The Holy Virgin Versus The Evil Dead (Moh Sun Gip)

 The subtitle for this could be "How to get me to watch a movie, even if I know it's probably not going to be good". Spoilers: It's not good.

 Hong Kong's category III films are a little bit of their own subgenre. Basically, it's just an age-rating system, equivalent to NC17 or the UK's 18 rating. But when people talk about cat-III films they're probably referring to the exploitation films put out by Hong Kong's movie industry from the late '80s to the early oughts*.

 This movie falls squarely under the exploitation banner, and is one of a few cheap-ass, thinly conceived movies Donnie Yen did in South Eastern Asia before hitting it big with Once Upon A Time In China II. It's not even the best of them.

 No false advertising here, at least. It kicks off with a cheesy title sequence that includes some bloody footage from the movie along with a topless girl artlessly jumping around, like the shittiest, sleaziest possible Bond intro.

 From there we're introduced to Yen's character, Professor Shiang, who plays a professor enjoying a picnic with five female students. Not sure what the ethics are, but while they're all flirty, it seems platonic enough. Then the moon turns red (they pretty much just use a filtered spotlight for the moon throughout), there's one of those explosions following by a guy high-jumping takes that older HK films are so fond of, and the film's main villain, the Moon Monster (the ubiquitous Wai-Kwong Lo, AKA Ken Lo), makes his entrance. The newcomer handily beats up Shiang in a quick fight (this is the sort of movie where everyone knows martial arts - this is a good thing), and then rips the five girls apart and feeds on their blood. Like Dracula, but only if Dracula had to completely strip his victims naked before feeding off them.

 As the only survivor, the police fixate on Shiang, the sole, blood-splattered survivor, as the culprit. This leads to the film's most memorable creation: Sergeant Hu, AKA fire match - a ridiculously belligerent, profane police officer played with hammy abandon by Sibelle Hu. She even quits the police force in a huff later; Sadly, she's only in a couple of scenes. The film could do with a lot more of her.

 Shiang engages in some tiresome, mostly ineffective investigation with the aid of a "comedy" sidekick (Te-lo Mai) who calls himself Chow Yun-fat, har har, a librarian/possible love interest (Kathy Chow), and the sympathetic police officer (Ben Lam) who's been busy stealing Shiang's wife (!). They find out that the supernatural menace has something to do with a sacrifice-hungry mustachioed goddess (I swear, I couldn't make this shit up if I wanted to) in Cambodia. So they decide to go down to that country to protect Shiang's... I guess ex-wife now, because the Goddess has chosen her as her next victim.

 Then the film abruptly cuts to a tribe in Cambodia where Princess White (the beautiful Pauline Yeung) - the titular Holy Virgin - fights off a suitor with a turd emoji painted on his back. It turns out the tribe are the ancient enemies of the Moon Monster, and they send her with a magic sword to wage war on him.

 She catches up to him and they fight, mixing martial arts, wire-assisted leaps and hand-animated magic bolts (I love that shit). White wins, but the beast escapes. She later teams up with Shiang's crew to assault the compound of a dude that had barely appeared before who's apparently the main bad guy and the mastermind behind trying to invoke the Moon Goddess. Or something; Sandman, this ain't. At least this development allows for some (weak) gunplay and a few more (slightly better) martial arts fights.

 This is -objectively- not a good movie. It reeks of a project everyone clearly saw as disposable from top to bottom, based as it is on a script that barely feels like notes from a brainstorming session before a first draft was put together. The acting is terrible (yes, even Donnie), the filmmaking looks like ass, the production values are shit, it's rarely sexy despite featuring very frequent gratuitous nudity, and the gore is mild and very, very basic - people do wave around out some gubbins fresh off the butcher's block, but there's very little in the way of prosthetics or makeup effects.

 On the plus side, the fights at least are fun, but with a couple of exceptions they're disappointingly short and their choreographies are kept simple. The pyrotechnics-and-hand-drawn special effects, cheap as they are, are pretty cool too.

 The story doesn't flow at all, but given the amount of weird choices and jarring tonal changes, it's at least kind of entertaining: so bad it's kind of just OK.

 It's the weird details that make it worthwhile. The Moon Beast's tendency to launch into some hilariously naff wire-assisted spurts of flight, Sgt. Hu's whole bizarre character, who gets a complete 'loose cannon' arc that's outrageously extraneous to anything in the movie, or a weird digression where they get a gweilo police doctor to drop some forensic science - and I'll reproduce most of it because it is glorious:

 "Human hair can be divided into three main categories. The first is curly, belonging to the African race. The second type is wavy, which belongs to the typical Europeans and Americans." The third type is... well, I'll let the man tell you himself:

 And what about the sex-maniac's hair found at the scene of the crime, the reason for this insane bit of exposition? Well, it belongs to...

 You will notice that the guy has wavy hair; QED. Not that the hair sample makes any impact to the plot whatsoever, other than maybe helping convince the police officer something weird is afoot. I mean... If I didn't know any better, this would come off as an attempt at some subversive type of anti-humour, like Snuff Box or something. (It's not).

 As with all of these films, it's impossible to write this up without making it seem more fun than it ends up being. And to be fair, it's at least kind of daftly charming in its I-don't-give-a-fuck tossed-off-ness. But there's a bit that really soured it for me.

 For the grand finale, there's a parade of women that proceed to disrobe for the camera to ogle at. One of them, after dropping her frock, quickly covers her breasts with her arms, looking at the camera with distaste before resignedly uncovering herself again. I might be - I hope I am! - misinterpeting, or projecting, or whatever, but it really gave me pause.

 You know what they say, you got to break a few souls to make a boob omelet. OK, that doesn't work at all - how about you can't have exploitation without exploiting? Hell, I don't want to take this silliness more seriously than it needs to, but it's not like that bit didn't broke a spell, because there wasn't a spell to break in the first place. It's not something this movie can survive; I'm not going to pretend that other, similar sleazy films I go to bat for don't have that sort of crap going in the background, but it's rare (and heartbreaking) to see it surfacing as clearly. My hypocrisy has limits, dammit!

 Things you could watch instead: Donnie Yen made a far better cheap-ass nonsense movie just before this one (Crystal Hunt), which at least properly shows off his physical skills. Or you could just skip a couple of years ahead to Iron Monkey, that's a stone-cold classic. For sleazy horror-adjacent weirdness, I can't recommend Boxer's Omen enough. And if it's the confluence between Kung Fu and Boobage you're after, go with Erotic Ghost Story and its sequel.

*: Stuff like Raped by an Angel 1-5(!), Sex and Zen and so on. But a lot of classics, too - it's easy to see why some got slapped with the Cat III tag (Lust, Caution). Others (Bullet To The Head, or the SPL films)... not so much.

Azrael

 Azrael's the angel of passover, one of the angels of death. At least according to non-mainstream Jewish texts and canonical Muslim lore; Christianism tends to be a little more circumspect about the private lives of angels, and leaves the details to be hashed out by pseudo-occultists, theurgists, and monks with too much time on their hands. And of course, by occultists who, like anime writers, love nothing more than to play around in other people's toyboxes.

 In any case, according to Muslims Azrael's got an unhealthy amount of faces and wings coming out of a body made up of millions of eyes and tongues. I think we can agree that looks nothing like Samara Weaving, who plays a character named Azrael in the eponymous movie I'm going to start discussing now, I promise.

 She's not supposed to be an angel or anything, she's just a young woman called Azrael trying to get by in some post-apocalyptic forest. And the term post-apocalyptic is actually more appropriate her than on, say, Mad Max or whatever: The world Azrael lives in is based on a... creative reading of the bible where the rapture has come and gone, leaving only the sinners behind. No sign of Nic Cage, sadly - but take heart, there's no Kirk Cameron either.

 Azrael and her partner (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) belong to a cult-like tribe of survivors who live in forest compounds and who have all ritually removed their vocal chords to enforce a sort of vow of silence (the scar, in a neat little detail, is cross-shaped). Trying to gain back God's favour after he's turned their back to them, I guess. In any case, Azrael and her friend are on the outs with the group for some unspecified reason, and are living alone in the woods.

 It doesn't take long before the two are captured by agents from the cult and separated. And this is where things nasty: Azrael gets tied to a chair out in a small clearing, one of her captors slices her leg open, and then... they just turn away, making weird noises. Soon the wind rocks the treetops (a recurring device signalling something wicked this way comes) and a withered, charred-looking zombie-like creature stumbles out of the treeline and tries to make a meal out of Azrael. I mean, if these cultists are trying to get god to re-think their left-behind-ness, serving up someone so they can be eaten by a post-hell-sinner doesn't seem to be very virtuous. Which I guess hasn't stopped any Christian ever, but this is a tad extreme.

 Thanks to a lucky break Azrael escapes getting eaten alive (some of her captors don't). That leaves her stranded in a zombie-filled woodland, her lover captured by a bunch of murderous zealots. All right then.

 Azrael is a neat, badass, low-budget action/horror mashup, with the title character vacillating between escaping from and waging a sort of guerrilla war against her erstwhile cultist brethren. And because everyone is forced into their de facto vow of silence, it's basically dialog-free.

 I really love the worldbuilding here, and how the absolute lack of exposition beyond a short opening crawl forces us to fill in the blanks; The script, by Simon Barrett (a regular collaborator of Adam Wingard's) gives us just enough information to work out the basics, but the rest is left tantalizingly up in the air. What set Azrael and her boyfriend against everyone else at the compound? Who's that woman (Katariina Unt) who seems to really have it in for Azrael? What's the deal with the zombies, anyways, and is the devil really flying over the treetops like he's implied to?

 Fuck knows, but it's a fun set of questions to think about. Basically, it's all action and context; There are enough threads to pick up and tie things together, but more importantly, enough is left in the dark to foment a sense of mystery that's pregnant with possibilities. At one point something from the wider world intrudes into the story, reframing the scope of everything that's going on in a pretty cool way. It ends up being an incidental detail, but like everything else in this movie it informs the background churn of associations that you then assemble into a picture of what's going on.

 It's interesting to compare the lack of dialog to another recent non-verbal genre piece, No One Will Save You - there, the silence was pointedly symbolic, whereas here it's more of a... diegetic narrative device, if that makes sense. It doesn't feel like a gimmick, it's just a movie that happens to be about a bunch of nutjobs who mutilated themselves so they couldn't speak. No bullshit, no deeper meaning; It's refreshing. And it makes the world and the lean story more interesting.

 Like all horror hybrids, it's not particularly scary, though its iteration of zombies (Director E.L. Katz would probably throw something at my head for calling them that, but, well, they're basically fast zombies) is an effective threat. It's also somewhat hard to believe that Weaving, what with her tiny frame, has it in her to run through the gauntlet the movie sets before her, but she's excellent as usual and manages to convey a good sense of despair and grit.

 Effects are thin on the ground, mainly some cool practical gore effects when the post-people dig into their chosen food, and the fairly minimalistic orchestral score is a pretty good too. Direction is basic but effective (I guess Katz got all the stylistic flourishes out of his system while directing his Channel Zero season), and the cinematography by Mart Taniel follows suit, though there are some striking shots of sunlight streaming through the eaves.

 The action is decent, things get pretty brutal and it builds up to a nicely fucked-up finale. It's a good one.

Marui Video

 A marui video is, according to... well, the movie Marui Video, a term prosecutors in Korea use for evidence media that, because it's too violent or disturbing, is not released to the public.

 A documentarian and a reporter (Seo Hyun-woo and Jo-Min-Kyoung, I think - information on this one is a bit thin on the ground if you don't know Korean) get wind of a 'cursed' video depicting the 1992 murder of a woman by her boyfriend in an inn room in Busan. It's a marui because it captures the killing, but it's cursed because at one point you can clearly see the face of a kid looking out from one of the mirrors in the room.

 They set out, along with a small crew, to try and track down the tape. What we're watching here is not the documentary these people made - it's one put together by a company called Marui LLC, based on original crew's collected footage, which was found in an abandoned van outside a shrine in 2019 and has just now released to the public due to a legal dispute. Got that? I guess it then technically doesn't count as marui, even though it includes footage from an actual marui video.

 Most of the film is actually comprised of a pretty compelling investigation - first a quest for the videotape itself, and then a delve into some ancillary details surrounding the murder. Particularly, the crew starts looking into the shady owner of the inn - a man who also owned another property where a kid brutally killed his mother and sister and then set himself on fire. The boy, incidentally, looks exactly like the figure in the mirror in the video.

 Writer/director Yoon Joon-Hyeong does a good job making sure both the mundane and supernatural elements of the film's intertwined mysteries link up in satisfying ways, and things mostly end up making sense. Which is good, because this is a slow, dry movie. There are a few flourishes - one of the funnier ones is a recurring genealogical tree that keeps getting edited, and thanks to the documentary gimmick, the film is slickly edited and usually has a number of angles to choose from in any given scene.

 It's good at the creepy stuff, too. The shadow of Noroi looms large, of course, but I think the contained and more straightforward thrust of the plot here is enough to differentiate it. The nature of the curse here is a little less J-horror-inspired, even if it includes several nods to the subgenre (my favorite - whenever the 'curse' manifests, it fills the ceiling with black mould that looks like the burn stains where the kid immolated himself).
 There's a standout Korean exorcism sequence and a few derelict house exploration scenes that are pretty effective. They balance out with the sadly prevalent 'running through the woods in the dark' finale, at least, and some staggeringly bone-headed decision-making on the part of our protagonists - which is a shame, because they're a likeable lot otherwise. Like on virtually all these movies, the filmmaking is only preoccupied with immediacy and immersion, with everything else a tertiary concern at best. It scores some good ambiance, but other than that it tends to look like ass.

 The unique mystery at the center and the (slow) way it's drawn out are probably the main draws here - the horror is a bit more hit and miss. I'm glad I watched it, but if you don't enjoy this particular genre I wouldn't recommend it.

Smile 2

  I liked Smile well enough. It didn't leave a huge impression, and it really felt like a short only partially successfully expanded to feature length, but it was a well-crafted slice of horror filmmaking and a promising debut for writer/director Parker Finn.

 Well, consider that promise fulfilled: Smile 2 sheds its predecessor's buzzkill, dour tone and improves on almost everything else. Despite boasting one of the worst trailers I've seen this year (I almost missed this on the big screen because of it) this is a boisterous, gloriously ridiculous and great-looking horror banger.

Put an image as memorably shit as this on your trailer, don't complain when everyone uses it.

 The basic premise is the same: There's a demonic entity which possesses someone and torments them with visions until they kill themselves in front of someone else, sporting a huge, shit-eating grin. At which point the witness turns into the demon's next host. Things kicks off with a stunning, one-take scene where the survivor from the first movie (Kyle Gallner), now carrying the demon, storms a remote cabin in an ill-advised plan to fob off the curse into a deserving recipient.
 It all goes tits-up, of course, but in a tense and highly entertaining way which includes grievous body harm. Like most one-takes, it's intensely showy, with excellent blocking and precise camera movements; And while it does feel like a technical flex for the crew, it also lends the shootout and ensuing carnage a great sense of immediacy and intensity. A jarring smash cut to a bizarre title card seals the deal.

 That's just about the only link to the first movie. From there we jump into the life of Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), a famous Lady Gaga-like pop star preparing for a comeback tour after a drug-fuelled bender got her into a car accident which caused painful wounds she's still recovering from and the death of her actor boyfriend.
 Riley is now on the wagon... mostly. But because she's a substance abuser, she can't get adequate medication for her crippling back pain. That leads her to a drug dealer (Lukas Gage) to score some vicodin - and unfortunately, to her possession by the Smiler (as the possessing demon is unofficially known): the drug dealer was a survivor from the shootout in the first scene. And then it's off to the races as Riley starts getting haunted by hallucinations of creepily smiling ghouls.

 Riley's life was already nightmarish - the film does a good job depicting the grueling physical and mental toll required from a star of Riley's magnitude - and the visions... well, they don't help. As in the first film, there's a heavy psychological horror element, as the demon feeds upon anguish and distorts Riley's reality in ways calculated to hit her where it hurts. The conceit works better thematically than on the first movie, as the smile motif meshes very well with the facade everyone expects her to put on at all times, no matter her internal turmoil.
 And Riley is just a better, much more interesting protagonist than Smile the first's victim; A convincingly broken, self-destructive soul who's nonetheless easy to root for. There are a few good characters and performances here (particularly the ever-likeable Rosemarie DeWitt as Riley's smothering mother/manager), but Smile 2 is essentially a one-woman show - and Naomi Scott absolutely nails it in her depiction of an artist that's at once likeable, vulnerable, and deeply fucked up. She also pulls off a couple of elaborate choreographies and sings a few convincing modern pop songs (most of them from the producer duo Take a Day Trip). This role should make her a star.

 I can't say I find the popstar milieu particularly compelling, but it's an original setting for a horror movie, it heavily informs the protagonist's trajectory in the story, and more importantly, it provides a hilariously over-the-top scene where Riley is chased around by a mob of choreographed backup dancers (for bonus points, it's also informed by Dr. Who's weeping angels).

 Not everything works. Finn pours a lot of energy in the film's tiniest details, and while that makes it very endearing, it also results in some big misses. I mean... I can't not love a movie where the sound effect of flesh peeling from a face is recurringly used to haunt the protagonist. But that mirror scene from the trailer? Never mind how stupid it looks, just the way it's exaggerated by the editing sound design and editing, it's just as fucking tacky and terrible as it was on the trailer.

 The movie's overreliance on jump scares and creepy smiles grated on me. The smiles in particular were good as a novelty in the first film, but they've now lost their luster, and the drive to provide ever-spookier smiles gets old quickly (this is another reason why skipping the first film and diving directly into this one might be a good idea, if it's an option at all).
 Finally, there's a delicate balance to telling any story where you don't know what's real and what's not  it in a way that still feels meaningful and satisfying. I don't think Smile 2 walks that line particularly well, but it's made up by an ending that's daring both conceptually and in its out-there imagery.

 So yeah, it's nowhere near perfect, but the spirit of excess and an impish, evil sense of humour goes a long way in making up for any shortcomings. The bloodshed is magnificent, a mix of practical effects and CGI that for once feels perfectly pitched. It feels tame in a post-Terrifier 3 world, but by any other metric the gore is copious, creative and disgusting. Certifiably good shit.
 Finn and cinematographer Charlie Sarroff also pay a lot of attention to style, with some interesting transitions and flowing camerawork that aren't afraid to come off sometimes as silly and crass. I have a lot of time for that. The same director is slated to do a remake of 1981's batshit Possession, and despite all my qualms with modern remakes in general, especially something as personal and unique as that film, I'm definitely interested.

 This is a great movie, folks, don't let those shitty trailers convince you otherwise.

Thanksgiving

  So: This is a pretty effective, fun slasher from Eli Roth, fulfilling the promise made by a fake trailer he provided to Grindhouse quite a few years ago. It's built around, well, thanksgiving, of course, but also Black Friday, that recent cancerous growth that's completely eclipsed the holiday.

 The film opens at a thanksgiving dinner hosted by a local business (Rick Hoffman) owner, his family, and a few employees and friends. His daughter Jessica (Nell Verlaque) soon sneaks off with a bunch of university knuckleheads and sneaks into her dad's superstore, triggering the angry mobs outside to storm the supermarket. A few people get killed in the fracas as the mob goes into full consumerist frenzy.

 A year goes by, and a couple days before the next thanksgiving someone with a pretty appropriate John Carver mask starts stalking the people responsible for the small massacre, which was handily filmed and posted online by one of Jessica's friends. The killer is social-media savvy, and uses social media posts to both document his murders and taunt his future victims.

 Thanksgiving (the movie) feels like a lark, but it's a fun lark. Roth, who co-wrote the script with Jeff Rendel, obviously knows and love the elements that make up this subgenre, and he carefully works them in, sometimes memorably. This is the sort of film where if someone mentions knowing how to shoot a blunderbuss, you can be sure it's gonna come into play at some point.

 The tone is very heightened, almost comedic despite some ugliness and shitloads of blood and gore, so plot holes, dumbness and a cast of uniformly unlikeable characters don't take away from the fun. There are a lot of bits that made me laugh, a mix of solid jokes (the killer stops to feed his victim's cat on the way out) and over-the-top bloody spectacle (a guy gets his face pulverized by a large pointy object... as his horrified grandkids, in an inspired evil touch, watch on.)

 Like a lot of slashers, it pays lip service to having a whodunnit - or is it whodoinit? - element. Like virtually every single slasher I can think of that attempts that, it's absolute trash. I guess it's more about keeping people guessing than anything else, but I was really annoyed as the film seemed to want me to wonder about a couple candidates who whose physical frames are nothing like the killer's.

 The kills are bloody and ludicrous, varied, pretty graphic... and satisfyingly holiday-themed. The dumbness and comedic tone precludes any of the film from being even marginally scary or having an tiny bit of suspense, so it's mostly an exercise in waiting for the next kill. That's ok, you never have long to wait.

 A pretty solid outing by Roth - not the most reliable of auteurs, but one who usually makes stuff that's at least interesting. This is, I think, his best movie, playing as it does to all his strengths: an obvious love for the genre, some technical chops and an energetic, if weirdly personality-free style, and a sort of juvenile willingness to push buttons in dumb but entertaining ways.

 Not that it doesn't have its problems. Most of them result from the film wallowing a little too much in its tropes; It's a dumb, dumb film - that goes without saying - but it also makes its characters a little too fucking insufferable. Understandable, and a time-honoured part of the slasher formula, but honestly, spending time with these dipshits was a chore. You usually get at least a few token likeable characters - here, the minority of people who are not absolute douchebags are non-entities, starting with the clearly designated final girl. Oh well, at least the script does do some interesting things in its third act and denouement. That felt weirdly mature compared to the rest of the film.

 A little more personality and touches like that would maybe make it stick a little more in my memory - as it is, I don't think I'll remember anything about this come next black Friday. But I was pretty entertained.

Trancers

 Before there was a Full Moon Pictures, and way before he started making dumb shit for people who are too stoned to know any better (AKA: the Sharknado set), Charles Band put out his B-movies through Empire pictures. He had a pretty good run: Ghoulies, Dungeonmaster, Zone Troopers, Terrorvision... not to mention Robot Jox, Re-animator, Rawhead Rex and From Beyond. That's an impressive, eclectic list that includes some genuinely great films - and the streak extends into the early days of Full Moon, too: Castle Freak, Subspecies, and good old Dr. Mordrid.

 Band makes his entrance into this blog with 1984's Trancers, one of Band's few non-horror efforts. I'm not going to pretend it's aged all that well, but... yeah, it's still a lot of fun.

 Sometime in the 23rd century, a gruff, ornery cop in the Sam Spade mold going by the name of Jack Deth (Tim Thomerson) is hunting for trancers - regular people who have been brainwashed by his nemesis Martin Whistler as sleeper agents programmed to... attack Jack on sight, I guess.

 This is communicated via some clunky, Blade-runner-style voiceover (a device that quickly disappears, never to return). It plays over Jack arriving and heading into a dingy diner with a set design that also seems to owe a lot to that Blade Runner - I mean, look at this:

 Within, he abuses his authority (some things will not change in the intervening centuries, it seems), but he's proven justified when the nice old lady behind the counter turns into a zombie-like maniac. A really fun fight ensues - any movie that has a cute old grannie getting punched in the face in its first scene can't be that bad.

 Later he gets into a fight with his boss, who wears a suit a '50s used car salesman would think twice about wearing, and ends up quitting the force because he's too much of a lone wolf and a loose cannon to, you know, fulfill the basic obligations of his job like taking on assignments. "He was a good cop", the boss muses, "until a trancer killed his wife"; Some clichés, like police brutality, will never die.

 His retirement doesn't last long. Jack is summoned by the... (checks notes) High Council Western Territories (they have a floormat with that title in front of their big iron door). It looks like Jack's old nemesis Whistler survived and fled to the past, and is using his trancer-creating ability to kill the councilmembers' forefathers to erase them from existence in the present.
 The way time travel works here is, aside from a remarkably half-arsed take on paradoxes and time alteration, that when you travel back you take over the body of one of your ancestors. And obviously, that's what Jack is asked to do to stop Whistler.

 So Jack's gotta get back, back to the past and take over the body of a distant journalist relative in 1985. One who, luckily, owes a trenchcoat. From there he starts investigating whistler, who's taken over a hot-shot police detective (Michael Stefani). Only... investigating seems to be a bit too strong a word for what Jack does, which is basically to bumble around and get attacked by a number of trancers.
 The most memorable attack is by a mall santa (the movie is based around Christmas night), another great fight scene that scores a few laughs (Mrs Santa, calling for security over comms: "There's trouble at the North Pole"). Jack enlists the girl his ancestor was banging, Leena (a very young Helen Hunt) as an initially unwilling sidekick he slowly wins over, has some fish out of water escapades, and of course a pretty cringeworthy budding romance (Hunt's twenty, and looks a lot younger; Thomerson is in his mid-forties, and fully looks it).
 

 The film is kind of a hot mess, but it goes down easy thanks to a good balance between being a Terminator knock-off and keeping a sense of humour about it. The leads are likeable, there are some good fights, and despite its second half not being nearly as much fun as the first, it never overstays its welcome.

 Band has never been a good director, but he handles himself fine here, and even manages some atmosphere for that first scene. The effects are few and not that ambitious, but a lot of fun, and the script (by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo) scores a few laughs.

 The better Empire/Full Moon flicks are B-movies that know full well that they're B-movies, and this was made while Band still cared about quality. So if you don't mind a low budget, some corniness and a whole lot of cheese, it won't disappoint. It was followed, in true Full Moon fashion, by a buttload of sequels, a couple of which I remember enjoying. Someday, maybe... I still need to revisit the whole scanners saga so I can get to Scanner Cop 2.

 And it's a surprisingly Christmas-y movie, if you care about that sort of thing; Oversized candy canes and nutcrackers are used in the mall fight as weapons. Later there's a (very poorly dubbed) punk cover of Jingle Bells, and a trio of homeless people play at being the three wise kings. And.. well, not a lot else that I remember, but it's still more than Die Hard.

The Devil's Rock

 The Devil's Rock is a vanishingly rare thing: a serious horror movie from New Zealand.

 Two New Zealander commandos are sent to the channel island on the eve of D-Day to sabotage a German gun emplacement as a distraction. Their mission goes smoothly - too smoothly, you might say if you only spoke in clichés - but as they're leaving they hear a woman's cry coming from within the bunker.

 Because I guess neither of them has ever seen a horror movie, they go in to investigate, and find that something's done a bloody number on the occupying nazi troops; Bodies everywhere, in various states of dismemberment, strewn all over the surprisingly extensive underground tunnels.

 Unfortunately, one of the Nazis - one col. Meyer (Matthew Sunderland) - has survived. He ambushes our intrepid kiwi soldiers, kills one of them, and takes the other one, Captain Grogan (Craig Hall) prisoner.

 But... he seems in no hurry to kill or torture our man for information. As it transpires, this is another tale built around Hitler's mythical ahnenerbe misadventures, and Meyer is trying to deal with the fallout of a demon summoning gone wrong, and needs Grogan for... well, it's never totally clear, except that he keeps repeating that they're in the same boat.

 The infernal creature soon comes into play: a succubus in all but name who takes the form of Grogan's beloved late wife (Gina Varela). While there's an element of mystery - what exactly is happening here, and what does this or that other character really want - the film is, unexpectedly, more of a chamber piece, with the fraught conversations between the three taking up most of the run time.

 The script, by director Paul Campion, Paul Finch and Brett Ihaka does a decent job of keeping tensions high and budgetary needs low. It's all a bit bone-headed (the movie literally examines that age old question: what is worse, the nazis or an actual demon from hell?), and there's the sense that it's treading water at a couple of points, but the two opponents are mercurial and menacing enough to keep it decently entertaining.
 The acting also holds up. No one is going to win any awards, but the cast is up for these silly, pulpy antics and seems to be having fun. Sunderland in particular is very compellingly flakey - something that also extends to his accent, which I thought was a pro, not a con.

 Director Paul Campion is an FX guy, a matte painter (there's a nice shot of the nazi building where I imagine he got to do his thing), but most of the film it's good, old fashioned makeup effects that shine here. Just about all scenes take place in either tunnels or a couple of cramped rooms, lending the film a good claustrophobic atmosphere.

 It's all right, I liked it on its own terms. Sadly, what made it really memorable for me was something that's got nothing to do with any of the efforts from Campion, the cast or his crew... it was the incredibly shitty, and obviously machine-generated Amazon subtitles.

 Picture the scene. An SS officer is preparing to torture you. He looks you up and down, grabs your face, and softly says:

 In-fucking-credible. Nothing else was as funny, but it injected all sorts of random nonsense and non-sequiturs into the conversation. "Gott In Himmel" gets subtitled as "go to him", and then there's this glorious line:

"What kind of lewd tricks, special ects, and evens do they pull you out?"

 I'm sorry, The Devil's Rock, but I'm afraid that this is what I'll forever remember you for. Amazon, man. They ruin everything.

Attack The Block

 The fifth of November is Bonfire night here in the UK. It's sort of like the fourth of July in the States in that it's basically an excuse to launch fireworks all over the place, but instead of commemorating something momentous it's a sort of monument to the saddest, most ineffective mainstream terrorist this side of the four lions and his failure to kill some king.

 Against this backdrop that a few flares come down from the sky at high speeds. They're not fireworks, but meteorites carrying a highly lethal species. Unfortunately for these invaders, they happen to land in one of the rougher areas of Lambeth in southern London.

 How rough? Well, that's quickly illustrated when Sam (Jodie Whittaker), a young nurse on her way home is mugged at knife point by five young thugs. It's a legitimately scary scene - one that's instantly relatable in the way it conveys both the rush of fear and the impotent rage that follows these sort of events evoke.

 The mugging is interrupted by one of the meteorites falling nearby; Sam escapes, and the gang goes to investigate... and at around that point (if you haven't seen any of the trailers) you realize that holy shit, those five kids are the protagonists.

 Moses (John Boyega, in his film debut) leads, a laconic, no-nonsense would-be career gang member. Pest (Alex Esmail)  is the most vocal of the lot in the funny asshat role, and the group is rounded out by Franz Drameh , Leon Jones and Simon Howard. Most of them were closer to twenty than the fifteen or so they portray here, but they pull it off well. When not terrorizing innocent, underpaid nurses, they happen to be a charming bunch of hooligans. Just Kids. And the script sensitively drums up empathy for them without making any excuses for their behaviour. There's so much value in that.

 Anyhow! The gang manages to kill the alien the meteorite disgorged, but it turns out to be just the spearhead of the invasion - and a smaller version than the soldier types to follow. Once more meteorites land, unleashing their deadly passengers, the kids go on the hunt to see if they can bag more prey... only to find themselves running for their life, eventually falling back on their council estate. A thin, brutalist building, the Block in the title. There they join forces with Sam, who understandably isn't impressed, a chill drug dealer (Nick Frost), and a posh university student (Luke Treadaway) who provides a lot of cluelessness-based comic mileage.

 Oh, and they also piss off the block's resident gangsta, who's out for their blood as doggedly as the big alien gorilla wolf motherfuckers (as one of the kids christens the aliens).

 This is one of those movies that's an absolute joy from beginning to end - no missteps, no notes, nothing bad to say about it whatsoever. Writer/director Joe Cornish's direction and script are incredibly assured. He manages to pack in so much cleverness into a tightly-paced siege story and works so well with his actors that it's hard to believe most of his experience came from sketch comedy (he's the titular Joe in Adam & Joe).

 It's a movie I've watched several times over the years, and there's always a new detail to find. For example: This time I noticed that Pest fakes a leg injury to sneak an aluminium bat out of his house hidden in his trouser leg. Guess who (and this is a slight spoiler) gets a chunk of the same leg bitten off later, and spends the rest of the movie barely mobile? That's some next-level scriptwriting, especially when it reinforces the themes of consequence woven throughout the story. Man, to think we could have had an Ant-Man written by this guy.

 The action is good, the jokes are great, and the social commentary is, going by all the people who got put off by its choice of protagonists, sharp and still very topical. I've met fairly film-literate people who hated it because of that over the years. One of them turned it off, disgusted, half-way; His favorite movie? Scarface. I still find that funny.
 Beyond that, the writing's strong enough - and it trusts us enough - that it can play a scene where Moses is promoted to drug runner as a straight-faced triumph, with the rest of the gang sincerely, innocently happy for him. Oof.

 Effects are excellent for its budget, with the monsters (which started as gorilla suits!) feeling menacing and original; They look uncannily like something out of a '90s Image comics title. They're a believable threat and animate well, which is important as the more elaborate sequences consist of different types of chases. Things get a little brutal, especially for one (thoroughly deserved) gory death that lets the FX crew get all Romero and shit. The soundtrack is a glitchy wonder that has Basement Jaxx plus Steven Price playing with '50s scifi touches, Carpenter-style synths and more standard grand adventure film music.
 Yeah, this film's got everything.

 Sadly, Attack the Block failed to catch the public's attention in the same way that his mate Edgar Wright (who's an executive producer here) did with Sean of The Dead. Cornish's only done one kid's movie since, apart from some scripts and TV.
 Hopefully that will change soon; There's a sequel in the works, under the Netflix aegis, but let's not hold that against it. What is worrying is that it's gone a bit quiet lately, which is never a good sign, but we'll see. As the box office for Terrifier 3 showed us this week, sometimes the world works as it should.

Salem's Lot

 Stephen King's Salem's Lot is, like The Stand, a novel with a sprawling cast of characters entangled in a complex web of relationships. There's a reason why both have only ever been made as miniseries - and all of them still had to make many, many changes to the source material. Any movie version of either would have to cuts so much of the book that most of what made it special in the first place would be inevitably lost.

 And so it is with the new HBO adaptation of Salem's Lot. It's still the story of a small town that's invaded by a pernicious presence that brings out the worst in everyone until chaos reigns*. Except that even though the movie does spend some time establishing the fault lines and characters that will later become semi-feral bloodsuckers, it quickly becomes more of a cheesy, 80's laced horror adventure.

 Inevitably, it's set in the '70s, like its source material - this story would be unrecognizable in the age of mobile phones and social media. It mainly follows two characters: Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman, just as bland as his dad) as he returns to his hometown of Salem's Lot (Maine, of course- it's a Steven King Staple) to research a novel, and Mark Petrie (Jordan Preston Carter), an eleven-year-old who's basically obscenely competen in absolutely everything. Seriously - he's introduced immobilizing a bully Segal-style, and later takes to vampire hunting with an even-handedness that would make Peter Vincent feel completely inadequate.

Get that clown. Vampire. I mean vampire.

 Following the arrival of a mysterious stranger (Pilou Asbæk, gloriously ridiculous) at the local haunted mansion, a string of child disappearances (there's been a lot of that lately on this blog, hasn't there?) rocks the town. And then people start getting turned into vampires. Our heroes and a few disposable sidekicks quickly realize what's going on and decide something to do something about it. It's actually kind of refreshing how quickly they figure and accept what's going on, though it does require a hefty suspension of disbelief.
 The book is notorious for spending a very long time setting up things and ratcheting up tension - the real mayhem only really starts in the last few chapters; Here, it's more half and half, and a lot of the supernatural stuff is pulled forward to provide a brisker pace.

 Those changes mean that the film is nothing like the novel, despite being recognizably based on it. And yet... it's a surprisingly fun take, a film that feels like it was discovered in a time capsule. Writer/director Gary Dauberman's adaptation is firmly tongue in cheek without fully crossing over into horror comedy; When you find out that an eleven-year-old is an ace driver, for example, it's a moment that invites more of a good-natured cheer than eye-rolling. Or at least good-natured eye-rolling. 

 It is pretty stupid, is what I'm saying, willfully so, in both obvious and subtle ways. This is the type of film where crosses glow like the sun as soon as vampires come near, even emitting a sort of high-wattage lamp sub-sonic flicker as they light up. It's also the type of film where the characterization is completely left to the side characters; Mark, Ben and his girlfriend Sue get the barest minimum of personality. They're just the protagonists.

 Alfre Woodward and Bill Camp get much meatier roles as concerned citizens and would-be vampire hunters. Woodward, in particular, gets a very clever, that shows, rather than tells that she's figured something out - a rare moment of subtlety in this movie. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I have to pay respects to Asbæk's Renfield character - he's basically chewing scenery as if he came in from a Hammer movie. Someone should probably tell him auditions for Nosferatu are closed.

 So. It's a throwback 80's style action horror film, knowingly cheesy. There are a few laughs, but they mostly come out of situations organically. It feels like a huge improvement over Dauberman's previous two-part script for King's It.

What elevates it is a rare (in horror) sense of style. The production is a little on-the-nose with its period detail, but very well realized. And the ambiance is to die for; Layered thick - dusty, sepia-tinged sunlight and a gorgeous autumnal palette during the day, misty, inky-black nights with vampires perching on rooftops like bright-eyed gargoyles.
 There's a scene where two kids get attacked while trekking through a forest, backlit against the gloaming, that is frankly beautiful; Another one, set at a bar, makes uncanny use of light and, more importantly, shadow. The haunted house the vampires nest at looms over the town at one point, like Dracula's castle. There are also a host of fun, showy matching cuts, starting early on with an amazing transition from a business card to a staircase, but my favorite is probably a priest going through a bible to a guy opening a sandwich to check its contents.

Dauberman, cinematographer Michael Burgess, and the rest of the crew have evidently lavished attention on the visual side of things, and I love it. James Wan is a producer; I'm sure he got a kick out of that.

.

 There are, of course, a ton of problems baked into the film's approach. If you aren't on-board with what it's doing, you'll fucking hate it. This dumbness does get to be a bit too much even if you get into the spirit of things; once our heroes know vampires are in play, for example, their refusal to wear even a measly crucifix or slather themselves in garlic like human kebabs is very, very perplexing.

 But the thing that was most detrimental to my enjoyment was an extremely underwhelming final confrontation - hell: the final boss and head vampire himself, the Nosferatu motherfucker** who caused all the trouble in the first place barely makes an impression.

 As for the adaptation liberties... eh. I have a lot of affection for the book, but to be honest I'd rather have this than a more faithful adaptation. It's got some surprises. The literary approach of the novel is best left to the novel or a series... and honestly I'm not at all that interested in the latter.

 It's fine! A bit corny and old-fashioned, but again, that's kind of the appeal here. I suspect it'll make a great kid's horror gateway movie despite the tween deaths, or, frankly, probably because of them. There's a little blood, but not much - some splatters, but most of it is implied or more fun than upsetting. This is a much better result than we had any right to expect from the maker of some Annabelle sequels and the unholy clusterfuck HBO has become.

*: Sit down, Needful Things. You'll probably get another chance sometime soon.

**: A nod to Tobe Hooper's version, I'm sure. Definitely not from the book.

Terrifier 3

 Terrifier 2 expanded on the first movie in every conceivable way. A bigger budget can do wonders, as shown by that film's presentation, but no amount of money is worth anything if the people behind it don't have any ambition. That's not the case with Writer/director Damien Leone, who stepped up on his previous effort with a script that included likeable characters, a cool '80s-movie-adjacent fantasy plot (seriously, this movie's more fantastical elements feel like they belong airbrushed to the side of a van) and... more violence, more cruelty, and, well, I'd say more gore, but that doesn't even begin to cover the amounts of innards, shambles, offal, guts, viscera and other synonyms that Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) cheerfully throws around during the course of that movie. It's a fucking maximalist, peerless gorefest.

 So here we are, a couple of years later, with a sequel set during Christmas that somehow ups the ante on the grand guignol and on Art's antics, letting the rest recede a little bit into the background.

 The opening shows you just how terrific (and how vicious) these movies can be with a horrific, stand-alone yuletide home invasion shown from the point of view of a poor, doomed, innocent family who gets a visit from a suspiciously skinny and pasty white Santa Claus. With an axe. The segment is worth the price of admission alone and is a good showcase for Leone's considerable chops (ha!) for pacing and building a sense of dread. And, of course, for bloodshed.

 From there, the script gets a lot sloppier, bouncing back in time a little to explain what happened after the end of the previous film. First, a (very funny) interlude to show how Art put himself back together after being beheaded at the end of Terrifier 2. Then, an introduction to her sidekick Victoria (Samantha Scaffidi), back from the first Terrifier film. Her suffering at Art's hands left her a broken wreck, physically and mentally; After (literally) playing a role in the demonic clown's rebirth, she decides that she wants to be on the other end of a knife for once, helping him out on some of his grisly outings, providing running commentary all the time. There's a story reason for her inclusion which ties into the series' convoluted metaphysics, but honestly... it's kind of a mess.

 Once Art is fully back and on the warpath (a process that takes him five years), he decides to go after the other one that got away - and also decapitated him with a magical sword.
 Sienna (Lauren LaVera) has spent those five years in a mental institution. She's released to spend Christmas with her aunt (Margaret Anne Florence), uncle (Bryce Johnson) and adoring young cousin (Antonella Rose). Her trauma gets a lot of screentime, but while LaVera remains likeable and does a good job selling her internal turmoil, the dialog is a little too clunky. Serviceable, but not really effective.

 As Art circles around her and her newfound family, Sienna realizes something is up and tries to put up a resistance. It all leads to a sickeningly brutal final confrontation, and... sigh, an extremely unsatisfying cliffhanger. The script barely moves forward, plot-wise, and only develops the mythology a tiny bit - and not in a satisfying way*. The story here, like on many a modern Marvel or other franchise-minded movie, barely merits that name; Besides signalling that the series might get weirder, it's mostly padding. It works better as a series of murderous episodes, and the focus is firmly set on the bloodshed.
 

 It is some pretty damn good bloodshed, if I might say so. Faces are torn off, necks are slit, bowels are dissem'd. And that's just for starters. There's a grotesque creativity at work, and a sense of gleeful, over-the-top cruelty even before Art starts miming his stupid little jokes like the little shit he is; His lethality is only rivalled by his punchability.
 There's nothing as bad as poor Allie's torture from the last time around, but there are a lot more extended deaths, elaborate as all hell and realized with disturbing panache; It's no wonder that Tom Savini, patron saint of gorehounds, puts in an appearance. As in the previous movies, things are heightened enough (the sound design, particularly) that you can kind of have fun in between all the wincing... just about. There's some heavily sexualized violence (to both genders) but next to no nudity, which must have been a conscious decision - a strange one, given that we get to see loads of people with their skin off, never mind their clothes. In any case, that scene caused three walkouts at my screening (that I noticed).

 This is a nasty, nasty movie, ugly by design and calculated to get a deeply visceral reaction. Some of the targets of its violence are fair game as per the slasher genre's admittedly exaggerated rules, but most of them aren't. There's also a lot of black, black humour, most of it coming from Art. After killing a whole family at their home, for example, he takes the time to eat the cookies and milk they left for Santa. Or, in my favorite scene, the asshole finds a way to curdle the hospitality of a kindly soul in the foulest way possible. He really is the incarnation of the most hateful internet troll.

 Terrifier 3 is not exactly scary - it's a little too ghoulishly interested in its red, wet fireworks - but there's a lot of very effective suspense as the next gruesome death looms. And as a gnarly kill delivery engine, well... that's basically the film's raison d'etre, and it fully delivers. I prefer the second part's balance and tonal variety, but I have a lot of respect for a film that only cares about the bits that everyone fast forwards to in slashers upon a rewatch. Shame you may also need to do that here.

*:  We do at least find out that Art washes his hand after taking a piss. If he puts his shopping cart back with the other after doing his groceries, I think that effectively makes him a good person. At least according to some internet theories.

V/H/S/Beyond

  The V/H/S series seems to have found a second lease of life, with the last four installments of the anthology series (out of seven) coming in at a yearly release schedule. This latest one comes with a science fiction theme. As usual, it's fun, but uneven. I personally found it a bit weak, but worthwhile; There's some good stuff there.

 The framing device is directed by Jay Cheel (he of the excellent Shudder documentaries Cursed Movies), and it's a mockumentary about a couple of VHS tapes with supposed proof of extraterrestrial life. The fragments, interspersed among other shorts, give a (necessarily) very abridged overview of UFO mania over the ages while telling the tale of a family that was convinced that they were visited by some sort of presence over the years. They do a token effort of foreshadowing the short they precede, but the tie-ins are extremely loose, I suspect because of the nature of the project. The fake documentary itself is engaging enough, and features a few guest youtubers (the wizards at Corridor Digital put in an appearance), but it builds up to a conclusion that's mildly funny and wholly underwhelming.

 "Stork" kicks off things with the tale of a rogue police squadron raiding a derelict house that they suspect is home to a cult of baby-snatching cultists. Once inside it devolves into a series of shootouts against zombified enemies clearly modelled after action/horror computer games, down to the entrance of a chainsaw-wielding maniac and copious spurts of very fake-looking CGI blood.

 I wasn't too impressed by it, though it goes by easily enough. Overall it feels a little like a calling card to show what everyone involved can do. It's built around the reveal of a very bizarre boss creature, which did make me laugh out loud, so... mission accomplished, I guess.

 Virat Pal is next with a Bollywood-set story that includes the series' first musical number. Its first half is great, chronicling the attempts of two paparazzi (Rohan Joshi and Sayandeep Sengupta) to grab some 'candids' of 'Superstar Tara' (Namrata Sheth), an up-and-coming starlet. Unfortunately, thanks to a pretty underdeveloped plot development, it devolves into some mayhem that's rife with the worst tendencies of found footage movies: someone running around with a camera through extremely dark places.

 Then comes "Live and Let Dive", to me the clear highlight of this V/H/S installment, courtesy of F/X specialist Justin Martinez (he was involved in the very first V/H/S and in semi-spinoff Southbound). It's about a bunch of dudes (of both sexes) who, while on a skydiving expedition get caught in the middle of an alien invasion. The character introduction is weak (I have very little tolerance for forced bluster), but once things get rolling it's a fucking blast: the action moves seamlessly from a disintegrating plane to a forced skydive to the orange grove below, while all the time some truly disturbing aliens (of the feral, murderous kind) hunt them down. Add some inventive gore and you've got a top-shelf entry into the series canon.

 Justin Long directs the next segment, in which a group of activists go to investigate a woman (Libby Letlow) who runs a dog shelter. This one's by far the worst of the lot: Letlow is great, and the introduction mines a lot of anti-humour out of her cheesy promotional video, but other than that it's a slog- overlong, deeply mediocre... and for fuck's sake, out of all the things Long could revisit from his career, did he really have to choose Tusk?

 The great Kate Siegel helms the last segment, Stowaway, making her directing debut off a script written by her spouse Mike Flannagan. It follows Halley (Alanah Pearce), an independent documentarist, as she investigates mysterious lights in the sky sighted at the Mojave desert.
 She does find what she's looking for, but in her pursuit of a story ends up in a horrible situation, made all the more horrifying by an absolute absence of malice. 
 Conceptually, this is excellent. It's the only story here that attempts to engage with a proper science-fiction mindset, and the concepts it plays with are sound (even if they fall in the softest possible range of the sci-fi spectrum). Pearce is also great as Halley, and along with a solid script, she's the only person in this movie who could qualify as a decent, rounded character.
 Unfortunately the filmmaking - by choice or circumstances - is too murky, making the latter half of the story unintuitively uninteresting to look at. It also suffers from a bloated runtime, which is a trait several stories in this V/H/S installment share. Siegel's talked about considering doing a musical, and then something about muppets (with Bryan Henson's involvement, no less). Overall I like Stowaway, but it's hard to wonder how those would have turned out. As good as that last shot is, the movie really needed a bit more craziness.

The Coffee Table (La Mesita del Comedor)

 This... this is a really hard movie to write about without ruining it a little.

 Without spoiling anything: The Coffee Table is an extremely fucked up Spanish provocation - think Álex de la Iglesia, but more hostile to the viewer than he's ever been. Nominally horror, it features some of the blackest of black comedy I've seen in a long time... and unlike nearly all horror comedies, it's plenty horrific, although probably not in the way you'd expect.

 Jesús (David Pareja) and Maria (Estefanía de los Santos) are a middle-aged couple in the process of remodelling their apartment to make space for their newborn son. They're introduced at a furniture store where Jesús hopes to buy an extremely tacky glass-top coffee table, against his wife's justifiably horrified protestations. It's a quietly hilarious scene that, as they argue while an obsequious salesman gives them the hard sell, quickly establishes one of the film's major tones: whip-smart, well-acted character work, very funny in a sort of humour that's poised somewhere between observational and cringe comedy.

 That tone is maintained as they make their way back to their apartment. And then a horrific tragedy strikes, which the film treats seriously, only to then cruelly start bringing back in the same sort of quotidian comedy from before as things slowly start spiralling out of control.

 Yes, you can probably guess what it is that happens. And yes, it's brutal, though mercifully not as graphic as it could have been. But that happens very early in the film so that's not really where I feel the need to tread lightly. What I don't want to spoil is where the movie goes from there, because unpredictability is key to the film's bizarre allure.

 Writer/director Caye Casas gleefully keeps the chaos simmering, later expertly managing some very tense Hitchcock-style suspense to pretty unusual ends. His gift for unintentionally ironic remarks, in particular, remains a delight until the very end. The script (co-written with Chris Borobia) also has room for some inspired bits of lunacy -religious imagery, a 13-year-old femme fatale, Jesús's unexplainable sex appeal with all the major characters- and of course keeps up the wonderful dialog, which the talented cast have a field day with (Josep Maria Riera and Claudia Riera share the back half as Jesús and Maria's houseguests).

 On the technical front, it's a very accomplished movie, with good photography (cinematographer: Alberto Morago Muñoz) and a style that purposefully alternates between well-composed shots and jittery, handheld cameras. The production design is excellent, if on a modest scale; I particularly loved the title sequence.

 It's a great movie, though the subject matter and trollish tone do make it hard to recommend. I almost feel like a bad person for liking it; And that, surely, is the intention.

Let Me In

 Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a friendless, bullied latchkey kid whose life is changed when a new girl, Abby (Chloe Grace Moretz), moves in next door. Abby is twelve, the same age as Owen, but she's been twelve (to paraphrase the novel) for a very long time. Because she's a vampire. Which might be why when they meet, she coldly tells Owen that she can't be her friend.

 That falls by the wayside quickly because, in this take on the undead staple, child vampires retain at least something of their childhood no matter how many nights they've seen. Despite her misgivings, she ends up developing a connection with Owen, much to the displeasure of her familiar Thomas (Richard Jenkins).

 What follows is a weirdly sweet story about two outcasts falling in together amidst the chaos and mayhem that vampiric subsistence demands: they teach themselves Morse Code to communicate through their bedroom walls. He teaches her about the modern world and Mrs. Pacman, she teaches him to solve Rubik's cubes and to stand up for himself. They murder someone together. Puppy love.

 If any of this sounds familiar, it's because this is a remake of Tomas Alfredson's Swedish arthouse horror hit Let The Right One In, itself an adaptation of a 2004 novel by John Ajvide Lidqvist. This film came out only a couple years after the original, and at the time director Matt Reeves claimed it'd be a parallel adaptation of the book rather than a remake of Afredson's take on it.

 Well... I call bullshit. This is as close to a one-to-one adaptation of the original movie as these American remakes get, with many of the scenes staged and even framed almost identically. It's kind of hard to defend as anything other than as an exercise in making the movie more palatable to Americans... and that's a shame, because it's a pretty terrific movie on its own right.

 Let's go with the good first: The acting is phenomenal, with both Smit-McPhee and Moretz giving natural, convincing performances that both differ and compliment their Swedish counterparts. Both of them feel believable as kids, and what's rarer and more exciting, as weird, kind of unlikeable -but still relatable- kids. Full credit to them and the script (by Reeves, tracing the original script from Ajvide Lidqvist).
 Jenkins, as the familiar, is also terrific, and his character is much more sympathetic than his predecessor on Alfredson's take - not to mention the one on the book, who was a sociopathic paedophile strung along by the vampire with promises of cold, cold, underage eunuch corpse sex*. Elias Koteas also puts in an appearance; Great as usual, but barely there enough to register.

 The filmmaking and cinematography (by Greig Fraser) are also good. Matt Reeves is no Alfredson, but he acquits himself nicely. And because he's closely following someone else's script, this is by far his best movie - which is ironic, because his additions here, including a hilarious-slash-tense murder attempt followed by a harrowing car crash, are top-notch and the only time this version creeps out from the original's shadow.

 I'll also lump in some of what they chose not to go with on the remake in with the good. The book's biggest menace (spoilers for something that doesn't happen), an acid-scarred vampire going around murdering people in a paedo-boner-induced frenzy fails to make his debut for a second time in favour of a much more intimate, and honestly better, third act. I remember thinking at the time that would be this one's selling point, what with the claims on it being closer to the book, so that was a close one. It also doesn't re-attempt a scene with some hilariously dodgy CGI cats.

 Finally, Reeves' version -by virtue of his direction not being as clinical as Alfredson's- seems to add a little warmth, lean a little more into the story's fucked-up romanticism. That's nicely cut down by a little detail, unique to this version (in fact, it directly contradicts the book), that implies a much more cynical interpretation to the film's ending.

 But in the end... despite some differences, it ends up feeling to me like a lesser imitation. Part of that is that it's such a unique story that it's robbed of some of its power the second time around. I do wonder how I'd rate them if I had seen the remake first, but I think I'd still prefer Alfredson's chillier interpretation. CGI cats notwithstanding. I also wonder whether I'd like the new one better without Michael Giacchino's score. It's perfectly fine, but it sounds too intrusive and... well, too Hollywood for the material.
 The effects are a mixed bag. They're mostly ok, but I really disliked the way Abby moves as a vampire; Took me out of the movie in a similar way those shit CGI cats took me out of the original. Speaking of; As good as Moretz is, I liked Lina Leandersson's take much better - she just looked, and sounded (thanks to her voice being dubbed by Elif Ceylan) much more... other, something that's sorely missing in the remake.

 All in all I'm probably being too harsh on this one. It bears repeating that taken on its own, it's an excellent, unique, sophisticated little movie that packs a hell of an emotional punch, whichever way you choose to interpret its nicely ambiguous ending**.

 But... well, it's not on its own, is it?

*Ajvide Lidqvist adores taking deep dives into the psyches of deeply repellent people, and the book's chapters narrated from Thomas's (Hákan in the original) point-of-view are a pretty harsh reading endurance test, even to this jaded horror fan. That's nothing compared to Little Star, though, which is basically an attempt to cram in as much awful, awful human behaviour as possible into a single novel.

**I leaned cynical. The book's author disagrees. He also loved both adaptations.

Oddity

 In roman times, a husband would gift their wife a silver wreath on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and a golden one at their fiftieth. This custom was kept over time, and in the twentieth century a host of other anniversary milestones were added (yay, capitalism!). The fifth anniversary is called a wooden anniversary, and this is the excuse Danni Timmins (Carolyn Braken, who's excellent in her dual roles) uses to gift her brother-in-law Ted (Gwilym Lee) a horrifying wooden mannequin.

 This is wrong on several levels. One, because the mannequin is a fucked-up wonder, a creepy rendering of a shrivelled mummy with hollow eyes and a mouth frozen in a horrifying scream. Two, because the gift comes one year after Ted's wife and Danni's sister Darcy (Braken, again) was brutally murdered. Not cool, Danni.

 The story in Oddity hinges around the character of Danni, who happens to be both blind and possessed of psychometric powers (she can read objects, like Johnny Smith in The Dead Zone), and how she rudely invades her ex-brother-in-law's life -and that of his new paramour (Caroline Menton)- at their rural cottage in an attempt to find out what really happened to her sister. What part the mannequin plays is not clear until much later.

 It's a high-gothic tale that's happy to throw in ghosts, a dash of paranormal phenomena, and some deliciously heinous sociopathy on top of the initial murder, all laced with a bone-dry sense of black humour. It takes its time carefully laying the infrastructure to support a handful of extremely effective jump-scares and a very satisfying finale. The whodunnit aspects are relatively simple (they have to be, with a cast this size) but the pieces of the puzzle are assembled with such care and imagination that it's still a pleasure to watch them fall into place with grim sense of inevitability.

 Writer/director Damian McCarthy has crafted a nasty, elegant, classically-built box of horrors that's still playful enough to remain unpredictable in its particulars. Meticulously composed at all times, its heavy emphasis on atmosphere (cinematographer: Colm Hogan) beautifully supports the script's rising pitch. And that fucking wooden man, sculpted by Paul McDonnell and a team of six, easily tops the creepy rabbit from McCarthy's previous movie Caveat (which makes a welcome cameo here) both in form and function.
 There's a smattering of gore, ugly enough to jolt, but it's not a particularly bloody film. It is weird, funny, engaging and properly scary, though; It's a shame it didn't receive much of a marketing push, because it should rightly become a classic.

The Borderland

Most found footage movies try to have a good excuse for why the cameras are rolling all the time, but writer/director Elliot Goldner has found one of the best justifications yet: after a disastrous fuckup in Brasil that resulted in a few priestly deaths, the Vatican forces any group of miracle investigators to basically record absolutely everything they do. Holy health and safety department!

 And that's where our point of view character comes in: Gray (Robin Hill) is a techie who's tasked to make sure there's a buttload of running cameras around at all times to document the work as two priests (Gordon Kennedy and Aidan McArdle) investigate the site of a mysterious earthquake-like disturbance at a small rural English church that the local priest (Luke Neal) swears has a supernatural origin.

 Gray's a great character - a neurotic, John-Oliver-style smartarse who holds out opinions on anything and everything in a nasal Londoner whine. A proper geezer. Brother Deacon (Kennedy) is a lot of fun, too - a gruff Scotsman who strikes a good balance between idealistic and world-weary; The exasperated kinship that develops between the two men is both hilarious and hugely charming.

 They're overseen by Father Amidon, a by-the-book type who doesn't seem to hold Deacon in high regard. Both holy men are refreshingly realistic about the chances of there being anything of supernatural origin at the church - they arrive halfway convinced it's a hoax, and are always trying to find rational explanations for any of the mysterious events that start piling up as they explore the site. It's very funny that Gray, the guy who lied about being a believer to get the gig, is way more excited about the prospect of finding something mystical than they are.

 Writer/director Elliot Goldner (who sadly has only made TV since this) ably mixes character drama with a slowly evolving metaphysical threat - and because most of the sets are flooded with cameras, plus the ones worn by every main cast member, he's able to make a pretty compelling film around it. It's a little more dynamic than the ones centered around wannabe documentary filmmakers or the more comparable paranormal investigation teams, without neglecting the typical running-in-the-dark-with-a-shitty-flashlight scenes that are so integral to this genre.

 There's some pretty effective jump scares, but the bulk of the horror is more drawn-out, and the film excels at building up a considerable sense of dread, which it brings to a head in an excellent (if slightly unoriginal- though it's easy to see its influence in, say, Frogman) subterranean finale. Very little in the way of special effects, and next to no blood and guts, if that's important for you one way or the other.

 It's a very entertaining investigation yarn that inexorably decolours into a genre-appropriate shade of bleak. And along the way, it gives us a chance to hang around some very likeable characters; Any film where someone tells a priest 'Dan Brown was right about you lot!' is all right by me.