The Killer's Game

 Joe Flood (Dave Bautista) is a nice guy. He's also a contract killer, but that's ok, because his agency, managed by Ziv (Ben Kingsley doing what he loves best: putting on another accent), only kills criminal scumbags.

 While killing a Russian mobster at a high-scale avant-garde musical performance, Joe saves a dancer, Maize (Sophia Boutella), from the aftermath of the assassination. Maize turns out to be a nice gal, too, and after a couple of dates (and a very fun montage intercutting their dalliance with Joe going about his day job) they fall in love.

 Things get pretty serious - enough that Joe approaches his handler to get out of the game; And hey, it turns out Ziv is a good guy too! He gives Joe some advice (quoting Dolly Parton, who of course almost immediately pops up in the soundtrack) and basically blesses his star assassin's retirement.

 But there's got to be some conflict somewhere, and it ends up coming from Joe being diagnosed with a degenerative brain disease; he's only got three months to live.

 Now, there have been a few movies in the last few years about hitmen struggling with dementia and whatnot... but this film's a comedy, so the script (credited to Rand Ravich and James Coyne) opts for that old 'patient samples swapped' chestnut instead. So here's the rub: while convinced he's going to die, Joe breaks up with Maize and goes to another assassination agency - one where the boss (Pom Kiementieff) hates his guts - to take out a hit on himself (the justification is that if he kills himself he won't get life insurance, which raises all sorts of fun questions about what the insurance company thinks he does). 

 The confusion with the test results is quickly sorted out, but the boss of the hitman agency Joe contacted hates him so much she doesn't just refuse to cancel the hit - she goes all in and brings in multiple teams to take him out. Colourful teams, of the sort that necessitate an introductory vignette where their names are spelled out in neon, or blood, or whatever.

 So the second half of the movie turns into a jokier version of Smokin' Aces, as a bunch of themed hitmen try to take out poor Joe. This movie is nowhere near as good, or as coherent, as that one, but it does have a few cards in its sleeves. Namely, in that it's directed by J.J. Perry, a former stuntman and all-round action connoisseur, and in that the man has assembled a pretty impressive roster of action talent for the antagonists. Well, maybe not that many: Marko Zaror, Scott Adkins and Daniel Bernhardt. They go a long way.

 The rest of the killers are fine, even if their fights aren't anywhere as impressive. Terry Crewes plays the main antagonist (one wonders if maybe the original choice was Michael Jai White). His schtick is that he's a suave blaxploitation throwback, and he's forced to partner up with an Ali G impersonator (George Somner). It's... fitfully funny, but Crewes is great as usual. Elsewhere there's Shaina West and Lucy Cork (who both have pretty decent action credentials) as a pair of fun-loving killers who use stripping as their cover, a bunch of Koreans, a couple of people who use bikes as murder weapons... it's a solid, fun mix of ideas.

 So far, so good, right? The problem is that - as counterintuitive as it may seem - the first act, the romantic part - is the only part of the movie that truly works. It makes a convincing case for the couple, and both stars are more than able to sell their romance. Honestly, they're both adorable, which is not something I'd ever thought I'd say about Bautista.

 As the script goes on and the action gears strain to, say, keep Maize in the picture, things get more and more implausible. And not in a good way (though there's plenty of that, too). I mean that things become a morass of dropped threads, missed opportunities, and shitty contrivances. Pom Klementieff gets a little sword-swinging introduction... and that's all she fucking gets, for example. Bernhardt, West and Cork's appearances are very underwhelming - and, honestly, so is Crewes, who gets a ton more time verbally sparring with his idiot hanger-on than with the protagonist.

 Entire interactions and plot elements seem to be there just to pad the runtime (a whole deal is made of Joe needing to come clean to Maize about what he does, just for it to be waved away). Some jokes feel improvised - that's the only explanation I can find for an extended gag where wrestler Drew McIntyre shits himself.

 Worst of all, the entire third act is a complete disaster, even as it gives Dylan Moran a pretty substantial role; Talk about wasted talent. All the plots get resolved in insultingly perfunctory ways.

 The action is not as great as it could -should- be, either. Adkins and Zaror fill the screen with impressive acrobatic action, but the choreography doesn't fully work with Bautista's more static fighting style. The guy's a certified badass and has a great presence, but he can't really be described as gymnastic. So there's quite a bit of awkward editing to cover the gaps. His persona in this film is also a little too drab to pull off the Arnie-like one-liners and stupid little jokes the script throws his way.

 Shit gets violent, and there's a lot of blood spilled. But aside from someone getting their teeth knocked out, it doesn't feel particularly violent. It's all blood, and no gore - CGI blood. If I were feeling kind I would say the cartoon blood is there to keep things from getting too dark, but... fuck that, it looks terrible.

 The camera movements are energetic, at least, and later scenes at a sun-drenched church prove that the film can look good. (Cinematographer: Flavio Martínez Labiano)

 The Killer's Game is one of those movies that's been in development hell for decades - the script was first written in the mid-90's - and gone through endless iterations. It shows, and the end result honestly bears the marks of a troubled production on top of that. A shame, because a lot of it does work. Even with all these problems, the movie remains enjoyable - lightweight, dumb, sure, but also very likeable, slickly directed, and despite the non-ideal editing scheme, it manages some great action.

 I'd still recommend it, caveats and all. As long as you know what you're getting into. I hope Perry gets to make another one; his one's a huge improvement over Day Shift, and the guy's obviously got chops.

Theatre of Blood

 Famed Shakespeare thespian Edward Lionheart is back from the dead for one last encore: to take bloody revenge on the circle of critics who humiliated him and led to his attempted suicide. One by one, they are treated to bloody murder at the hands of the actor and his accomplices.

 The critics are, like the film around it, over-the-top in a playful way that's only very loosely anchored in reality; A colourful cabal of caricatures, perfectly calibrated that we can enjoy their diverse, often surprisingly grotesque, Shakespeare-inspired demises. Peregrine (Ian Hendry), their leader, gets a fair amount of screen time but he exists only as a foil for Lionheart; His resistance is ineffectual, as is the protection offered by the Scotland Yard, headed by one Inspector Boot (Milo O'Shea).

 No, our point of view is supposed to align squarely with Lionheart's. And it'd be next to impossible to deny him our sympathy, played as he is with soulful hamminess by a never-better Price, who is equally at home affecting a hilarious Scottish accent or a giant afro wig, and always has a killer one-liner to dispatch his victims with. One of the film's funniest conceits, slyly underscored by Price's unhinged but composed performance, is that it seems to be in on the joke that the critics might be correct in their assessment of Lionheart's acting abilities.

 Whether he's a good or bad thespian, there's no question Lionheart is a great villain, one that seldom drops his theatrics and is prone to reciting monologues from the bard at the slightest provocation. Price beautifully plays him as all gravitas, wounded dignity, and puffed-up self-importance.

 The peripherals for his activities are great, too: a beautiful derelict theater acts as his hideout, his aides a hep cat and a gaggle of degenerate destitute squatters he's enlisted as a rowdy troupe of murder assistants. And the murders themselves are the sort of elaborate, intricate schemes that could only work with the full complicity of scriptwriters Anthony Greville-Bell.

 Director Douglas Hickox (father of Anthony, of Waxworks and Hellraiser 3 fame) successfully threads the fine line between camp and suspense, as illustrated on a great flashback scene from Lionheart's suicide, the critics watching the disgruntled actor wander outside their high-rise London flat through different windows, their amusement slowly turning to concern).
 The killings are surprisingly vicious. As is normal for the time (aside from Herschell Gordon Lewis) there's very little gore and most of the carnage is artfully kept off-frame. But there's a fair amount of bloodshed and some pretty gruesome scenes - one with a severed head, for example, hits just the right spot between shock and humour, and there's a murder based on Titus Andronicus that fully honours the source material (a play that can only be described as splatterpunk.)

 Elsewhere Hickox indulges in a gratuitous swashbuckling fencing scene (complete with trampolines!), plus some impressive pyrotechnics and a few stunts for the grand finale. The obligatory "evil never wins" resolution is a little disappointing, but it gives the film's true protagonist a meaty melodramatic turn with his daughter (Diana Rigg), and a couple of pithy, hilarious, oh-so-British final lines.

 When I was a kid I preferred The Abominable Dr. Phibes, which this movie shares more than a passing similarity to. And while (as I remember it) that's probably the funnier film, I find it hard to believe it could top this; this seems like the quintessential Vincent Price role.
 Making some allowances for the year it was made (the intervening time has not been kind to some of the acting choices from a very talented cast, or the very cheesy, often counterproductive soundtrack), it holds up beautifully - funny, fun, mean-hearted and often shocking, its many delights woven around a truly wonderful, ridiculously expansive central performance. A classic.

In A Violent Nature

 In a Violent Nature is a new(ish) Canadian horror movie that's been doing the rounds - the rare low-budget slasher that makes it to the big screen in my (wrung) neck of the woods. I only found out it had been on here once its week was done, sadly, but it's still an achievement.

 I was a little worried about it because it's got a bit of a gimmick: the cameras cleave mostly to the killer's back as he leisurely makes his way from victim to victim. Kind of like a modern third-person videogame, which is funny because there is a game genre colloquially called 'walking simulator' which fits this pretty well. Critics were comparing it to Terence Malik or the Dardennes, of all people, so it made me worried it'd be a horror movie that wanted to distance itself from the genre, AKA 'elevated horror'.
 That's not something I usually shy away from, but in a slasher it seemed especially dishonest, so I was a bit leery. I was wrong, though:  Writer/Director Chris Nash has cooked up a love letter to early slasher films that despite an unorthodox approach it never felt to me like a deconstruction or post-modern wankery. It comes from a genuine place, going as far as being shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio to honor its forebearers. But it also does come with a very smart-arse attitude.

 Thing is, its skimpy story would fully work as one of its inspirations if it were so inclined. The killer, Johnny (Ry Barret), is an undead revenant who comes to life in the first scene after some douchey twenty-somethings steal a locket from his unmarked grave. His backstory, as related by he same group of vacationers around a campfire (one of the rare times the film abandones it's behind-the-killer POV) is solid, pretty creepy, and a clear tip of the hat to Friday the 13th. Homing in on the locket, Johnny murders his way through a bunch of people until there's just a final girl (Andrea Pavlovic) and.... well, that's basically it.

 But the cool thing is that as he's lurking in the background, we get to see snippets of the vacationers and hear parts of their conversations - and that accounts for a lot of the tropes from old-school slashers. The horny pair that slinks away and gets killed, the callous douchebag who pushes his girl away from him and gets the group in trouble.

 The unconventional framing makes it way more fun than it'd be otherwise, I think. My favorite part is when Johnny accidentally lets himself get photographed; nothing comes out of it at the moment, but the next day, after a bunch of murderin', we hear that they saw him in the picture, and it clearly rattled them. You can see how that would work from their perspective, but seeing it second-hand like this is novel.

 Other than the storytelling approach, the film's style, languid pace, and complete lack of non-diegetic music also foment a sense of low-key realism that give the kills a lot more impact.

 And what an array of excellent kills it is - from understated to over the top, comedic to upsetting, near-Terrifier-level-graphic to mostly implied. All technically very well made, and full of really cool details. I loved it how when someone gets two separate nasty injuries. the mixture of pooling blood comes in two completely different tones of red (arterial and venous). I have no idea if it's realistic - I somehow doubt it - but it shows a clear commitment to excellence.

 It's also very, very funny when it wants to. One of the kills (itself a solid pun on yoga flexibility) stands out, but my favorite moment comes after a walkman-wearing dumbass gets sort-of decapitated; The killer is then shown walking from behind with his victim's head in one hand, dragging the rest of the body with the other. But the headphones are still on the head, still playing, and you can clearly see the cable going from one body part to another. Brilliant! That both human remains are used as tools a little later is just a bonus, and also functions as a fun callback to Jason's throwing-bodies-through-windows shenanigans. Layers!

 Johnny's a good, distinct slasher figure: a patient, inscrutable, hulking killer in the Kane Hodder camp. He gets a couple moments of characterization, a distinctive mask and choice of weapons (axe and chained hooks). All good.

 Much as I enjoyed it, I'm not that enamoured of the pacing; Even at 90 minutes, I'd never call it lean, and all those shots of Johnny walking around do pile on. It also tends to hang on to a scene after it's organically ended for a little too long, a little like Werner Herzog keeps his cameras on the interviewees on his documentaries after they've said their piece. This is definitely not a movie to watch while sleep-deprived, recovering from a long bout of flu.

 The ending is also a bit of a... well, a non-ending, even if it's kind of thematically interesting.

 On the whole I think I liked it more than loved it, but it's an easy recommendation if you're up for some experimentation with a form that was sometimes a little too rigid for its own good.

In The Mouth Of Madness

 An insidious force of pure evil oozes into our world, turning seemingly normal people into raving maniacs and slowly bringing society - and the world - down to its level. And if that sounds familiar, it's because... wait, what? no, I'm not talking about the US 2024 presidential elections. Although...

...No. We're here to talk movies, and I'm not going to let an orange pall fall over one of my favorites.

 It kicks off in high style, with footage of an industrial printing press putting together a Sutter Cane book together to a cheesy/awesome butt-rock theme by director John Carpenter and Jim Lang that is decently tied to the rhythms of the machinery on-screen. The book's called The Horror on Hobb's End, but it features a blurb on the back promoting something called In The Mouth Of Madness.

 We then cut to John Trent (Sam Neill) being roughly brought into a mental asylum; "Look, I'm sorry about the balls" is one of his first coherent lines (to an orderly he hurt while resisting being put in a cell). Later, the head doctor (John Glover, an actor I'm always happy to see pop up) pipes in a muzak version of We've Only Just Begun, which all the inmates start singing along to... poorly. "Not The Carpenters, too" moans Trent, with near-infinite weariness. I did not remember this movie was this damn funny.

 By the time a mysterious doctor (David Warner) arrives to try and find out what happened to Trent - and alludes to it maybe tying into something that's going on out in the world, Trent's been able to obsessively redecorate the padded walls of his cell (with one black crayon). Impressively, he's managed to draw crosses all over his face - a lazy signifier of "this guy is craaaaazy!", but I'll let it slide because Sam Neill pulls it off somehow. His character, as it turns out, has no interest in getting out of the nuthouse and facing whatever's happening outside, but he's happy to tell his story.

 And suddenly we jump back in time and see Trent at the height of his powers as a high-end private investigator hired by insurance companies to look into fraud. A publishing company (run by Charlton Heston!) hires him to look into the disappearance of their star author - one Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow), the world's best selling horror author. His deal... sounds suspiciously similar to Stephen King (a buddy of Carpenter's), but no, he's explicitly said to be much, much more popular, his books so disturbing they've caused people to go insane.

 This ties to an earlier incident where Trent was attacked by an axe maniac... who happened to be Cane's agent. So his task is to somehow track down the missing author with the help of Cane's beautiful editor (Julie Carmen), whom Trent hits on almost immediately in the sleaziest way possible.

 Trent is very good at his job and soon figures out where the fictional town of Hobb's End is located on a real map. Convinced it's all some sort of publicity stunt, he takes off to visit it along with the editor. There they find the source of all the spooky weirdness they've been facing for weeks; Reality, it seems, is under siege from vast, incomprehensible horrors, and they're using Sutter's work as a conduit to reshape our universe to something more to their liking.

 It's a deeply trippy, conceptually daring movie, one of the very few effective portrayals of cosmic horror on film. It even manages to be scary at a few junctions, but the tone is a little to goofy most of the time for the scares to stick. Writer (and producer) Michael De Luca's dialog gives his characters an almost screwball patter even when they're discussing the end of the world: When a creepy Sutter fan confronts Trent early on, saying "He sees you" with blood coming from his eyes, Trent's response is a pithy "Oh... great. Uh... tell him I say hi."
 It doesn't do wonders for the film's horror ambiance, but it displays a fair amount of wit and is hugely entertaining. It does grate at points - like the cavalier way Trent shrugs off an attempt on his life that leaves the attacker dead early on, but for the most part it works. Neill is an excellent actor, and I don't think he's ever been better than here; His transition from a smug, worldly know-it-all to an unhinged believer is a sight to behold. But it's Julie Carmen who actually sells the horror of the film; She's the one bright enough to recognize what's happening early on - a gradual shift in consensual reality, from our hands into the hands of something... other - and she communicates it powerfully.

 (Incidentally, I've been meaning to re-watch Prince of Darkness for ages, which seems like a lesser, but more serious companion piece to this movie - Alice Cooper impaling some dude with a bicycle notwithstanding)

 Carpenter is a true master of multiple genres - conventions he introduced on Halloween, The Thing and Escape From New York are still being studiously reproduced to this day, and The Fog remains an incredibly well constructed bit of pulp horror. This one's a bit sloppier, a lot goofier and relaxed, but it's full of seriously cool stuff: Dreams within dreams, a kindly innkeeper with a dark secret, and some neat reality bending stunts (one scene, foreshadowed by Trent tearing off pieces of a poster throughout the movie, is an all-timer, while another one demonstrates that sometimes a humble color filter can be the everything you could possibly need).

 Not all of it works - some business with an extremely shitty painting keeps rearing up (the punchline is pretty good, though) and, for a movie that paraphrases Lovecraft all the time (what we see of Sutter Cane's work owes a lot more to him than to King), it makes the near-fatal error of actually showing The Things That Should Not Be. The FX crew, led by the dream team of Greg Nicotero, Howard Berger and Rob Kurtzman does not manage to pull that off. But their results are hugely entertaining anyhow, just like the rest of the movie.

 And it ends in a perfect metafictional moment, handily illustrating that sometimes laughter is the only sane response when everything goes batshit crazy. Very apposite, given -ahem- certain very recent election results... not that it helps that much.

 Here's something crazy: a movie this good is only Carpenter's fourth or fifth best. The guy's a legend.  

Iron Monkey (Siu Nin Wong Fei Hung Chi: Tit Ma Lau)

 Iron Monkey is usually referred to as Hong Kong's martial arts take on Robin Hood, but I think it's much closer to El Zorro - has got it all: broad humour, brusque tonal changes, ridiculous plot developments, corny sentimentality... all the stuff we're used to in these movies, but done a notch better and with such flair that it's still the first movie I recommend to people who aren't used to Asian martial arts films. It, my friends, is glorious.

 The Iron Monkey (Yu Rongguang) is a masked avenger who steals from the rich to give to the poor refugees attempting to flee the civil turmoil of mid-nineteenth century china. By night, he stages daring raids, going up against the authorities and corrupt shaolin monks; By day, he runs a local clinic that treats the poor pro-bono as doctor Yang, with the help of the lovely Miss Orchid (the lovely Jean Wang). She's a covert martial arts master too, of course.

 Enter Wong Kei-ying (Donnie Yen), a law-abiding physician who comes to town with his son Fei-hung (Angie Tsang) in tow. He's not looking for trouble, but the (delightfully dickish) corrupt mayor learns of his martial arts skills and orders him to hunt down the Iron Monkey... taking his son as a hostage to ensure his cooperation.

 So the two noble martial arts masters are set at odds, a fact that's complicated when Kei-ying befriends Dr. Yang after everyone else in town ostracizes him for agreeing to hunt down their folk hero. Will the two reconcile and join forces against evil? Well... after a very funny episode where Iron Monkey and Orchid pass themselves off as high officers from the imperial court to steal a buttload of gold, the court sends a truly evil representative to bring order to town. A man so dastardly even the fastidious, straight-arrow Kei-ying says fuck it, time for some civil insurrection.

 I can't emphasize enough just how chock-full of awesome this movie is. The fights are, of course, amazing, featuring a bunch of true masters of the form choreographed by the legendary Yuen Woo-ping (who also directs). Everyone gets a chance to shine, even little Fei-hung, in a silly but very entertaining fight where he shows off the staff skills that his historical counterpart will become known for (as an adult, though, at least as far as I know). All the combat in the film is carefully crafted and immaculately performed, with special attention paid to making each style reflect the fighter's personality and philosophy. It's a thing of beauty.
 A lot of gimmicks are used too, most memorably a fight on top of wooden poles poking out of a giant oil fire. There's a lot of wirework involved, but it enables some pretty incredible pirhouettes.

 The story is also engaging, if a bit episodic. Lots of goofy humour as usual, but most of it is either pretty effective or at least likeable, and the pacing is excellent.

 The whole thing functions as a sort of fantasy backstory for young Wong Fei-hung, who'll grow up to be Jet Li in Once Upon A Time In China. You don't need to know any of that  to enjoy the film; I didn't until I looked it up - nor did I know that his father, Yen's character, is one of the tigers of Guangdong, who I do know from a couple of Shaw Brothers movies. I guess it's similar to the way Western movies would sometimes feature historical figures and their exploits. I'm too old to start learning Chinese history at this point, but whenever I find out that this or that element in a wuxia comes from the history books, I can't help but to think I'd love to have that additional dimension in my enjoyment of these films.

 Iron Monkey got a fairly wide release in the west, aided by none other than famous fan Quentin Tarantino: he got his erstwhile (and thoroughly disgraced) bosses over at Miramax to give the film a re-release in these shores. Well, mostly America, I guess, but I remember it briefly became part of the pop-culture landscape even in the backwoods of the world where I grew up.
 Tarantino was right; This is a film that deserves to be seen by as many people as possible.

Phenomena (Fenómenas)

 Three women and a priest go against a haunting in a light-hearted romp that, to its credit, doesn't really skimp on the horror side of things. I really don't hold it against comedies when horror comedies fail to be scary, but this one isn't funny, either, and the story it tells is a hopeless muddle of clichés.

 "Based on a true story"; Yeah, right - because that always gets us more invested. Who the hell do they do that for? In this case it's based on an existing paranormal investigation team in Spain called the Hepta group that apparently made the headlines a few decades ago. At least according to the movie, it's loose association of psychics, supernatural experts, and... a grandmotherly camera operator that bumble around, trading mildly funny barbs between them, and end up resolving a centuries-old curse as well as some extremely formulaic character conflicts.

 Group founder Father Pilón (Emilio Gutiérrez Caba) gets things started by going to investigate a haunting at an antique shop alone, and he faces something so powerful and horrifying it ends up sending him to the hospital. That leaves his three associates to try and figure out what happened. You've got Sagrario (Belén Rueda, who... I honestly don't know what she brings to the group, other than being pretty enthusiastic and very telegenic. Gloria (Toni Acosta) is the acerbic, chain-smoking psychic who communicates with the netherworld via a... sigh... crystal ball (which, in what counts in this movie as a fairly decent running gag, she keeps forgetting where she put it), and Paz (Gracia Olayo), a grandmotherly type who's good with cameras and other technical shit. They also get a token young person (Ivan Massagué) to do science or something.

 As they investigate the antique shop (with little help from the owners, whose very broad comic relief schtick starts grating fairly quickly) they discover that things might be complicated than they seem. And could this haunting be related to another case, one with heavy personal significance to Gloria? Well... yes, but don't expect things to be tied with any sort of grace.

 The script (by Marta Buchaca and Fernando Navarro) is a complete mess that never manages to work out an engaging way to tell its overstuffed story properly, and tries to compensate by having feel-good character arcs that neatly resolve long-standing personal problems. Its central mystery is obfuscated to the point that when it comes to the fore the resolution is hilariously rushed, with maximum melodrama. The  actual explanation is handled by a heavy dollop of exposition during the denouement - you can almost hear the  scriptwriters say "Ah, fuck it".

 The actresses are obviously having fun and have a good chemistry together, which helps the character-based humour a little. Sadly it's never more than mildly amusing, especially as the script tends to lazily exploit exaggerated character traits like the running joke that Gracia is a terrible driver, or give them extremely clichéd character conflicts that it somehow expects us to take seriously. Director Carlos Theron's direction is slick but impersonal - It looks good but never distinguishes itself, like a slightly higher-end TV movie.

 The supernatural side of things is surprisingly beefy - don't expect a special effects extravaganza, as it maintains the facade of being a 'realistic' paranormal mystery, at least until the home stretch. But it at least features a reasonable spread of natural and supernatural threats arranged against our three middle-aged ghostbusters.
 Not that it helps. This is your basic, basic Red N quota filler, and its mediocrity just makes the obvious effort behind it feel all the more disappointing.

The Toll / The Toll Man

 After some delays with her flight, Cami (Jordan Hayes) arrives too late after a cross-country flight to get a lift from the family she's come to visit. So she gets a ride from an app on her phone, and hopes for the best. The best, at least in that area at two in the morning, seems to be Spencer (Max Topplin).

 I have no idea what the other end of, say, the Uber app looks like for the driver, but here it's a tinder-like affair where Spencer gets to swipe through several people asking for rides near him until he settles on Cami. To drive the point home, it even includes a profile picture. It might be unintentional, but this already sets up an interesting imbalance between the driver and the passenger.

 As if being chauffeured through the backwoods late at night by a stranger wasn't already fraught enough, Spencer also acts like a total creep - oversharing, making inappropriate comments, listening in and commenting on a personal call. Its enough to make Cami discreetly reach for her mace even before Spencer mentions he likes to hunt with bows and arrows, and jokes about human prey. Dude.

 The tensions come to a head when the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, after taking a side road that Cami does not recognize, but Spencer swears was on the GPS. Unfortunately for them that stretch of road is haunted by Toll Man - a supernatural creature with reality bending powers who won't let anyone out of its domain unless he's paid his due.... in blood! (cue the screen slowly turning red.) Now these two people who barely trust each other must band together to try and survive the night.

 

 The Toll Man is actually an interesting concept - I won't spoil what he's all about, but there's a little exposition delivered by a crazed-looking passerby (Rosemary Dunsmore) that outlines the bones of a pretty original and fairly cool mythology. Sadly, his methods of fucking around with his prey are mainly low-level manipulations and manifesting representations of deeply held traumas in a way that comes off as both sleazy and superficial. He's also not much of a presence in the film, leaving most of the dirty work to a band of unscary masked helpers and a bunch of hallucinations.
 It's all pretty far from being either original or cool, and coupled with some further tiresome bickering between the two leads, it brings down most of the third act. To top it off there's a weak twist that fails to add anything to the story, recontextualize things, or even surprise in any meaningful way.

 Things are fine on the technical front - it looks decent, only faltering when attempting to convey the uncanny with a budget that doesn't stretch far enough to even get some decent costumes for the ghouls. Aesthetically it's got a couple nice images (I liked the play of headlights on the treeline, for example) and it looks fairly slick, but other than that it's your typical modern, too-dark night-in-the-woods filmmaking.

 The acting is probably the film's strongest point, and both characters are easy to sympathize with - Spencer, as it turns out, is seemingly just awkward and a bit of a dumbass, while Cami's a resourceful and observant young woman in a very relatable bind from the get-go. Writer/Director Michael Nader supports both of them with his script, to a point, although it descends into having them just blurt out their fears and motivations every so often.

 Sadly, things get sillier and sillier once the supernatural elements come to the fore. It doesn't help that most of the would-be scares and revelations feel like padding, making an eighty-minute film feel longer than it has any right to.

 Shame, because both the setup and the actual premise of the movie had some potential. Those strengths, and the execution of the movie's first half almost makes me want to overlook how badly it botches things afterwards. Almost.