep in Amy’s guts.  You know that this isn’t going to end well for everyone, and there is a sense of pervading despair and inevitability that hangs over the proceedings. 

This kind of movie never let’s up.  But, while the victims are fairly obvious (this being an American movies, you can guess who is going to get chopped fairly soon), but nevertheless it manages to keep the tension fairly high, although in the underwater chase scene (yes, that’s right) you do tend to lose track of who everyone is.  The movie wraps up with a fairly unconvincing turnaround, and you do feel a little cheated, if not slightly relieved. 

With the addition of some unconvincing zombies, this could easily have been a remake of Zombie Holocaust (aka Dr Butcher MD), but it is probably the better film for it.  If you are looking for titillating torture porn, this isn’t it: there’s no torture and only two pairs of naked breasts on display.  But if you don’t mind a fairly straight horror movie with some decent performances and a sense of gritty, slightly sweaty despair, then this isn’t too bad.  Not, however, a date night movie, or for those who have recently booked a holiday…

100 Tears

(2007)

By John Fountain

The abbreviation SOV stands for Shot On Video; in the normal run of events, it usually should be replaced with the phrase Shit On Video, such as in the twin shitaclasyms of 13 Hours In A Warehouse and Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker.  With regard to 100 Tears, directed by Marcus Koch, however, it doesn’t really apply.  As soon as I pressed play, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my bowels: SOV.  I was in two minds whether to stay the course and risk some kind of rectal collapse due to the ineptitude of the sorry affair, or turn it off and watch Damnation Alley instead.  I decided to be brave.  Oddly, I’m glad I did.  100 Tears opens with a scene that makes you think “Oh…okay”, although the more cineliterate viewer will identify it correctly as a flash-forward, and will be waiting for how that chain of events comes into being. 

We then meet Mark (played by writer Joe Davison), chubby yet lovable whinger, and Jennifer (Georgia Chris), slender and pretty, both of whom are friends writing for a shock tabloid.  Jennifer wants to review serial killers, while Mark wants to cover a story about raising the titanic.  They banter.  It’s all good.  We then cut to a halfway-house filled with “actors” who are obviously friends of the production team.  This is normal in SOV movies, so you don’t expect much in the way of acting ability.  Under normal circumstances, you’d have to watch these non-performers drone on with bad dialogue for about an hour before anything actually happens.  Not so in 100 Tears, as the killer Clown turns up and begins to slice and dice each one without so much as a killer-lurking-in-the-bushes-and-breathing-shot. 

The Karo syrup flies for about five minutes, with a number of splattery vignettes as each character, even the pretty ones, get hacked.  But the end of this sequence, you are sat in your chair thinking: “well, okay, that was pretty good, and had the odd funny gag in it, I’ll keep watching”.  And you are not going to be too disappointed.  The Clown hacks off limbs throughout the film, intercutting with our two journalist heroes trying to track him down.  We also meet crazy sex-minx Christine (Raine Brown) who favours pig-tails and short skirts, and what’s not to like there?  We meet her having a playful exchange with her mother before going to a bar and picking up a guy. 

After said guy provides the most selfless act of love upon her nethers, we cut away for a while, and when we come back, he is dead with a lot of blood on his face.  What’s going on there?  Christine’s time of the month?  Christine, we learn is a little “off” and gets sexual pleasure from cutting herself with a razor.  And yet she doesn’t look like an Emo.  Meanwhile, Mark & Jennifer (who’s sister works for the FBI…unnecessary plot-point that doesn’t go anywhere) make the connection between the clown and the local circuses….dear god, Mr Holmes, we thought you were dead. 

Sarcasm aside, its more than the local PD have managed.  Researching further, they get a lead in the form of midget performer and barker Drago (Noberto Santiago) who leads them on a hilarious chase around a trailer park.  He denies knowing anything, but we soon learn he has all of the answers.  The clown is searching for his long-lost love, and due to a mistake in the past, he is driven to slaughter lots of people (just go with it).  Mark & Jennifer rush to beat the Clown to the woman’s house, but she is dead, and her daughter Christine is missing.  All clues lead to an abandoned warehouse, and a reveal about Christine that is increasingly obvious, yet still fun.  Enough to say that the cops are inept, the journalists won’t make it out unscathed, and Christine is more insane than the Clown. 

The two things that raise this SOV effort above the general sewage out there are the engaging performances by the two leads, Davison and Chris, who are warm and seem to genuinely like each other.  Other standout performances in the film are the guy who plays the Chef (the credits list names, even for characters whose names you never learn, so sorry about not being able to give a proper credit here), Noberto Santiago, and a wonderfully silent, slightly snide and cruelly playful turn by Jack Amos as the Clown.  Any of these actors who want to get their break into the mainstream may have a serious chance of doing. The second thing going for this movie are the effects: they are pretty well staged for a low-budget movie, and are frequently hilarious.  Limbs get hacked off, people are decapitated and disembowelled, heads get stamped on and bisected, and the levels of torture-porn suffering are kept to a pleasant minimum. 

On the down-side, it’s obviously the budget that lets the film down, but not by much: they achieve a lot, and it is obvious that there is talent here in the writing and directing.  The only real gripe is the running time, at 100 minutes, its about 20 minutes too long for an SOV film, and there could have been some editing of the slower paced moments.  But that is a very, very small gripe. 

So it comes down to the bit question; would I watch this movie again instead of any of the following: Ghostbusters 2; Anthropophagous The Beast; Piranha 2 The Spawning?  The answer is of course, yes, hell yes.  This movie has more heart and is more engaging than any of those piss-poor efforts.  All in all, I was surprised about this film.  I’m not saying I will ever watch it again, but it’ll stay on the DVD shelves…maybe on the second row, but it’ll be there.

Fringe (Season 1)

By John Fountain

I’d heard good things about this series; current geek-meister JJ Abrams latest foray into television.  Fringe’s basic premise is that there are some areas of scientific progress that are tantamount to the supernatural.  Cutting edge science, or “Fringe” science, is reaching the point where technology becomes able to supersede the current parameters of the Known.  So far, so good. 

The way this plot thread is woven into the series is by way of a young, beautiful FBI agent (are there any other kinds?) Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv).  She and her partner, John Scott (Mark Valley) are having an illicit affair.  They are called in to investigate a horrific terrorist event on a flight from Germany.  The attack itself is extremely well done, with some seamless and wonderfully drippy special effects, as the passengers and crew melt before out eyes.  Great stuff. 

Unfortunately, it is right after this that things start to unravel into a poorly written mess: Dunham needs to get hold of Dr Walter Bishop (John Noble), incarcerated in a mental hospital these last 17 years, as she believes Bishop holds the key to unravelling the incident.  To do this, she needs to track down Bishop’s errant son, Peter (Joshua Jackson), a jack-of-all trades shady character with rough edges by a heart of gold (yawn).  Even though Peter is on the run from some “people”, he’s easily found by Dunham in Iraq.  Peter is a blank slate of a character, he is essentially a get-out-of-jail-free card with the writers being able to dredge up some past experience or underworld contact to use. 

Drawing this group of characters together is Broyles (Lance Reddick) who walks everywhere like the bastard child of a predatory cat and a cartoon by R.Crumb, head of the Fringe division.  Broyles and Dunham have a complex relationship…or is it just that different writers sketch him out differently minute by minute?  Throw in mysterious robot-handed Nina Sharp (Blair Brown), deputy head of the sinister multinational Massive Dynamic, wonderful goggle-eyed FBI agent Charlie Francis (Kirk Acevedo) and young, beautiful trainee FBI agent (really, another one?) Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) and you have the main players in this tale. 

So begins the first season of Fringe, in which we learn that Scott may be a traitor or not, Nina Sharp may be a baddie or not, Broyles is continually grumpy or not, Bishop is crazy and can’t remember Astrid’s name (oh the hilarity), and Peter is, well, just there.  The character of Olivia Dunham is well played by Torv, who brings some real emotion to the role, especially when her sister and niece enter the story and her life by moving into her apartment.  The problem is that even though you are asked to suspend your disbelief to a certain degree (yeah, sure, a chemical that turns someone into a were-porcupine, ok fine), the plots seem to revolve around finding a stupid pseudo-science means of solving the mystery. 

A case in point: using a “special” camera to photograph the impulses travelling along the optic nerve of a corpse to see the last thing they saw.  NO!  Bad Scriptwriter!  Go outside to do that!  The other main annoyance is the conceit that Dunham has a portion of Scott’s consciousness in her brain, that can be accessed by drugs and an isolation tank.  Wisely, they ditched this particular script-crutch after a few episodes, but not before it already reached it’s clunky annoyingly-convenient stage.  Bishop is there to spout techno-babble that Star Trek writers would be envious of and to come up with an elaborate and implausible way to save the day.  Lazy, lazy writing.  The introduction of the terrorist organisation ZFT is a welcome one, with a star turn by Oliver Reed sound-a-like David Robert Jones (Jared Harris) playing the incarcerated head. 

The other great part of the series is the character of The Observer (MichaelCerveris); obviously included to give fans something to talk about on the internet.  The Observer plays the Man In Black from UFO mythology, only this guy is from another dimension.  Or is he?  He is a good guy.  Or is he?  The main problem with Fringe, aside from the really annoying last minute pop-science salvations, is that it is suffering from Lost syndrome.  “Ooh, look how mysterious we’re being” is the main cry through the series. 

So many plot threads, so little cohesion.  What is the Pattern?  Eventually, you won’t know or care, because the characters don’t seem to.  Is Massive Dynamic is real bad-guy?  Dunno…does it matter?  Who are Broyles and Sharp really working for?  Do the writers even know?  Are the writers playing a game with each other?  All in all, the plot lines, especially the metanarrative, seem cobbled together, loosely written, with no sense of any real cohesion.  Almost as if they were all written late at night when everyone was tired. 

Is there a stand-out episode in the season?  Well, not really, they are all a little bit “meh”.  None have the throat grabbing tension of the early X-Files, nor any or the well toned humour of that series.  Fringe feels like X-Files Lite, a poor cousin, a fart in a bath-tub.  Fringe feels like X-Files of around season 4-5 when it really started losing it’s way.  None of the Fringe episodes rate more than a 6 out of 10. 

That being said, they are entertaining.  I recently bought the box-set of S1 and spent 2 days watching them back to back.  When the box-set of S2 gets cheap, I’ll probably buy that too, because no matter how clunky the scripts, how throwaway the plots, there is something in the performances (except that of Peter, but to be fair Joshua Jackson isn’t really given much to work with) that makes you want to see what happens next.  Speaking as the co-writer of a soon to be published RPG that jumps between alternate realities (subtle plug) the multiverse aspect appeals to me.  So all in all, Fringe is a likeable, if simple, series that is entertaining.  You just have to keep your hand poised over the Bullshit Button…

King Of The Hill (El Rey de la Montana)

By John Fountain

(2007)

Meet Quim (don’t laugh, it’s his name, pronounced Keem.  Although every time it pops up in the subtitles, I did giggle).  Quim is driving across a mountainous part of Spain, and has recently had girl-trouble.  His girlfriend won’t talk to him on the phone, and although we never find out why, it is easy to sympathise with the unseen woman, because Quim really is a whiny bitch.  Quim (played to perfection by Leonardo Sbaraglia) is a twitchy, sweaty, nobody who really doesn’t engender sympathy for his plight.  Struck by Modern Horror Movie Cliché #1 (poor mobile phone reception) Quim is forced to pull in at an isolated gas station to use the land-line.  Is it run by psycho hill-billies?  No.  Instead, Quim meets mysterious,sexy kleptomaniac Bea, (Maria Valverde) and they hitch up in the bathroom.  Yes, folks, Quim really is an unsympathetic man.  And yet, Sbaraglia manages to get us on his side, simply by the charisma of his performance: Quim is not evil, nor is he a saint.  He’s just…there.  Like an Everyman character, full of flaws, but with a good heart.  Of course, he is still on his way to try and win back his girlfriend, despite his quick knee-trembler in the toilets of the gas station.  But Quim, inept that he is, gets lost in the mountains. 

And that is where his life is irrecoverably changed.  His car begins to experience difficulties.  Why?  Quim finds a bullet hole.  Something is not right in the mountains of Spain.  It’s not long before Quim realises that he is being hunted by one or more gunmen.  A little while after that, Quim catches a bullet from a hunter with a black dog.  Fleeing, Quim panics and runs the hunter down in his car.  He runs into the mysterious Bea, also having car trouble.  But there are things that are suspicious about Bea.  He car has a baby seat in it, yet Bea doesn’t seem to have a baby.  Has she stolen the car?  Is she on the run?  Is she involved with the hunters?  Bea and Quim are forced to trust each other as they go on the run.  When help seems to arrive, in the form of local police, Quim and Bea are arrested and Quim is handcuffed into the back of the police Land Rover.  So everything is fine and peachy now?  Far from it.  There is no help here.  When the hunters return, Quim and Bea must run again and their path will take them into a landscape where every tree could be hiding a murderer…

This is a great film.  Quim is a whiney bitch, but his presentation is entirely naturalistic, and Sbaraglia plays it so realistically, that on occasion you feel as if he isn’t an actor, but just some guy off the street being hunted.  That is to the benefit of the film.  The other central performance, that of Bea, is likewise engaging.  Bea is mysterious, strong but vulnerable, and Valverde plays her as a capable young woman who finds herself in a situation she cannot control and doesn’t understand.  The third major player in this film is the landscape: Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego, the director of this movie, should be congratulated in his ability to marry beauty and menace in his portrayal of the magnificent Spanish mountains.  His use of the camera is also fantastic: the camera is always on the move, mirroring Quim’s twitchy, hunted nature.  More impressive is his ability to bring a sense of claustrophobia to the outdoor spaces: this is achieved by using two key shots: close-ups and long-shots.  Quim’s face is intercut with long shots of impressive vistas.  The director invites us to empathise with Quim as his eyes search the distance for a sign of the hunters.  The cat and mouse game is played for about 3/4 of the films running time, whereupon the film delivers a revelation that stops your heart dead in the chest.  In doing so, sympathy with Quim is lost, only to be recovered by the power of Sbaraglia’s performance.  The film’s viewpoint abruptly shifts to follow the hunters as they track their prey.  It will only be later that Quim will once again take centre stage, and as an audience we will feel his pain as he has to make terrible choices to save his life.

This is a film that once or twice hammers it’s message home with a sledgehammer when a simple breeze would have sufficed, but it is a powerful piece of cinema that will shock and make you tihink.  Despite all the horrors, the real tear-jerking moment comes a mere second before the credits.  Quim’s ordeal throughout the film is leading up to the final seconds of the movie, a moment of ordinary life that merely underlines the terror.  I will not spoil the film for you.  I will not tell you of the revelations or of the heart-wrenching final moment.  All I will tell you, is that this is a fine example of the new wave of Spanish horror films sweeping cinema over the last few years.  You will probably cry (I know my girlfriend would, which is why I’m not showing it to her), but it is worth the tears to see such a good piece of simple, character driven cinema.

We are in fact equal opportunity here at Fangirl Magazine.  And now we have Jay here to prove that point as well as share with us some film reviews!

Let em have it Jay!

The Blackout.

Film Review: by John Fountain

(2009)

(I wish I had).

There are works of art in the world that raise hope for the survival of the human race, and speak volumes about the state of the human condition.  Some of these are paintings, such as works by Goya; some are theories, such as those postulated by Darwin, Einstein, and Hawking.  Some may even be movies, such as The Seven Samurai.  However, there are also things released into the world that not only do not contribute to the vault of humanity’s achievement, but somehow manages to make those advancements and philosophical journeys seem worthless.  The thought that humanity could excrete something as pitiful and remorselessly shabby as The Blackout should make you wonder if we shouldn’t just give up on this whole “having lungs” business and crawl back into the sea.  Those involved in this turgid excuse for a movie need to be hauled up in front of some kind of hastily convened tribunal, forced to watch the original Halloween, then have burly men repeatedly smash their heads into the screens, screaming “Do You See How It’s Done, Yet?” before being fed to some hyenas.

The basic plot, care of the writer, Jim Beck revolves around a group of fairly unlikeable tenants of an old New York (I’m assuming) apartment building, who bumble about their tedious “getting to know you scenes” with about as much believability and ability as lobotomised mice being taught how to play a piano.  Chief among these is Elizabeth Pierce (played by Barbara Streifel Sanders…who suspiciously has the same last name as the producer…weird) from whose perspective the story is loosely told.  She has a husband and a pair of bratty kids, and a lot of neighbours who veer from one character trait to another, never really settling on any particular stereotype for more than a few minutes.  In to this maelstrom of tedium comes a problem: no, not the script, although that really is a major issue.  It’s monsters.  Well, lets be honest, it’s a guy in a poorly fitted rubber suit with a terrible CGI tail.  And that’s about it. 

The rest of the run time is concerned with getting out of the building through dark corridors, dark staircases, and dark rooms, blah blah blah.  The few interesting moments in the film; a character noticing the flash of gunfire from another tower block; the fact that the presence of the creatures causes lights to blow; and the non-hollywood splatter of one particular character, are totally subsumed by the relentless drab malaise of the film.  Poor acting; poor scripting, bad cinematography; characters being terrified one minute then deciding to have a smooch the next.  It all becomes like a wet towel being lowered onto your head.  As a movie lover, I committed the cardinal sin: I had to fast forward after about 45 minutes, waiting for something to happen.  It didn’t.  Until the end, when you get a pathetic and telegraphed “revelation” shot that a 12 year old could probably knock up in photoshop. 

I was looking forward to watching this film: that’s what I can’t forgive.  I was suckered by the cool DVD artwork, the claustrophobic promises of the synopsis, the desperate need for some decent horror after the disappointment of recent monster movies.  That’s what should have triggered the cynic in my brain:  the DVD artwork.  It was just too similar to the packaging of the original Feast.  Slavering maw poised menacingly above pretty female face, dripping saliva and the hope of a thrill packed ride.  All of which the original Feast provided.  None of which The Blackout offered.  What is more annoying is that the movie holds the seeds of a good idea: creatures that cause darkness, the thing humans seem to be hard-wired to fear.  And then they strain and deliver this straight to DVD nugget into the lavatory of the wider world. 

Wow, yeah…this hasn’t been done before

Oh wait, it has

Someone else just got on top.

I cannot stress enough how poor this movie is: it makes me yearn for the bland, painful nonsense of Ghostbusters 2, and that is something I thought would never happen.  For this alone, everyone involved in this movie should be fed parts of themselves before being encased in concrete for the sake of the world.  In fact, whenever I refer to this dross as a “movie” or a “film” please feel free to replace those words with the sound of a cat vomiting.

For the love of humanity: do not buy this “movie”; do not watch this “movie”.  Above all: DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE.

My girlfriend just read this back to me, and noted that “This isn’t a review, it’s just a way for you to articulate pain.”  And she’s right.  The film gave me pain.  Pain in every fibre of my being.  Remember, I watched this shit so you don’t have to.