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.

Lord of Illusions

 It's always surprised me how few neo-noirs there are out there that pit detectives against the supernatural; It seems like such a natural cinematic pairing for a genre film.

 Out of the ones I've watched, 1995's Lord of Illusions is by far my favorite, something that should absolutely surprise no one who knows me even in passing. Grass is green, sky is blue, and Rodrigo liked a a batshit crazy Clive Barker film where an origami man sics a flaming amphisbaena on the protagonists. Well, duh.

 The cold open is one for the ages: Three ex-cultists, led by Swann (Kevin J. O'Connor), wander into their ex-compound with shotguns looking for Nix, their levitating, fire-juggling ex-messiah (Daniel von Bargen) to rescue a little girl. After a short confrontation, Swann and co. shoot him multiple times. Knowing a few bullets aren't going to do much against the dishevelled magician, Swann's come prepared with a very cool looking iron gimp mask to bind Nix - one that requires it to be screwed against its recipient's flesh. It's immediately clear that you're in a movie from the mind that spewed forth Hellraiser into the world.

 Mission accomplished, high fives all around, surely it's all over and done with and nothing will ever come out of this.

 Then the movie jumps to New York thirteen years later to follow Harry D'Amour (Scott Bacula), a hard-boiled detective whose cases seem to always run up against the occult; He's introduced in the middle of some sort of scandal after some sort of mess with a possessed kid.
 When he's offered an insurance fraud investigation (hello, In the Mouth of Madness!) case in a LA, it seems like good way to make a clean break from the media shitstorm. 

 No such luck. That investigation soon gets sidetracked when D'Amour runs into a murder in progress: A heterochromic fey man (Barry Del Sherman), whom we last saw fleeing the cult compound in the prologue, and a crony are busy sticking scalpels into a fortune reader whom we also last saw in the prologue, accompanying Swann. The detective chases the murderers off and gets some cryptic information from the victim before he expires. (Also present at the murder scene: the ten of swords card from the Waite-Smith tarot deck, which shows a man being skewered by ten blades. Cute.) Then the police arrive and, just like that, Harry D'Amour is again in the front pages involved in more occult shit.

 This captures the eye of Dorothea (Famke Jenssen in her big-screen debut), the beautiful trophy bride of our boy Swann, who's now a big-time illusionist with shows in Vegas and everything. She hires D'amour because she's worried that her husband, who insists on his 'magic' being just tricks, is acting particularly weird lately.
 Things quickly spin out of control when Swann has a very messy, very public, very foreshadowed death (that is one load-bearing Waite-Smith tarot card!). You'll surely be surprised to learn that the whole Nix situation from the prologue was not, as everyone thought, done and dusted.

Only nine swords, though. Tut tut.

 Clive Barker directs, produces (along with JoAnne Sellar, who's since produced Paul Thomas Anderson movies almost exclusively) and writes, adapting his own story The Last Illusion. The film only shares the premise, characters and some details with its source, but in expanding it to feature length Barker crafted a hugely entertaining script full of great lines, bizarre ideas, and a punchy pacing that juggles investigation, oddball digressions, and horror beats expertly. The narrative line never falters despite detouring into some weird spaces and being fueled by a couple of truly out-there character motivations.
 It's this seamless stitching of sun-drenched neo-noir detective story and weird supernatural horror that to my mind puts this so far ahead of similar stories like Angel Heart or Cast a Deadly Spell; The finale gets maybe a little too strange for the way the plot has been superficially set up - I can see how people could find it underwhelming, but I'm very much on-board with the non-standard resolution.

 It looks great, too. It never develops a distinct visual identity like Hellraiser did, but it's slick and handles its many disparate elements unobtrusively (cinematographer: Rohn Schmidt). The physical makeup and gore effects are as good as you'd hope, though there aren't that many of them and they're fairly restrained by Barker's standards. The design work is also excellent, and while some of the early CG looked pretty cheesy even when it came out, the concepts on display are bizarre enough that it doesn't really matter.
 As for the music... well, it sounds like Hellraiser* - so much so I was surprised the soundtrack is not by Christopher Young, but by Simon Boswell (who's a legend in his own right). Wonder if Barker requested it that way or if Boswell voluntarily gave a Young impression; In any case, I really like it.

 Bakula's never been better, giving a deeply sympathetic, relatable but quietly badass performance, and femme fatales don't get any more... well, femme than Famke Janssen; She doesn't get to do much but as far as looks go, I like her much better here than in Goldeneye, which hit theaters a few months after this.
 O'Connor doesn't leave that much of an impression, but Del Sherman does with his weirdly feral bundle of queer menace as the main heavy. I also really liked Von Bagen as another deeply unorthodox character: more hobo than saviour, more self-absorbed than menacing - and one of a long line of Barker villains who wants to destroy the world not because he's on a power trip, but just because he finds it distasteful. The plot's basically driven by the fact that he doesn't want to be alone at the end of everything, a pretty sympathetic goal all in all.

 Sadly the movie did not do very well in theaters, and Barker would never direct another film. Some severe studio interference led to a bunch of important connective tissue as well as a little sex and gore getting cut out - this is one of the cases where the director's cut improves on the film dramatically (overwrought pun intended). Barker's gone on record saying that having to deal with this sort of shit was a big factor in why he stopped making movies... so thanks a bunch, UA.
 Lord of Illusions doesn't pack the same wallop as Hellraiser or Nightbreed, partly by design - it spends too much time on its detective story to go as far out the as the other two movies do - but it's still very much of a piece with them, part of an oeuvre that almost qualifies as outsider art, given the oblique angle at which Barker tackled genre filmmaking.

 In a better world we would have a Harry D'Amour trilogy, maybe a TV series, but I guess this was a little too ahead for its time. It'd play a little better now, probably, and I honestly think Barker, and the way his imagination (however slightly) tweaked pop culture towards weirdness, is a not insignificant factor in that.
 I fucking love this movie.

A David Bowie impersonator and a Queensÿche fan walk into a theatre...

*:In case it's not clear, that's a compliment.

Frankie Freako

 Eighties (and early nineties) nostalgia doesn't get much more specific than Frankie Freako, writer/director/editor Steve Kostanski's love letter to cheapie Gremlins knock-offs, kid-friendly comedy/horror/sci-fi like The Gate or Suburban Commando, and all things Charles Band. It coasts on enough weirdness and an odd likeability that it gets to be the rare bad-on-purpose movie that manages to be worthwhile. Just about.

 Conor (Conor Sweney) is the caricature of a drip, a ridiculously square office worker and a fuddy goodie-two-shoes whose idea of being adventurous consists of getting two different types of cheese on his pizza, and who's brought to orgasm within seconds by just holding hands with his loving but understandably frustrated wife (Kristy Wordsworth). When a series of events at the office with his boss at the office (Adam Brooks) bring to his attention that maybe he is a bit... boring, he gets a bit of an identity crisis.

 Bristling at the temerity of such a baseless accusation, Conor calls a party hotline hosted by Frankie Freako, a diminutive, ugly red dude voiced by Matthew Kennedy, and soon three lovingly realized but slightly stiff puppets are running amok in his house, thrashing the place in the course of their partying.
 Part of the film is Conor pitting his wits against the tiny invaders (he's hopelessly outmatched) plus a side of comically inane corporate intrigue, and then the back half expands the scope to explain a little about the Freakos and enlist Conor in a really mild interstellar adventure.

Here's an early attempt of me trying to find out how to watch this. PSA: Winners don't use AI!

 The music's pretty good! A couple of dead ringers for the sort of obnoxious party rock that dominated teen horror at the time, plus some excellent synth-driven tracks from Blitz/Berlin that are similar to, say, College in that they sound more like we think the eighties sounded than they actually did.
 The puppets' design is very solid (one of them is a pretty direct homage to Puppet Master), but they really don't animate that well. By design, of course, but if you're expecting the sort of low-budget practical effects wizardry Kostanski is known for you'll have to wait until things go haywire at about the halfway point. It's totally worth sticking around, in case you're wondering.

 The acting is also bad on purpose, with some truly odd choices from the cast (I'm still not sure what Wordsworth's accent is supposed to be - sounds like a mix between Australian and a made-up Eastern European country?). I wouldn't be surprised to find out there was a lot of improvisation on-set; At least everyone looks like they're having fun, which makes sense as many of the actors and crew go way back to at least Father's Day.

 The oddest misfire is the script, which packs in plenty of jokes but often forgets to make them funny, possibly in a sly wink to such comedic masterpieces as Munchies or Hobgoblins. Maybe it's on purpose? Arch, good-natured postmodernism, played straight. Maybe. I'm not sure! But I kind of love that uncertainty.

 It's all abetted by an obvious affection for the material it's spoofing, and leavened with the same type of transgressive humour that made Kostanski's Psycho Goreman so essential (but dialed all the way back to one or two). Only mildly amusing and kind of half-arsed, but weird and agreeable enough that it never outstays its welcome, Frankie Freako seems destined to be another bit of Canadian low-budget weirdness for stoners to obsess over as they stumble upon it in the dankest reaches of the streaming lists over the coming years.

Killer Constable (Wan Ren Zan)

  Killer Constable is one of the Shaw Brothers films I best remember watching when I was a kid - a shockingly bleak, extremely bloody tale about skewed justice. Not that I would have been able to tell you that at the time, though; I just thought it was cool and felt more 'adult' than any of the other films channel 9 aired on their martial arts weekend programming. And all the bloodshed helped a lot, of course.

 The titular Killer Constable (KC) is played with steely determination and undeniable presence by Chen Kuan Tai brandishing an oversized one-edged sword. He's justly called a killer because he seemingly always leaves the room before someone can finish the phrase "bring them in dead or alive." This causes a rift with his brother early on after he resolves a hostage situation: it's a great demonstration of his badassery (he jumps clean through a thatch roof and starts cutting up the bandits inside). Which is awesome. Unfortunately he also rides down and brutally kills the last bandit as he tries to escape, unarmed. 

 You might disagree with his methods, but the man gets results; So when the ruling Manchu dowager empress asks her ministers to find out what happened to two million taels missing from the treasury within ten days, they immediately appoint KC to track down the thieves to bring them back dead or... oh, wait, he's gone. Not again! Oh well, what are you going to do.

 KC appoints a few good men to follow him into the war- and famine-torn lands outside the palace and right out the bat they get a clue that points them at the people who stole the money. It's a simple setup; There's treasure to recover, a few colourful bandits to kill, and maybe a twist reveal about the mastermind behind the heist. KC is true to his name throughout the whole 'investigation'; His first collar, a hopelessly outmatched miller, ends up getting skewered in front of his family.

 KC's dichotomy - the pureness of his pursuit of the law, coupled with the violence he applies it with - continues throughout the movie, but it's given a nasty complexity by the fact that when one of the constable underlings tries to show a little kindness to the impoverished villagers, he's tortured and left dying in another ridiculously harsh scene. This movie does not fuck around, nor does it provide any easy answers.

 It's a film that seems to despair for humanity - everyone sucks, and those who don't don't last long. Every element of the film reinforces this brutal thesis, not the least the blood effects, which are frequent and extremely well realised. As KC and his gang make their way killing assassins, bandits and thieves, it really does start to seem like hardening their hearts to the slaughter is the only way to survive in this bleak world.
 But to buy that you'd need to ignore that the movie explicitly frames the constables' activities as enforcing the will of the Manchu against the Han people; The script comes right out and says it, just in case you aren't steeped in Chinese history. All the commoners in the film either are victims or had to resort to thievery. As honest and righteous as the portrayal of the constables is, their brutality in service of the powers that be makes any of their virtues ring (by design) very hollow. #hanlivesmatter.

 The film reveals most of its cards when one of the final thieves (the great Ku Feng) reveals a link to the imperial court... and the fact that he was stealing to give his saintly blind daughter (Yau Chui-Ling) a better life.
 She's the only pure person in the movie who doesn't meet an ignoble death. Not that she gets a happy ending... This really, really isn't that type of film; But it is thoughtful in its unsparing violence.

 It's never a chore to watch. For all that it drags you through the muck, there's always some excellent, imaginative action just around the corner. And trace amounts of humour as well; If you're as soul-dead as I am, the final confrontation might make you laugh appreciatively a few times. This movie features not one, but two of the funniest foot amputations I've seen.

 The fact that it's absolutely gorgeous, technically immaculate film also helps make it go down easy. Director Chih-hung Kuei was known for his horror and gangster films (he would go on to direct the absolutely batshit Boxer's Omen), and this was his only Wuxia movie.

 It's a deeply atmospheric film, with some truly spectacular scenes using driving rain, mists, and beautifully lit darkened rooms - and cinematographer Lee San-Yip shows a consistent knack for getting the cameras to capture reflected light just so. The fights are portrayed cleanly and with an eye for causing maximum impact. There are also a lot of the elaborate soundstages the Shaw Brothers were known for (all beautifully crafted), great use of complementary colours, and some compositions that seem to take inspiration from Japanese cinema.

The fights are, of course, a highlight, and not just because of the incredible choreographies involved. I love, for example, that a fight where our constable fights with an assassin to get the antidote to save another man is staged on a giant sundial; The clock is ticking! And of course the script (credited to On Szeto) provides a nasty low blow as a punctuation to that scene. The script for this movie is an absolute dick.

 Not that it (the script) is perfect - there are two ambushes which, while impressive and excellently staged, seem to be there just to hijack the plot and take it from point A to point B in a pretty jarring fashion- the film's third act feels more than a little bit haphazard. It does do an incredible job of reinforcing its unremitting bleakness throughout.

 Watching this again after thirty-odd years... yeah, this is still one of my favourites. I probably like it even more now that I can parse out why it felt so 'adult' at the time. It's one long, powerful gut-punch of a movie.
 If at all possible, I'd also recommend you watch Grady Hendrix's wonderful introduction to it, available with the Arrow Video release - it goes into some detail into the film's angry undercurrent, and makes a compelling case tying it into the abusive practices over at SB studios. If nothing else, it's worth it to find out that one of the actors lost a pinky finger because the director insisted they film with sharpened swords.

Let The Wrong One In

  Let the Wrong One In is... well, just look at the title. It's basically advertising itself as the next Saturday the Fourteenth, but for vampire movies. A goofy Irish horror comedy that repurposes the Shaun of the Dead formula to work with broad humour. OK, OK - broader humour.

 For a while, that's enough. This is nowhere near as good as any Edgar Wright movie, not on any level, but it delivers its silly jokes with decent regularity, the cast is willing to take the ridiculousness as far as they can, and there are some fun conceits here and there. The lowbrow humour does get old pretty quick, though.

 Baby-faced Matt (Karl Rice) is a good kid who runs into trouble when his dumbass, deadbeat brother Deco (Eoin Duffy) suddenly pops up at his home after being turned into a vampire by a bridal-dress-wearing creature of the night (Mary Murray). Deco's had troubles with addiction, so his impulse control is... a concern, to put it mildly. As if things weren't complicated enough, a vampire hunter (Anthony Head) soon arrives with his sights set on Deco. And the hunter was to be the groom-to-be of the head vampire (she got infected during her hen party at Transylvania, in one of the film's funnier scenes)... so that in turn leads the vampires to Matt, Deco and their mom (Hilda Fay). Will our protagonists be able to save their family, and put a stop to the vampire's bid to take over Dublin?

 The setup is convoluted, but not as complicated as I make it out to be. It's not really plot heavy-film, it's just that it works a little too hard to set up its lightweight farce.

 As for the humour, expect good-natured slapstick and a lot of easy jokes. It made me laugh a few times; The Transylvania-set introduction (not filmed in Transylvania) scores a great joke by setting up an old-school Hammer Vampire movie atmosphere, only to deflate it when a deranged hen party group runs into the frame, inflatable penis in tow. Later there's a cut from a (pretty gory) slashed neck to someone spurting mayo on some fries. Fun.

 The bulk of the jokes, though, are not quite that clever. Here's a couple of examples of the sort of stuff we're dealing with: There's a running gag where when Deco tries to become a bat, he farts instead. And when Matt tries to rouse an unconscious vampire hunter, the dignified old man mumbles "I don't want to go to school today, mom..."

 Writer/director Conor McMahon knows exactly the movie he wants to make, and he and his crew deliver without a fuss and with some good technical chops. There's a lot of blood in the film (most of which ends up covering poor Matt), some cool practical effects and some incredibly cheesy instances of CGI that, to be fair, fit the tone of the movie pretty well.

 There are some attempts to inject some style into the proceeds - smash cuts, montages and the like (I didn't mention Edgar Wright idly earlier) - but they seem a little bit off, as if the scenes needed to linger a little longer to feel organic. The script, meanwhile, as willfully dumb as it is, features a lot of nifty setups, callbacks and punchlines peppered throughout. There's no question that the level of craft here is much higher than a lot of better-known comedies. As for the acting.. the acting's ok. This is not the sort of movie you'd hold against anyone in it -comic exaggeration is the order of the day- but other than Deco none of the characters embarrass themselves with too much mugging.

 I dunno. It's agreeable enough. Other than some "haha, look, that conventionally unattractive person is horny", there's nothing wrong with its willingly dumb comic formula. My main issue with it - the fact that its more inspired moments during the first act raised my expectations a little - is an entirely self-inflicted problem. It's perfectly fine, and to be honest I don't think it ever tries to be anything more. If you're after a more likeable tale about Irish wasted youth taking on vampires, well... I'd direct you to The Boys from County Hell - but this is an all right second choice.

Inugami

Somewhere within the mountainous Shikoku Island lives Miki (Yûki Amami), a beautiful, reclusive middle-aged paper maker. She spends her days at her wooden mill crafting large sheets of paper and gathering the roots and herbs she needs to make it along the gorgeous surrounding mountainside forests; Her tools are the same her ancestors used going back centuries, but she wants for nothing more.

 Meanwhile a young teacher Akira (Atsuro Watabe) is assigned a new post in the nearby town of Onime. His arrival will change everything.

 Odd dreams spread like a plague, keeping everyone from getting a good night's sleep. A man comes from Tokyo, kills his family and then commits suicide. The local delivery girl falls over, dead in an instant, her tongue blackened. Meanwhile Miki suddenly finds she doesn't need glasses any more, and looks younger every day.

 Her family, the Bonomiyas, have ancient roots in the area. And an ancient obligation: As Miki learns from her mother, it is the burden of the women of the clan to bear an urn that contains the Inugami, ancient, spiteful dog spirits, that are apparently let loose when the urn bearer lets loose her emotions.

 And Miki, who doesn't wholly believe in faeries, is having a hard time keeping control of herself lately. A burgeoning romance looms with with Akira, for one. But the main problem is the Bonomiya patriarch Takanao (Kazuhiro Yamaji, as a wonderfully hateable douchebag), who's conspires to sell the land Miki's mill stands on, and starts dredging up some uncomfortable, decades-old secrets.

 The townsfolk are well aware of the Inugami curse, and react to their misfortunes in about a rational and sane a fashion as you'd expect in a situation that bears many parallels to witchcraft. As the Bonomiyas stage their annual ancestor festival, tensions come to a head.

 Inugami is a deeply odd movie. It was released at the height of the J-Horror phenomenon (the same year as Kairo) and its narrative is built around a curse; Technically, it more than qualifies as folk horror.
 But writer/director Masato Harada (whose filmography seems to consist mostly of stately dramas and love stories) downplays almost every genre element until the final stretch, and the end result reminded me more of the great South American magical realist family sagas of Isabel Allende or Gabriel Garcia Márquez.
 The result is a thoughtful, languid, deeply affecting film that judiciously dissects traditionalism and women's roles in traditional Japanese society from multiple angles.
 On the one hand, before Akira, before things went to shit, Miki was completely fulfilled as she was, even with the terrible hand she was dealt* - hell, for most of the movie, she fights to keep things as they are. On the other hand... well, everything. The Bonomiya women are also clear-eyed about their situation; One of them memorably summarizes it as the men treating them "like fleas on their ancestor's sides."
 And to drive home how far we've come as a society, part of the finale is shot in black and white.

 Harada's script (based on a novel by Masako Bando) takes its sweet time getting anywhere, but his characters are well written, the love story is affecting, and the film is full of warmth and low-key humour. The direction is sometimes cack-handed (particularly his subjective handling of a seizure), but for the most part this is a playful, gorgeous movie, with both him and cinematographer Jun'ichi Fujisawa working in concert to convey the beauty of the film's natural surroundings.
 There's a recurring transition technique that slowly turns on lights until the scene is set that is nothing short of beautiful. Harada also stages some truly memorable imagery, from a surrealist dream that repurposes Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson to a gaggle of Shinto priests congregating under a derelict bus stop. 

 The association with the J-Horror movement seems to have hurt the film, which flew under most radars To the point where it's rarely mentioned along with other examples of the genre, if at all. But for my money, it's right up there with the best (for those counting at home: Kairo, Audition, Black Water, this.) That's if you want to count it as horror at all. Which I do, personally, just don't expect it to even attempt to scare you.

*: And the fates really do have it in for the poor woman; She's got the luck of the hero in a classic Greek tragedy, right down to an (easy to foresee) twist regarding Akira.

Hostile Dimensions

 Emily (Josie Rogers), a graffiti artist, goes missing after entering a mysterious free-standing door in the middle of an abandoned building. Sam (Annabel Logan) gets wind of the case and the attending footage, and decides it would make a great subject for her new documentary; So she enlists the help of her best friend Ash (Joma West) and after a short investigation they bag an interview with the guy who filmed the artist's disappearance (writer/director Graham Hughes). More importantly, they also find the door the artist disappeared through, which they take and install at Sam's living room - floor stands and all.

 A little experimentation quickly reveals that the door does indeed open to other dimensions - some hostile, some not so much. But after a quick brush with danger (in the form someone in a panda suit with CGI tentacles sprouting from his back) the documentarians recruit a nerdy university professor (Paddy Kondracki) who seems to specialize in very basic multiverse exposition to try and help them work out what they have on their hands, and maybe mount an attempt to rescue poor Emily.

 There's a welcome twist towards the middle that hammers the story into a (slightly) more focused suspense-like shape - it's not the most developed of scripts, and it soon writes itself into a corner, leading to a deeply unsatisfying finale - but an extremely amiable tone, a very game cast of actors (of varying skill but unflagging commitment) and a goofy, pervading sense of humour more than carry it. As a bonus, this was produced in Scotland - so the delivery of all lines is about fifteen percent funnier than it would be otherwise. That's just science.

 Visually, things are about what you'd expect; the found footage genre just isn't conducive to a good aesthetic. Nor is the very limited budget. While the dimension-hopping premise allows the film to get remarkably ambitious, the digital effects remain lower-end youtube material, albeit cleverly stitched into the film's mockumentary format.

 No matter. On the main, Hostile Dimensions is a very winning film: creative, funny, enthusiastic, warm-hearted and engaging. You definitely have to meet it halfway and gloss over some of its limitations, but that's a given for a micro-budgeted indie sci-fi found footage comedy that treads ground that's been trampled flat over the last few decade or so. Loved it.

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum

 A horror streaming channel enlists a bunch of randos and a couple of internet personalities to go explore one of the (real-life) "7 freakiest places on the planet", according to CNN: Gonjiam Asylum, an abandoned mental hospital with a murky spooky history that the film, sadly, seems completely uninterested in exploring.

 Maybe you have a higher tolerance for influencers; In my case, I couldn't wait for most of these thinly drawn asshats to start getting killed in gruesome ways. Sadly, we get to spend a lot of 'quality' time with them before anyone comes even close to dying - first as the 'captain' (Wi Ha-Joon) lays out the plans for the stream and the crew make their way to their destination, then as they start exploring the hospital while their intrepid leader watches from a tent and edits and adds music to the stream in real time.

 And we get to be very close to them, too, thanks to the camera rig with which they're outfitted: one go-pro to see everything they're seeing... and another one pointed straight at their face to catch their every reaction. So when things finally get moving and everyone starts getting chased by the asylum haunts, we get all the screaming via close-up (think Iron Man's in-helmet cam). At least that part seems to be faithful to a actual horror streams. On the other hand, I could have done without it.

 Beyond being young, pretty and vacuous, there's not a lot going on with the cast. The script barely slows down to give the characters space - and to be honest, when it does, like one of the guys' constant negging of the girl with the weakest personality - it distanced me even more from them.

 The asylum itself fares a little bit better. There's no rhyme nor reason to the haunting, no coherence to the spooky shit - just an assemblage of random weird imagery and fairly well-trod scares, but there's a decent sense of buildup, and urban exploration of dark, derelict spaces is never going to fail completely at being creepy. And things do get admirably hectic once the film decides to stop wasting our time and throws everything it can think of at the screen in an attempt to scare the audience.

 The spooky business is varied and well staged, with a good combination of jump-scares and more slow-burning atmospheric groundwork. Some good imagery, too, though most of it feels fairly random. Not that all of it works; Spooky changing grafitti will never not be stupid, and one of the film's centerpiece scares - its own take on Evil Dead's possessed deadites - is so goofy-looking it made me laugh every time it appeared.

 Visually... it's a found footage film, so don't expect anything on that front. A couple of scenes are captured with extremely wide angle cameras, which at least adds some flair to the fumbling-in-the-dark scenes. Other than that, it (by design) combines the ugliness of found footage films and youtube reaction videos. No blood, no gore, which is kind of admirable in a film of this type (and kind of reinforces my impression that it's at least partly aimed at a teen audience.)

 It's a movie that clearly has one mandate - to scare the living shit out its target audience. The way it goes about it is a little too blatant, derivative and incoherent for it to be successful for me (never mind that I'm decades out of being in said target audience); But it definitely gets an A for effort.

The Killer's Game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theatre of Blood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In A Violent Nature

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

 I was a little worried about it because it's got a bit of a gimmick: the cameras cleave mostly to the killer's back as he leisurely carves his way from victim to victim. Kind of like a modern third-person videogame, which is funny because there is a game genre colloquially called 'walking simulator' which fits this movie pretty well for a lot of its run time. Critics were comparing it to Terence Malik or the Dardennes, of all people, so it made me worried it'd be a horror movie that wanted to distance itself from the genre (AKA 'elevated horror').
 That's not usually a problem for me, but in a slasher it seemed especially dishonest, so I was a bit leery. I was wrong, though:  Writer/Director Chris Nash has cooked up a love letter to early slasher films that despite an unorthodox approach and a fair bit of arty prickliness never felt to me like a deconstruction or post-modern wankery. It comes from a genuine place (going as far as being shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio to honor the memory of watching these on old TV sets) without wholly dropping a very smart-arse attitude.

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

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

 The unconventional framing works at least as well as a more normal take, I think. My favorite part is when Johnny accidentally lets himself get photographed; nothing comes out of it at the moment, but the next day, after a bunch of murderin', we hear that they saw him in the picture, and it clearly rattled them. You can see how that would work from their perspective, but seeing it second-hand like this is novel, and putting the pieces together yourself is engaging in its own way.

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

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

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

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

 Much as I enjoyed it, I'm not that enamoured of the pacing; Even at 90 minutes it's far from lean, and all those shots of Johnny walking around do pile on. It also tends to hang onto to a scene after it's organically ended for a little too long, a little like Werner Herzog keeps his cameras on the interviewees on his documentaries after they've said their piece. This is definitely not a movie to watch while sleep-deprived, recovering from a long bout of flu.

 The ending is also a bit of a... well, a non-ending, even if it's kind of thematically interesting; It leaves  you with a different type of dread that the ending stingers for these films usually go for, something a bit more existential.

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

In The Mouth Of Madness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Iron Monkey is usually referred to as Hong Kong's martial arts take on Robin Hood, but I think it's much closer to El Zorro. It's got all the issues HK martial arts usually come with that jar (some of) us westerners: broad humour, brusque tonal changes, ridiculous plot developments, corny sentimentality. But, and this is a big but- even those problematic elements are done a notch better than usual and with such flair that it's still the first movie I recommend to people who aren't used to Asian martial arts films. It, my friends, is glorious.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phenomena (Fenómenas)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Toll / The Toll Man

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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 - to be clear, I'm not complaining), 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 energy.

 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 princess's 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 with the beast (THE BEAST) and they fight, mixing martial arts, wire-assisted leaps and hand-animated magic bolts. Lovely stuff. 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; Coherent, this ain't. At least this development allows for some (weak) gunplay and a few more (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 lampooning loony racists (it's clearly 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 even 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 shit going in the background, but it's rare (and heartbreaking) to see it surfacing this 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.