V/H/S/2

 Within just nine months after V/H/S was released, the fine folks over at Bloody Disgusting rounded up another bunch of new and returning miscreants to make another sleazy, gory collection of found-footage horror shorts. V/H/S/2 runs about thirty minutes shorter than the first movie, and that tightening really pays off. And while it's still sleazy as hell (we get a pair of boobs and a dong within the first few minutes), but it's noticeably tamer than the first film; I'd only choose "degenerate" as the sixth or seventh adjective to apply to this one.

 The wrap-around this time is about an entertainingly amoral private dick (Lawrence Michael Levine) who, along with his partner (Kelsy Abbott) is hired to find a missing college student. They track him down to a house that looks suspiciously like the one in the first film (and we even see a little footage from some recurring assholes) - there are a load of tapes everywhere, but no corpse this time around.

 I'd forgotten these films implied a shared universe, though it always seemed a bit half-arsed. This segment is written and directed by a returning Simon Barrett, but it's pretty forgettable aside from a goofy-looking bit of gore later on.

 Barrett returns for the first story (Phase I Clinical Trials) as a scriptwriter, paired as usual with director Adam Wingard. It follows one Herman (played by Wingard), the recipient of an experimental electronic eye that connects directly to his brain and records everything he sees (justifying the PoV approach).

 The problem is that the eye is a little more keen than is useful, as a cute woman (Hannah Hughes) who's run into similar usability problems explains later on. It's an excellently creepy little ghost story; Between this and V/H/S/94's Empty Wake, Simon Barrett is responsible for probably the most traditionally scary segments on these anthologies.

 Next are Eduardo Sánchez (mis-spelled as Edúardo in the credits) and Gregg Hale, both alums of the found footage film that kicked it all (Sánchez co-directed, and Hale produced) in a zombie segment that has a pretty fun first-person twist on the zombie genre. It's quick, vicious, technically accomplished, and the premise carries it a fairly long way.

 And then comes what's easily the best segment of the movie, and possibly in the whole series: Garth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto's Safe Heaven. An Indonesian documentary (Fachri Albar, Hannah Al Rashid, Oka Antara and Andrew Suleiman) crew go visit the remote compound of a mysterious and controversial cult leader (Epy Kusnandar)... on the same day that their promised rapture comes.
 The tension is built beautifully as the increasingly discomfitted documentarians keep discovering just how fucked up things are, only for things to get more and more fucked up. There's a ton of gore, a lot of weirdness, and the action is shot with the sort of tense energy that both Tjahjanto and Evans can do so well. I've met some people who hate that it ends with a really goofy joke, but not me. I love this one.

 Unfortunately, I don't have anywhere near the same amount of appreciation for the last story, Jason Eisener's Slumber Party Alien Abduction, where a bunch of obnoxious teens and pre-teens face off against each other in an escalating series of pranks before a bunch of feral aliens come to try and abduct them. It's remarkably energetic, but it doesn't go anywhere interesting, and the characters are hateful except for one very good boy who is cruelly put down. If that's intended as a provocation... well, good job: I fucking hate it with a passion.

 Aside from that bum note, V/H/S/2 is a blast: a high-energy collection of fairly distinct, gory tales - it's a shame that it chooses to go out on its weakest link, souring the experience somewhat. But on the whole it's easily one of my favourite modern horror anthology films.
 It was followed one year later by V/H/S Viral; I don't remember it being very good, but it was so poorly received it sidelined the series for seven years - which seems like an exaggeration. I'll revisit that one soon.

Banshee Chapter

 Inspired by an investigation of the old CIA MKUltra experiments, two young men disappear while one of them tries DMT-19, the drug used in the trials. Because they did it for science, some footage remains of the event; It shows the kids getting more and more spooked until the downstair radio starts emitting calliope music and then tunes into a numbers station. Then something mysterious happens and the video turns into a jumble of botched camera angles, white noise, and this lovely image:

 Anne (Katia Winter), a journalist who used to be best friends in university with the missing kid decides to investigate the disappearance some unspecified time later. Connecting the dots eventually leads her to a weirdo out in the desert (very clearly modelled on Hunter Thompson, and played by Ted Levine) who helps her hook up with some DMT-19 and provides some sorely needed energy to the proceeds. From Beyond gets explicitly name-checked as the duo are hounded by strange presences who are drawn, along with a transmission from the mysterious numbers station, to people who consume the drug.

 Banshee Chapter skirts the line between found footage and more a traditionally shot horror movie. Most of the exposition is handled as in-universe footage, but Anna's exploits are filmed with non-diegetic cameras, albeit in a handheld style that's consistent with the rest of the movie. It's a little messier than that, though - some of Anna's exploits are shown through in-universe cameras, as well.
 I wonder if the intention was to shoot it all as found footage, but they couldn't work out how to do it. As things stand, director Blair Erikson makes it work - it's a fairly good-looking indie horror movie.

 He's unfortunately not that successful with his script (based on an idea by Daniel J. Healy). The mystery is compelling, and there are a couple of very well-crafted set pieces that slowly ratchet tension until they're capped by an inevitable (but effective) jump-scare. But the resolution feels a bit rushed, and the events and the intriguing blend of elements leading up to it never really come together into a coherent, satisfying narrative. The movie is slightly less than the sum of its parts.

 Still, those are some pretty good parts. The jump scares are a little formulaic but the film works hard to make sure they're earned, and they're very well executed when they come. The (modest) effects are fine, Erikson has a pretty good handle on atmosphere, and the acting is enjoyable: Anna's got some good chemistry with Levine, and their rapport heightens what could otherwise have been a pretty dry movie.

 It's not perfect, but it's interesting, and better yet, kind of scary. Success on any of those two fronts is usually enough for me to enjoy something, so I'm not going to look askance at something that succeeds at both. I found out about this one while reading up on Miskatonic U; Happy to say something good came out from that debacle.

Blue Ruin

 Dwight (Macon Blair) is a very hirsute beach bum* who lives in his car (the titular blue ruin). An evidently damaged soul, one good day he's brought in by a sympathetic cop to the station to learn that someone called Wade Cleland is being let out of prison on parole.

 The particulars of the situation are gently revealed throughout the next twenty minutes or so - I'll leave them unspoiled, as letting us work things out is one of the many pleasures the movie offers, but the news of the parole electrify Dwight and send him on a revenge quest as he contemplates premeditated murder... with a couple of twists. One: he's just a schlub who's extremely ill-suited to violence. And two: The revenge is successfully consummated within the first twenty minutes, thanks in no small part to dumb luck.

 So we haven't even finished the first act and the deed is done. The rest of the film then becomes a light dramedy as Dwight, his trauma cleanly resolved, attempts to shake off more than a decade of being a hermit to reintegrate as a productive member of society.

 Or maybe not. Maybe it's one of those consequences of revenge/cycles of violence-type stories as the rest of the Cleland clan goes after Dwight and his innocent sister (Amy Hargreaves) gets dragged into the whole sorry mess. You'll need to watch it to find out.

 Grim, understated, and shot clean through with a nasty vein of gallows humour, Blue Ruin is a masterclass in sustained tone and thoughtful scripting. That shouldn't be a surprise if you've watched anything by writer/director Jeremy Saulnier, but this is only his second movie; it's impressive to see just how fully-formed he burst out into the scene.

 Saulnier worked as a cinematographer on other indie films while figuring out this project, and he shoots this with an incredible eye for atmosphere - it is a gorgeous-looking film. A lot of attention is also spent on its violence, which provides messy, graphic and suitably horrifying capstones to the script's carefully built up tension.
 The acting is phenomenal; Blair makes for a very compelling, very soulful weirdo. His ability to emote his pain (both spiritual and very very physical) gets a serious workout here. Everyone around him does a great job, especially Amy Hargreaves, but it's essentially a one-man show.

 It's one of those films where everything is... just so. Saulnier and his crew put it together with some Kickstarter money, personal savings and a lot of hustling after their first microbudget movie, Murder Party (which is definitely worth a watch) failed to get them any further opportunities. They figured they'd give it one more try, which luckily worked out for everyone.

*: Beach Bum, incidentally, was at one point the movie's working title.

Joe

 Joe is a rambling, nasty but beautiful southern gothic with a never-better Nicholas Cage in the titular role - a grizzled, no-bullshit ex-con who manages a team of tree poisoners somewhere out in rural Texas. He's a bit of an ogre, but fair to the people who earn his trust - a circle that, shortly into the movie, extends to teenager Gary (Ty Sheridan), a kid who joins the crew and makes a good impression.

 Gary's been dealt a bad hand; His father Wade (Gary Poulter) is an alcoholic whose main income is brutally stealing Gary's earnings, and whose shenanigans got his family run out from their old town. The kid deals with it as best he can, but is trapped in a horrible home situation with his sister and his mom. Working on Joe's crew makes things a little better - not the least because he develops a sincere friendship with Joe.

 For his part, Joe tries to distance himself from Gary's home life, correctly sensing that if he steps in things will take a very nasty turn. It's not just that he's on a very thin line with the police, who hate him for a run-in which landed him a few years in jail; the guy has some very real anger issues. But a feud with a local thug (Ronnie Gene Blevins) escalates things until he can no longer stand by the sidelines.

 For all its bleakness - and it gets incredibly bleak - director David Gordon Green leavens it with plenty of his signature lyricism and oddball humour. His camera rests for long stretches on his cast of non-professional actors, leading to long, authentic-sounding conversations and character moments. The plot is almost in the background for a lot of the movie, surfacing every now and then to strengthen the film's themes and tighten the screws; These moments - which include a ruthlessly violent, evil incident that startingly recontextualizes the menace of one of the film's villains - are expertly paced by scriptwriter Gary Hawkins amidst the film's almost two-hour runtime.

 It's a beautiful-looking neo-noir, too, with cinematographer Tim Orr (who worked with Green on all of his movies up to this one) managing some gorgeous lighting on both daytime and nighttime scenes. The acting is strong from both professionals and non-actors, with Cage in particular giving what's probably his career best turn. Sheridan is very good as well, but the biggest impression besides Cage is made by Poulter, who looks like a frail-looking old man but manages to tread the line between pathetic and pure fucking evil in a way that almost made me queasy several times. An all-time villain played by a local homeless man, who sadly died while the movie was in post.

 Other than the shitty Amazon AI subtitles (which were sorely needed to make some headway into the southern drawl) I can't really thing of anything that doesn't work here. There's some animal cruelty, for those of you for whom that's a deal breaker, and some truly vile mundane evil, but it's all woven into the film's strengths. Maybe one development right near the end didn't make a whole lot of sense to me? Or a fairly contrived coincidence to set up the escalation of the plot? Or the fact that it seems... unlikely that Joe would have survived his frequent run-ins with the law, let alone managed to stay out of prison.
 No matter. For my money, this is one of David Gordon Green's very best films, possibly the best alongside George Washington. I don't say this lightly, as I consider most of his early stuff unimpeachable. Hugely recommended.

Oculus

 Before Mike Flannagan became mostly known for a string of thoughtful horror/drama miniseries, he directed (and often wrote) a string of excellent, varied horror movies - all of them thoughtful, even his sequel to Ouija, a mediocre franchise starter if there ever was one. If I had to chose a favorite I'd have to pick Doctor Sleep, but 2013's Oculus is a very close second.

 Tim Russell (Brenton Thwaites) is released from a mental institution eleven years after killing his father (Rory Cochrane). To be fair to Tim, his father had just killed his mother (Katee Sackhoff), and was coming after him and his sister Kaylie (played as an adult by Karen Gillan) next. And to be fair to the authorities that sent him away, Tim was convinced a haunted mirror caused the murders.

 His long stint under psychiatric care has disabused Tim of that notion, and he's keen to resume his life as a free, well-adjusted person. The problem is that his sister is still very much convinced the mirror possessed their father; She's got a plan to prove it... and she wants Tim to help her.

 Kaylie's been stalking the Lesser glass (as the mirror is known) over the years, and has positioned herself to work at the high-end auction house that is holding it in storage. The old family home was held for her while she was going through the foster system. Now her brother is free, she arranges for the mirror to be sent to the old house, which is almost in the same state they left it. She's rigged the place with cameras and a clever killswitch that will destroy the mirror if she doesn't constantly reset a mechanical timer.
 She doesn't just want revenge - she wants to prove her father was a victim, not a murderer - one more in a long series of souls the mirror has ruined. She's also had more than a decade to plan everything, and the plan she's come up with is clever: The mirror manipulates people's perceptions, hence all the cameras and failsafes. It feeds on the lifeforce of plants and animals, so there are plants arranged everywhere to measure how far its influence reaches... as well as a cute Boston terrier Kaylie puts in a cage in front of the mirror for it to devour; I stewing on something for almost half your life will leave you at least a little unhinged.

 All of this naturally alarms Tim, who wants nothing more than to return to a quiet life, and has more rational explanations to explain the death of their parents - but he lets himself be drawn into his sister's designs, and as the day draws to a close the past bubbles forth, giving us glimpses into the final days of the older generation of the Russell Family (Annalise Basso and Garrett Ryan Ewald play Tim and Kaylie as pre-teens). The script (by Flannagan and Jeff Howard) deftly weaves the two storylines, slowly growing darker as the mirror awakens and exerts more and more influence in both the present and the past, each  strand's events reflecting* each other all the way to an inevitable, delightfully evil conclusion.

 It's a remarkably dark psychological horror tale that focuses on perception being distorted until the characters don't know what's real and what's not. This can be frustrating - I rewatched this partly due to being somewhat annoyed by Smile 2's foray into similar territory - but I think Oculus does it the right way by putting this element front and center, both in its plot and its themes - and it never feels like it undoes what you thought the movie was about. The (minor) supernatural mayhem is substantial, too, with plenty of creepy imagery and some nasty unpleasantness. There are a couple of jump scares, but the film tends far more towards sustained dread.

 Flannagan's direction can usually be best described as elegant, and this was already the case this early in his career. It doesn't call much attention to itself here, but it blocks the actors and action beautifully and gives the house a great sense of place. Much of the film takes place during the day or in well-lit spaces, giving the murky finale a little bit more of a punch.

 More than anything else, though, the film thrives thanks to the care and depth with which Flannagan and Howard have lavished their characters, beautifully played by the cast. Gillen in particular stands out, her no-nonsense determination not quite covering up for a decade of hurt, but honestly everyone in this is really good.

*: Sorry! In my defence, I almost used mirroring.

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.

Open Grave

  A man (Sharlto Copley) wakes with no memory in a huge mass grave. OK; clichéd, but intriguing. A mysterious woman drops a rope for him and runs away; chasing her the man finds a house, with voices coming from inside.
 Now you'd think the best approach would be to knock, right? Or at least scout things out better, maybe eavesdrop a little? Well, no. Because Open Grave operates at the shrillest possible level at all times, our hero runs in waving a gun. It goes down about as well as you'd expect.

 The people inside include an insufferable tough-guy German (Thomas Krstschmann), the mute, mysterious woman who dropped our hero a rope (Josie Ho), a nerdy American (Joseph Morgan), a poor lady who's constantly trying to look so intense she almost looks cross-eyed (Erin Richards), and a token Brit (Max Wrottesley). A lot of shouting ensues, and it quickly becomes clear that despite the mystery-box setup, this is a movie that constantly feels the need to manufacture drama at any cost, often to the detriment of the plot or any character work.

Not big on gun safety, Sharlto? You're gonna Cheney that poor guy.

 It kind of works anyways, for a while at least. Once things quieten down somewhat, we find out that everyone in the house has lost their memories as well - some of them feel like they know each other, but they don't really know how they're related. It's an interesting setup: how do they proceed from there? Sadly that potential unfortunately goes unfulfilled as the only character who's developed at all is the protagonist.
 Meanwhile the mystery broadens as the amnesiacs explore first the house and then the environs; They find corpses everywhere, get attacked by feral people, and run into more seemingly abandoned buildings. which hold more clues to their predicament. It's interesting until you work out that the answers aren't particularly... well, interesting, and it's all further ruined by the film being seemingly terrified of losing the viewer's attention. It stacks the pointless antagonism, manipulative out-of-context flashbacks, heightened chases and red herrings, all in service of a very artificial tense tone that just isn't deserved by the material.

 The script (by Eddie and Chris Borey) also fails to develop a proper plot beyond the puzzle solving. The story beats that follow once the mystery unravels make for a laughable attempt at generating some pathos, but even if they were better handled they would be doomed by the poor characterization.

 It's an indie film through and through, nominally American but shot entirely in Hungary with a local crew and a pretty international cast. The differently accented actors make sense here, as the location is unspecified; just another part of the mystery. As for their acting... well, Copley manages to wrangle his lines into something compelling, the rest don't. I wouldn't blame the actors, as the film's tone is pretty strident already.
 Director Gonzalo López-Gallego manages some cool imagery, a good sense of grittiness, and a little tension, but the film pisses away its mild early promise with dick measuring contests, pointless finger pointing and shouting matches even before it gets the chance to underwhelm with its revelations. I wouldn't bother with it unless you're a Copley completist. A Copleytist.

The Sacrament

 A thinly fictionalized found-footage account of the most horrifying cult massacre in modern times. Sure, sounds fun!

 The Sacrament is a grim, grim movie, as befits the material. It posits a world where the 1978 Jonestown massacre never happened, so it can re-stage it, simplified and in a much smaller scale.

 The movie presents itself as a Vice documentary following up on a letter received by one of its employees- Patrick (Kentucker Audley), a fashion photographer. In the letter his sister asks him to join her at Eden Parrish, some sort of religious utopic commune. When Patrick follows up and tries to get more information, he's informed that the Parrish has moved to a remote country, and they refuse to tell him where it is - they tell him that to see his sister he has to fly out to the unnamed country and go to an airstrip, where a helicopter will be waiting. Gulp.

 So Vice (which, honestly, should be paying advertising fees to this movie, but it's a fun conceit) fly Patrick out to find his sister, with investigative reporter Sam (A.J. Bowden) and cameraman Jake (indie director Joe Swanberg) embedded to report on whatever the hell is going on.

 When they arrive they find that the Parrish, which is set in the middle of the jungle (or as close to a jungle as Georgia, where the film was shot, can provide) have cleared out a few hectares and set up a compound with several cabins and a central meeting area for a hundred and something people; It's a pretty impressive setup. On a creepier note, a group of AK-toting gunmen are sent out to meet them.

 But once inside everyone they talk to seems to be happy and thinks the world of the Parrish and Father (Gene Jones), the cult their spiritual leader, and Patrick's sister Caroline (Amy Seimetz) looks radiant and more together than she's been for a while. So the Vice crew, while sceptical, allow themselves to be somewhat won over by the commune.
 Until the second act, where they discover things are not as paradisiacal as they seem (the Vice crew sub in for the real-life Ryan delegation, and the way they find out about the cult's nastier side is the same). So begins a tense search for more information and a series of face-offs with Father and his cronies, resulting in... well, a fact-inspired massacre that includes dozens of children, depicted in an unsensationalistic manner. You have been warned.

 The events have been changed - by necessity, as so much went on in Jonestown before shit went down that it'd take at least a miniseries (with a much bigger budget) to do a faithful dramatic depiction. For starters, the original massacre claimed more than nine hundred lives, not a hundred and sixty-odd. And there's all sorts of wrinkles- from attempted collusion with the soviet bloc to Father pulling off full-scale suicide dry runs before the main event that the movie never covers (the real Jones was much more openly unhinged than his cinematic counterpart, at least until his final scenes.) But for a fictionalized take, it's pretty close, taking all sorts of small details and weaving it into a thriller framework.

 Writer/Director/Editor Ti West does a stellar job delivering an unflinching, genuinely upsetting slow-burn of a horror thriller. It's a good-looking movie, too, with a bright, polaroid-like color scheme (cinematographer: Eric Robbins) and a lot of the footage actually shot by Swanberg as he was acting the character.

 West hasn't missed yet, and this is another strong entry in an extremely impressive run of very diverse films.

Europa Report

 At some point in the near future, a company sends out six people on a manned mission to one of Jupiter's moons to look for life under its thick icy crust. Six months, less than a third of the way to their destination, there's a huge solar storm, and comms are lost completely.
 Some time later, the Europa corporation puts together and releases the Europa Report, a documentary about the fate of the expedition. And that's what we're watching.

 This is a film that strongly commits to its bit, and it nails the tone, music, visuals, and the format (talking heads, split screens, aspect ratio changes) down to the smallest detail. Coupled with a hard sci-fi edge and a mostly unsentimental approach to its story, it all makes for pretty compelling viewing; unfortunately it relies on a puzzle box structure to cover up that not a lot happens during the movie. There are a lot of incidents, but the plot itself is a bit too simple and ultimately a little unsatisfying.

 Being cobbled together from camera footage from all around the ship and inside the crew's helmets, it fully qualifies as found footage movie. One of the least contrived ones I've seen; All the cameras make sense in-universe, not a single asshat waving a camcorder to be seen.
 The editing jumbles up the timeline to give a little more drama to the proceeds, which is OK because the story itself is pretty straightforward and consciously unmelodramatic - don't expect anyone to, I dunno, start worshipping the sun and killing off crewmates. Everything is kept low-key and people remain reasonable to the end. Literally.

 Yes, it's clear from the beginning that things do not go well; the script (by Philip Gelatt) pulls some tricks to make it hard to gauge exactly how not well, but it's clear that at least a few people won't make it back. First with the permanent loss of communications, then an accidental death that leaves the team understandably shook and demoralized (the details are left until late in the movie) and finally with a series of technical issues once they finally reach their destination and everyone takes a lander down to the frigid moon's surface.

 Once there they run into some anomalies which lead to the film's more out-there element. It's well handled and kept pretty mysterious.

 The crew consists of the captain (Daniel Wu), the pilot (Anamaria Marinca), a techie (Michael Nyqvist) and a few science people (Christian Camargo, Karolina Wydra and Sharlto Copley; remember when he was in every other movie?). They're not particularly detailed, but they're all likeable people played by pros. And the script and the actors work together to give them a lot of implied history with just a few details - a phrase in Russian, a knowing stare...
 As mentioned throughout, all the technical aspects are excellent; the cinematography (by Enrique Chediak) and environmental designs are excellent, and it's expertly directed by Ecuadorian Sebastián Cordero. It's a shame the movie never coalesces and feels a little hollow, a bit less than the sum of its parts. But most of those parts are so good, dammit.

 *: While I'm here, I should also point out that there was a plot hole near the end that brought the movie down a peg or two for me - namely that [SPOILERS!] they fixed the comms by cannibalizing life support on the lander? In ten minutes? Why didn't they do that earlier? Less of a problem, but still funny, is that the person who first bites it is the one who talks all the time about his family. Might as well have called him Dead Meat.

Motivational Growth

  Ian (Adrian DiGiovanni) hasn't left his apartment in over a year. A little agoraphobia, a lot depression. We know this because he's in the habit of speaking straight to the camera and expounding on his habits and philosophy at the drop of a hat, in slightly overwritten monologues that are articulate but maybe a little too glib, trying too hard to be clever. A very indie movie style of dialog. In any case, he's not too big on introspection or self-analysis. He's likeable enough, though.

 Unsurprisingly, his place is a sty. Ian himself is a mess of sores and unkempt hair in a dirty wifebeater-underwear combo. The guy's routine consists of a haze of watching TV, with his daily trek to the bathroom to take a dump the sole highlight. It's in one of these pilgrimages that, after his TV implodes, he decides that he's had enough and attempts to kill himself by making a cocktail of bleach and sulphuric acid, trying to gas himself with chlorine.

 He is not successful*; When he wakes up, it's to the dulcet tones of The Mold (Jeffrey Combs!), a sentient pile of mold that talks about itself in the third person and kind of sounds like a deranged beatnik.
 After getting over Ian's initial disbelief, The Mold (never just Mold) browbeats him into getting his shit together, cleaning up his act, and fixing up his department. He also gets him to drill holes all over, which will factor later into the... well, let's be generous and call it a plot.

 What we have here is a sort of surrealist chamber piece -or, to be precise, a two-chamber piece- that's mostly driven by Ian talking with The Mold, and Ian talking with us, the audience. Other characters intrude every now and then, all of them a bag of quirks, most important among them Leah (Danielle Doetsch): the girl next door and love interest whose immediate attraction for Ian, obstinate self-insertion into his life and relentless acceptance is... well, very quirky-indie-movie and kind of a bum note. Without going into spoilers it does kind of fit into the narrative by the end, but still.

 As a whole the film is kind of comedic, but without a whole lot of jokes, and it's definitely going for weird for weirdness's sake. It works, mostly. I was expecting the different characters to be symbolic, or at least to have a function, but if they do, I didn't catch them. They seem to be there just to provide incident and pass the time. Their dialog is, again, a little hit-and-miss, and so is their acting, but nothing too dire. I liked the TV repairman's monologue (Robert Kramer, I think?) , and there's a pretty funny rant about breaking a chimp's arm.

 Jeffrey Combs stands apart - he clearly had a blast voicing The Mold, and the script brings its A-game to all of his lines. The puppet they used for it is also extremely expressive; It's effortlessly funny and inscrutable and menacing in turns... Definitely the best character in the movie, which is as it should be.

 Writer-director-editor Don Thacker's done a lot of videogame shorts (including a few widely liked ones for Devolver Digital), so I guess it shouldn't be surprising that the whole soundtrack is composed of chiptunes, or that there are animated scenes done in the style of an old videogame. This seems odd, since Ian at no point even expresses any interest in gaming.
 There really is no discernible reason for that stylistic choice, but hey, it adds variety to the proceeds and it looks good, which is kind of a guiding principle here. There are aso some cool camera moves, especially at the beginning. It gets a bit flatter later but by then there's enough going on to keep things moving apace.

 The film ultimately attempts to be some sort of mindfuck, but honestly I felt there's too little substance here for it to stick... even now that world events have lent it more resonance than when it was originally made back in the year of our lord 2012. It's entertaining, though, agreeably loopy, and well worth it just for Comb's performance alone.

*SPOILERS: Or... is he? Dun dun DUNNNNNN

The Blind Detective

 Johnnie To is best known to me (and I'd wager, most non-Chinese cinema enthusiasts) for his gangster movies, but the guy has been filming since 1978, and in his ridiculously prolific career he's tried his hand at a ton of genres (including at least a couple of martial arts classics I plan on revisiting soon.)

 This includes comedies, and more specifically, romantic comedies. Now, I didn't know The Blind Detective was a romantic comedy going in, as it's a genre I really dislike, but here we are. I didn't like it, but I didn't turn it off mid-way like I tend to do with a lot of Chinese comedies, never mind romantic comedies. So... success?

 Johnston, the protagonist and titular Blind Detective is an unlikeable, shallow douchebag. Good job he's played by Andy Lau, whose effortless charisma goes a long way in making him sufferable at least some of the time. He used to be a policeman until his blindness got him kicked out of the force, and he's been using his deductive powers to solve cases before the police and get paid some reward money... which is apparently a thing in this movie.

 He's built up as some sort of Sherlock Holmes, but once we see him in action that falls apart quickly; His procedure is to take as much information as possible, try to imagine how things went on, and then... well, he basically pulls a random theory out of his arse based on his magical intuition.

 Seriously, the stuff he comes up with is so full of shit. It's tempting to say the movie is in on how ridiculous everything is, because it does let him get things wrong every now and then, but it's not presented like a flaw in his reasoning, more like a necessary step in working things out. Part of his process. It's a miracle he ever manages to even find a case, let alone solve one.

 His deductive powers so impress Goldie (Sammie Cheng), a rookie police woman who also happens to be  rich and beautiful (now there's an implausible character for you!) that she agrees to pay him one million dollars to track down a girl she slighted ten years ago and subsequently disappeared. Yes, that's the main plot in this movie.

 Or maybe not - as in, this is not the type of movie that is particularly preoccupied with plot. After taking (half) of the money, plus room and board, Johnston starts using her dime to work on other cases, and has the nerve to be offended when she calls him out on it. He automatically assumes she's ugly and constantly patronizes her and treats her like shit, part of it disguised as some sort of training to get her to be as great a detective as him.

 Now, this could be funny, except... it's not a comedy, it's a romantic comedy, and Johnston's actions are all supposed to be at least somewhat charming. We're supposed to root for these two to get together, and find Johnston relatable, even when he's actively torturing his prospective partner because, reasons. Stupid, stupid reasons.

 Goldie, meanwhile, is absolutely smitten with the douchebag, so she basically acts like a doormat for the whole movie - it's her fate to go through the slapstick humiliations that (bad) Chinese cinema seems to find endlessly hilarious.

 There's an uncomfortable edge to their relationship that could have been sharpened into a decent comedy, but the script is so misbegotten that I don't think it even realizes that. It's just going through the formula, you know? The two lovers don't know they're in love until the third act. It's just that in this one, one of them just assumed the other one is fugly and doesn't want his friends to be ashamed of him.

 So we're left with a bloated, unfunny mess of a movie with a beyond fucking terrible script, buoyed by good filmmaking and the ridiculous amounts of charisma of its stars (Guo Tao rounds out the cast as Johnston's frenemy, now a police commissioner). It takes two hours to tell its nothing story.
 There are glimmers of a better movie buried deep in this turgid pile of crap. Andy Lau and Sammie Cheng crack up every now and then during their line deliveries, which hints at the fact that the cast was having way more fun than the viewers; A little annoying, but also endearing. Watching Lau's outsized confidence and silly mannerisms, like the way he plays with his folding cane, is always amusing, even when the script saddles him with unlikeable lines and idiotic attitudes.
 There's also a case-solving scene set in a morgue that is kind of fun, mostly because two assistants stay in the background and add a running commentary. It's also got the lone laugh-out-loud moment in the movie. There's a couple of stunts and a tiny bit of a fight, too, all well made, but they are such a tiny part of the movie as to be negligible.

 These things add up a little, to the point where it makes the film bearable. But I still wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

The movie's not nationalistic at all, but daaaaamn, check out that production logo...

The House at the End of Time (La Casa del Fin de los Tiempos)

 Wrongfully convicted of murdering her husband (Gonzalo Cubero) and son (Rosmel Bustamante), a woman (Ruddy Rodriguez) is sentenced to life. Thirty years later, she's allowed to serve the rest of her sentence in home arrest, and sent to live out the rest of her days in the house where it all happened.

 And of course, there's something spooky going on with the house. The movie jumps back and forth between two time periods: the events leading up to and including the night where Dulce lost her husband and son, and a short span thirty years later when she is returned to the house and starts working out what actually happened on that night.

 Played by the same actress under a layer of unconvincing makeup, modern-day Dulce gets an ally in a catholic priest that helps her unravel the history of the house. From there the elements start falling into place - spooky night happenings with mysterious strangers roaming the house, family secrets, a second son who died shortly before that fateful night...

 More accurately translated as The House of the End Times, La Casa del Fin de los Tiempos is a Venezuelan horror movie that set box-office records in its native homeland and got enough international attention to secure writer/director Alejandro Hidalgo a place making an English-language remake at New Line; That hasn't surfaced yet, but a 2017 Korean remake based on Hidalgo's script did.

 Unfortunately, I don't think it's a very good movie. The crew does well within the obvious budget limitations, but the script leans too heavily on melodrama, contrivance, and corny sentimentality for my taste (an extended cutesy scene with children early on sets the tone and soured me considerably on the film).
 Genre-savvy viewers will quickly catch on to what's going on, and the way things fit together is reasonably clever. But for things to fall into place plot dictates that people behave in very specifically dumb ways; this is a movie that would go very differently if people just used their damn words.

 The genre trappings are pretty rote. The house is suitably dilapidated, and the family's poverty means that there are power cuts to justify lamp and candle-lit night jaunts, but the geography is never really clear. There's a witching-hour of sorts, a scary mysterious old man, that sort of thing. It's by no means elevated horror but it is 'tasteful', so expect a stately pace, an uplifting message and (sadly) an absence of crazy shit.

 The acting is all over the place. I thought Ruddy Rodriguez was pretty good as Dulce, but her priestly deuteragonist was pretty bad - and it's not helped by corny lines about the smiles of children and shit like that. Luckily he's not in a whole lot. The kids do get a bit more screentime, and they're... child actors; I'll just say they don't distinguish themselves.
 The camerawork and direction are good, but its efforts are mostly expended in making it seem like a Hollywood movie with very traditional shots - well made, but not especially memorable; Much like the movie around it.

 For all its melodrama and cheap sentimentality, I do think its heart is in its right place and it does find an effective emotional center - but all the contrivances and out-of-nowhere plot developments effectively killed off any goodwill for me. It's a shame, but it was successful enough that with any luck we'll hopefully get to see better genre stuff from this particular director, and Venezuela in general.

Odd Thomas

 I read a couple of Dean Koontz books when I was younger - enjoyed them, thought they were a bit cheesy, and proceeded to forget almost everything about them; His stuff struck me as being a bit... lightweight, which is probably unfair since I only read three or four of his novels. I never did get to his Odd Thomas books, but going from its 2013 film adaptation... yeah, it didn't do much to change my mind. Again, not fair as the movie, at least, is aimed at the YA market.

 As directed by Stephen Sommers (he of Deep Rising and the first couple of Mummy Movies), Odd Thomas is a fairly cartoony horror comedy about a guy with psychic powers (Anton Yelchin) who gets pulled into a race against time to prevent some horrific events. And it's pretty fun! If I'd seen it as a teen, I suspect I'd have fallen in love with it. As it is, it's still pretty enjoyable: good pacing, some cool ideas, a handful of good scenes, and at least one clever twist.

 Odd (that's actually his name!) lives in the small town of Pico Mundo, CA, where he works as a fry cook with a sideline as a supernatural investigator. We first see him finding a serial killer with help from the ghost of one of the victims, and then chase him down and bring him to justice (turns out, he's done this enough that he's gotten pretty good at fighting.)

 One thing I found interesting (because it's pretty uncommon in this type of story) is that the guy is pretty universally beloved. There's a couple of throwaway lines intended to make him seem a bit of an outsider, but pretty much all the characters in the movie adore him... and the ones who don't are clearly assholes. This goes double for the police chief (Willem Dafoe!) who not only trusts Odd implicitly and is endlessly patient with his phone calls (even while he's trying to get it on with his wife), but is also willing to do a spot of cover up so Odd's psychic abilities remain a secret.

 Odd doesn't just see dead people. He also senses inhuman spirits no one else can see, which kicks the plot into gear when he starts seeing bodachs swarm into his neighborhood - they kind of look like ghostly, goopy, bug-like mashups of humanoid skeletal things that skitter all over the place. At one point one of them splits into several others... it's a cool creature design! The bodachs of Scottish folklore were fairy-like kid snatchers, but seeing one of them was supposed to be an omen of doom, so at least that tracks with their use here. As Odd explains, they can sense when something bad will happen, and come out to feed on it; Their coming out in such numbers can only mean something terrible is about to go down.

 The rest of the movie consists of Odd trying to work out what's got the bodachs all riled up. It all leads to a horrific event that could have worked very well, but it's unfortunately a bit defanged. It's a shame, because I would have preferred the movie grapple with at least some of its horror a bit more honestly, but eliding over it makes sense as anything else wouldn't really fit Odd Thomas's upbeat tone.

 About that tone- unfortunately, it can get a bit grating. The protagonist keeps a constant narration going, and when he's quiet, other on-screen characters feel the need to fill the silence, or else a cheesy blues riff rushes in to fill the void. The film attempts to be almost manically breezy, and the script isn't always up to the task. Lots of forced quips and character moments that don't quite land; The poor girlfriend character (Addison Timlin) gets saddled with a lot of them. Shit gets quirky. On the up side, it helps what nasty stuff there is hit a little harder than it would have otherwise. 

 I'm not usually a fan of Sommers's maximalist style, but it's a good fit for the material here, especially as the lower budget means that he had to rein in his instincts in a little. Most of the scenes with the bodachs are at least a little creepy, and the action beats are well handled (a fight against an angry poltergeist is a highlight.) He does overreach his budget often, resulting in some dodgy CGI, but at this stage in his career that seems to be a directorial trademark. When the imagery is supposed to be unreal, it works pretty well.

Odd Thomas had a very troubled production; It was screwed over by marketers and distributors, resulting in several lawsuits and a delay of two years before it was released... and then it bombed, badly. Feels a little unfair that people like, say, Roland Emmerich can still get semi-big budget films greenlighted, while Sommers hasn't made another film since. I hope it was by choice.