A mostly routine but diverting Netflix Original film that's a fine showcase for the growing cult of veteran tough guy character actor Frank Grillo. Grillo also produced and his character fits in perfectly with the persona he's crafted in the second and third PURGE movies (and it's infinitely better than THE CRASH, the dismal Libertarian polemic he produced and starred in earlier this year, which was so bad that the last name of its Wall Street financial titan villain was actually "Del Banco"). As the titular wheelman, Grillo is a stoical, no-nonsense getaway driver for an early evening bank robbery that goes typically awry when he's contacted by "the handler," who tells him to ditch the robbers and drive away. He can't get a hold of the contact (Garret Dillahunt) who arranged the job, and when a second handler calls and reveals that the other handler was an impostor, the wheelman has no idea who to trust and things get really hairy when the fake handler kidnaps his ex-wife (Grillo's wife Wendy Moniz). The wheelman ends up reluctantly teaming with his 13-year-old daughter Katie (Caitlin Carmichael) in an unpredictable and surprisingly engaging plot development, as Katie turns out to be smart, resourceful, and wise beyond her years and not the spoiled, "can't even" brat we're led to expect from the periodic phone calls to her dad throughout. The introduction of Carmichael's character could've easily been the film's death knell, but she and Grillo make an unexpectedly solid team. Writer/director Jeremy Rush, a protege of co-producer Joe Carnahan, wisely keeps 99% of the action in the car and focused on Grillo, who's in every scene and onscreen from start to finish. It sort-of ends with a whimper, but for the most part, WHEELMAN, a cross between DRIVE and LOCKE, is an entertaining, uncomplicated B-movie that's ideal for streaming and doesn't overstay its welcome at just 82 minutes. Also with Shea Whigham, perfectly cast as "Motherfucker." (Unrated, 82 mins, on Netflix) SHOT CALLER (US - 2017)
Following a pair of straight-to-video thrillers (1996's EXIT and 2001's IN THE SHADOWS), stuntman-turned-director Ric Roman Waugh has carved a niche for himself as a maker of gritty prison dramas. SHOT CALLER shares a lot of themes as his 2008 film FELON, which was a bit better than you'd expect from a 2008 movie with Stephen Dorff and Val Kilmer. Waugh continued on this trajectory with the slightly more improbable Dwayne Johnson vehicle SNITCH, but the barely-released SHOT CALLER really should've been his breakthrough. Opening with the parole of hardened, gang-affiliated convict "Money" (GAME OF THRONES Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), the film follows his post-prison activities that include taking part in a deal for a shipment of Russian military weapons stolen from Afghanistan, intercut with flashbacks to his old life and how he ended up where he is. Ten years earlier, "Money" was Jacob Harlin, a successful stockbroker with a wife (Lake Bell) and young son. After a dinner out with another couple, Frank is distracted by conversation and runs a red light. His friend in the backseat is killed and since he had a couple too many glasses of wine, he's charged with DUI with vehicular manslaughter. He makes a plea deal and is sentenced to two years and eight months, but life on the inside means ensuring your safety. He pragmatically aligns himself with a gang of white supremacists for protection, and is soon smuggling drugs in his ass and shivving a guy at their command. After he's involved in a riot, his sentence is extended and he builds a wall around himself, cutting off contact with his wife and son. Now that he's out, he still beholden to the powers that be on the inside, specifically The Beast (Holt McCallany), a gang lord who's so powerful that the guards in solitary answer to him.
It sounds like a standard-issue prison melodrama, but Waugh constructs SHOT CALLER in a way that it becomes a character study of a man using his intelligence to stay alive in a horrible situation. In a typical scenario like this, the story would be about what the prison system does to convicts. Everything that happens to Jacob in his transformation into Money is of his own volition. The pieces don't all fit until much later--indeed, there are moments here with the storytelling seems muddled, especially with exactly what Money's parole officer (Omari Hardwick) is really up to, but it all becomes clear by the end (though I'm still not quite sure what happened to Jeffrey Donovan's "Bottles," a key gang figure who vanishes from the film with no explanation). The main reason SHOT CALLER works so well is Coster-Waldau. Money is a quiet man who can only be pushed so far, and Coster-Waldau, in one of 2017's best performances that no one will see, never goes over the top and rarely raises his voice, internalizing Money's rage, always playing it smart and reading the room before making a decision that shows he's several steps ahead of everyone else. SHOT CALLER premiered on DirecTV before going straight to VOD after two years on the shelf. This deserved a much better release strategy than it got. (R, 121 mins, on Blu-ray/DVD) THE BABYSITTER (US - 2017)
It dispenses with any and all logic by the end, but the Netflix Original film THE BABYSITTER is a fun, fast, blood-splattered horror-comedy that's perfect for streaming. Bullied, overprotected 13-year-old Cole (Judah Lewis) is the only kid his age who still has a babysitter, but he doesn't mind because it's hot and hip Bee (Samara Weaving), who's so cool that she can quote BILLY JACK with him (there's the first tip-off that this doesn't exist on any level of reality). When his parents (Ken Marino, Leslie Bibb) go for a romantic getaway for the weekend, Cole and Bee party it up, and she even gives him encouraging big sister talks about how things will get better and how he should just be himself and stand up for who he is. Curious about what she does after he goes to bed, he spies on her when he hears the doorbell ring and she lets some friends in. One of these kids is a nerdy type who clearly isn't like the others (cheerleader, football star, etc), and when Bee puts two daggers through the nerd's skull and they all drink the blood pouring out of his head while reciting passages from an ancient book of Bee's, it's pretty clear that Cole might not make it through the weekend.
Basically HOME ALONE with Satan worshipers instead of bumbling burglars, THE BABYSITTER has Cole evading Bee and her accomplices, setting traps for them, and using his wits to take them out one by one. Considering it's after midnight and they're in a neighborhood, it's surprising no one calls the cops with all the mayhem going on, but hey, whatever. The kills are goofy and gory and the set-ups for some of the splattery gags are surprisingly smart in some foreshadowing and joke construction that's far more clever than it has any reason to be. It's a little more small-scale than you 'd normally expect from brainless blockbuster purveyor McG (CHARLIE'S ANGELS, TERMINATOR: SALVATION), who really goes for a sort-of Joe Dante vibe here. It's a guilty pleasure and I'm probably way past the target demographic, but it was funny and surprisingly enjoyable and just the right length at 85 minutes. Look for this to become a big cult movie with teenagers. (Unrated, 85 mins, on Netflix) THE FOREIGNER (China/UK - 2017)
A formulaic (villain says to hero "We're a lot alike, you and I") but still-riveting revenge/political thriller that's probably not quite as action-packed as the trailers make it out to be. Chinese immigrant Jackie Chan, trained by US Special Forces during Vietnam and now a British citizen, is obsessed with vengeance after his teenage daughter is killed in a London bomb blast. A group calling itself "Authentic IRA" claims responsibility, which doesn't sit well with Pierce Brosnan, a former IRA and Sinn Fein legend in his youth, now a Belfast-based bureaucrat working for the British government. Chan demands answers from Brosnan and won't leave him alone, setting off a small bomb in his office, following him, texting him photos he's taken of him with his mistress. Tensions escalate and it becomes clear Brosnan has something to hide, and it's quite fun watching him grow increasingly agitated that this "60-year-old Chinaman" is outwitting all the bodyguards and flunkies he sends after him. At first it appears the film when be Jackie Chan's entry into Liam Neeson/TAKEN mode, but THE FOREIGNER is equally focused on political intrigue and the past haunting the present, whether it's Chan and his family's tragic backstory or Brosnan's former associates and even his wife (Orla Brady) thinking he's a sellout. The story gets surprisingly twisty and complex, with one really sleazy plot reveal midway through that produced audible gasps from the audience. One problem is that the second half is so focused on Brosnan (who's really great here, chewing the scenery with rage and gusto) that there's a long stretch where Chan vanishes and seems like a guest star in his own movie, and Chan purists may lament the trickery used to help him with his stunt work (the dude's 63--give him a break), but THE FOREIGNER allows the beloved action star a chance to show his dark side in an English-language role, and the film proves to be a solid thriller from director Martin Campbell (GOLDENEYE, CASINO ROYALE) with a terrific score by the always-reliable Cliff Martinez. (R, 114 mins, in theaters) CULT OF CHUCKY (US - 2017)
The seventh entry in the now-29-year-old CHILD'S PLAY franchise, written all these years by Don Mancini (who took over directing with the fifth installment, 2004's SEED OF CHUCKY), returns to the more comedic approach largely abandoned by 2013's surprisingly straightforward CURSE OF CHUCKY. CULT brings back paraplegic Nica (Fiona Dourif) from the previous film, and it makes Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent, a little kid in the first film back in 1988) a key supporting character. Mancini's storyline is muddled for the most part, but eventually things make sense--at least on their own terms--and you'll just roll with the insanity that develops. Mancini seems to be making it up as he goes along, but like CURSE, there's some surprisingly well-done shout-outs to the horror genre in general, with one SUSPIRIA-inspired death being a real standout. There's other genre staples like De Palma split screen, a lecherous doctor, and a mental hospital whose chilly, antiseptic layout has a vaguely Canadian horror vibe to it. Plus having Chucky possess the patients at a mental hospital one by one is a sly nod to THE EXORCIST III with that film's Brad Dourif also being the voice of Chucky. It's actually almost adorable watching Nica get possessed by Chucky and cackling along with him, Fiona Dourif perfectly replicating her dad's Chucky laugh. There's some impressively over-the-top gore, a lot of it old-school and practical. This has turned into one of the more durable horror franchises, very unusual in that it's been going nearly 30 years with Mancini and Dourif, as well as the returning Vincent and Jennifer Tilly, who's been a part of the party since 1998's BRIDE OF CHUCKY, and has yet to be rebooted. CULT OF CHUCKY is what it is--it's no masterpiece, but in the world of DTV and being a horror franchise that's several decades old, it's more entertaining than it has any reason to be. (R, 91 mins, on Blu-ray/DVD)
THE SNOWMAN (US/UK/Sweden - 2017) Directed by Tomas Alfredson. Written by Peter Straughan, Hossein Amini and Soren Sviestrup. Cast: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, J.K. Simmons, Val Kilmer, Jonas Karlsson, Chloe Sevigny, Toby Jones, James D'Arcy, David Dencik, Ronan Vibert, Genevieve O'Reilly, Jacob Oftebro, Adrian Dunbar, Michael Yates, Jamie Clayton, Peter Dalle, Sofia Helin, Leonard Heinemann. (R, 120 mins) THE SNOWMAN is the first big-screen adaptation of Norwegian mystery writer Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole series. Though I believe the intended pronunciation is "Hol-uh," the fact that they didn't take into consideration that the name "Harry Hole" is only going to induce Beavis & Butthead snickers for English-speaking and American audiences, especially since they just say "Hole" throughout the movie (I've read two of Nesbo's Hole novels, and it's easy to overlook on the page) is a good indication that this was never going to work. Nesbo's books--his non-Hole novel Headhunters was turned into a film in 2011--were part of the post-Stieg Larsson/Girl with the Dragon Tattoo explosion that launched the Scandinavian mystery subgenre into the literary mainstream (see also Henning Mankell's Wallander novels, adapted for television with Kenneth Branagh in the title role, and Jussi Adler-Olsen's Department Q series, which was turned into a movie trilogy) and generated renewed interest in older works by the influential Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo, and others. THE SNOWMAN is a bit fashionably late to the party as far as movie adaptations of Scandinavian noir go, and it was originally conceived several years ago with Martin Scorsese planning to direct. Scorsese eventually left the project in 2013 as it was put in turnaround but remains credited as a producer, having passed it on to Tomas Alfredson to direct when it was given the green light again in late 2015. Alfredson has two classics to his credit--2008's LET THE RIGHT ONE IN and 2011's TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY--but THE SNOWMAN looks like a film that's been so mangled in post-production that everyone involved simply walked away and gave up trying to fix it. After the film opened to disastrous reviews in Europe, Alfredson attempted to do some damage control in the days prior to the US release, saying that the film was rushed into production with little planning, and when it came time to hit the editing room, he found that he only had, by his own admission, "85%" of the footage he needed, forcing him to use voiceovers and restructure character arcs in an attempt to put everything together. The Band-Aids precariously holding THE SNOWMAN together are all too obvious, starting with several name actors having nothing to do with anything, at least two critical subplots dropped without explanation, that there's a plethora of credits for "additional photography" and a team of editors (including Scorsese's legendary secret weapon and right hand Thelma Schoonmaker), and the fact that virtually none of the footage, dialogue, or implied plot developments in the trailer are actually in the movie. If you're enough of a film nerd, you can tell when a movie has had a troubled production and the end result is barely hanging together. And if you're familiar at all with film editing, you know that if Thelma Schoonmaker can't make it work, then it just wasn't meant to be.
That said, it's not terrible. It's by no means "good," but it's hardly the total dumpster fire that its chaotic backstory and Alfredson's excuses would indicate. It looks good, there's some effective atmosphere and striking location work in Norway, and I'm a sucker for cold, snowy, depressing mysteries. As the glum, alcoholic Hole, Michael Fassbender keeps the story interesting even as it's falling apart at the seams. In relatively crime-free Oslo, a serial killer is decapitating single mothers and putting their severed heads on snowmen (the mechanism used is similar to that seen in Dario Argento's 1993 film TRAUMA). He also seems to be stalking cold-case detective Hole, sending him a taunting note calling him "Mister Police." Hole has nothing to do ("I'm sorry about Oslo's extremely low murder rate," his boss tells him) and can go on weeklong benders with no none really noticing he's gone, so he teams with younger investigator Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), who seems hellbent on tying wealthy Oslo politician and businessman Arve Stop (J.K. Simmons) and fertility doctor Idvar Vetlesen (David Dencik, a fixture in Scandinavian mystery adaptations) to the murders. Hole also digs into secret files Katrine has stashed away about a similar string of killings nine years earlier in Bergen, which were investigated by corrupt detective Gert Rafto (Val Kilmer). Hole's obsession with cracking the case puts a strain on his relationship with Oleg (Michael Yates), the teenage son of his ex-girlfriend Rakel (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Hole is still on good terms with Rakel, even though she's involved with shrink Matthias Lund-Helgesen (Jonas Karlsson), but Hole sticks around because Oleg has always viewed him as a father figure and, unbeknownst to the boy, Hole is his biological father (not a spoiler--it's divulged very early).
There's a lot of story in THE SNOWMAN, and I didn't even mention Chloe Sevigny playing dual roles and getting about five minutes of screen time total before disappearing from the movie. The whole subplot about sleazy Stop trying to get the Olympic Games to Oslo ends up being a time-wasting, dead-end red herring that goes nowhere, along with pervy Vetlesen--who paints his toenails--acquiring young girls for him (are they pimps? Human traffickers? Who knows?). The killer's identity is easy to figure out, especially with a flashback to a young boy witnessing the drowning of his mother twenty-odd years ago, which a) must mean something, and b) gives you a good idea of what age that kid would now be, and Rakel and Oleg serve no purpose whatsoever other than being put in jeopardy. The motivations of Katrine and her drive to continue Rafto's work are obvious long before Hole figures it out by visiting a cabin that somehow hasn't been touched in nine years, and the editing is so bad at times that you'll wonder why Schoonmaker even left her name on it (how can the killer be throwing a snowball at an intended victim as she walks to her car and at the same time be in the car parked right behind her when she gets in hers?). The plot requires characters to be idiots in order to move it forward (the killer leaves cigarette butts all over the crime scenes, yet no one runs a DNA test on any of them), and the film's version of high-tech is laughable, as evidenced by the "EviSync," a cumbersome, clunky gadget that Katrine totes around that looks like an oversized iPad prototype from 1988.
But the biggest point of discussion about THE SNOWMAN is bound to be the bizarre appearance of Kilmer, in his first role in a major movie in years. For the last several years, Kilmer's health has been the subject of rumors until he finally admitted earlier this year that he'd been battling some form of tongue or throat cancer. Kilmer's Gert Rafto is only seen fleetingly in a handful of flashbacks. The veteran actor looks gaunt and visibly ill, almost unrecognizable, and when he opens his mouth, it's instantly obvious that he's been dubbed over by a voice that sounds absolutely nothing at all like his own. There's also a near-GODZILLA effect as the words barely match his lip movements--probably a sign of post-production rewrites--and Alfredson bends over backward to keep Kilmer's face offscreen while his character is talking. There's even scenes where people are talking to him and he awkwardly says nothing in return. It's a distraction even if you're aware of Kilmer's health problems (back in the '60s until his death in 1973, throat cancer robbed beloved actor Jack Hawkins of his voice, requiring him to be dubbed in everything, but at least effort was made to sound like him). You're taken out of the movie every time he's onscreen. Kilmer's dubbed voice couldn't be any more jarring if it was done by Gilbert Gottfried. It sounds like the kind of deep-voice distortion given to a silhouetted whistleblower in a 60 MINUTES interview. Sure, maybe he needed the work and has a friend at Universal who wanted to do him a solid, but even if he was unable to speak or if his words were garbled post-cancer, they couldn't find anyone who sounded even remotely like Val Kilmer to dub his dialogue and not completely sabotage his performance?
BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99 (US - 2017) Written and directed by S. Craig Zahler. Cast: Vince Vaughn, Jennifer Carpenter, Don Johnson, Udo Kier, Marc Blucas, Mustafa Shakir, Thomas Guiry, Dion Mucciacito, Geno Segers, Willie C. Carpenter, Fred Melamed, Clark Johnson, Pooja Kumar, Victor Almanzar, Calvin Dutton, Michael Medeiros, Devon Windsor, Tobee Paik, Rob Morgan, Philip Ettinger. (Unrated, 132 mins) With 2015's horror-western hybrid BONE TOMAHAWK, novelist/musician/jack-of-all-trades S. Craig Zahler immediately established himself as a filmmaker worth watching. The best description being "THE SEARCHERS if remade by Ruggero Deodato," BONE TOMAHAWK was an instant cult classic that was deserving of the label. Influenced by everything from Hollywood classics to Italian splatter films to underground metal (his musical projects include singing and playing drums in a band called Realmbuilder, and playing drums in the black metal band Charnel Valley), Zahler tackles the prison genre with BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99, a hyperviolent and stunningly brutal revenge melodrama with the kind of wonderfully old-school title you'd expect to find on a mid '50s Allied Artists programmer. In a welcome departure from roles he's been coasting through for years and what the little-loved second season of TRUE DETECTIVE hinted at, Vince Vaughn is almost the spirit of Lee Marvin incarnate as Bradley--do not call him Brad--Thomas, a man with a dark past who's just trying to make an honest living and get by. Stoical and serious, and with a large cross tattooed on the back of his shaved head, Bradley and his wife Lauren (Jennifer Carpenter) are recovering alcoholics living in a small house in a crummy part of town. Bradley drives a wrecker for a local mechanic, but business is slow and he's let go. Arriving home, he finds Lauren about to take off for some afternoon delight with a man she's been seeing for the last three months. Bradley is not an abusive man but he reacts in the only way he can at that moment: by calmly and methodically tearing apart her car with his bare hands.
After resolving to work through their problems and preserve their marriage, Bradley decides to go back to an old job: "delivering packages" for local dealer Gil (Marc Blucas). 18 months go by, and Bradley and Lauren are in a spacious new home and she's six months pregnant. Against Bradley's gut instinct, Gil goes into business with powerful Mexican drug lord Eliazar (Dion Mucciacito), whose crew of irresponsible fuck-ups end up in a shootout with the cops, during which Bradley takes out Eliazar's guys to save the cops and keep the situation from escalating. That still does him no favors with the judge, and after he refuses to give up any names of his associates, Bradley is sentenced to seven years in a medium-security prison. Lauren promises to wait for him, assuring him that "that same mistake won't happen again." Determined to keep a low profile and hope he can be paroled after a few years for good behavior, Bradley's plans expectedly go to shit almost immediately: he's visited by the mysterious "Placid Man" (Udo Kier), posing as Lauren's doctor but actually a representative of Eliazar. The Placid Man's boss isn't happy about Bradley's actions during the shootout, which cost him two men and $3 million. Eliazar has taken Lauren hostage with an abortionist at the ready--one who claims to be able to "clip off" the legs of the fetus but let it live, maiming it in utero--if Bradley doesn't pay off his debt by getting himself transferred to Red Leaf, a maximum-security hellhole in upstate New York, where he's to take out a top Eliazar enemy who's being held in cell block 99. Bradley goes to extreme, limb-snapping measures to get himself transferred upstate, and once he's at Red Leaf, he's forced to work his way into cell block 99 while also dealing with conditions that make Gitmo look appealing, plus endlessly bullying guards and sadistic, cigarillo-sucking warden Tuggs (Don Johnson).
If you're familiar with BONE TOMAHAWK, the languid pacing and slow burn methodology of BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99 won't come as a surprise. While BRAWL isn't quite on the level of BONE, Zahler again demonstrates a unique ability to build the world in which the film exists on his own terms and at his own pace. He brings a novelist's style and sensibility to the crafting of this story, letting it unfold like an long, engrossing book with vividly detailed characters. With his first two films, Zahler fuses pulpy grindhouse and serious arthouse more effectively than anyone since Quentin Tarantino in his prime. As with BONE TOMAHAWK, which ran over two hours and took 90 minutes to get to the crux of its horror plot, the 132-minute BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99 is in no particularly hurry to get to the title event. Instead, for about 105 minutes, we watch a fundamentally decent man who's been dealt one shitty card after another, his ability to keep his head above water growing more tenuous by the day, doing what's necessary to provide, to do what's "right." Vaughn is a revelation here, his every moment on screen seething with a palpable, slow-boiling rage. He knows he's in a bad business, but he's not a bad guy and still tries to do what's "right." He refuses to flip on his employers. When he's told he'll be out in four years and the judge hits him with seven, he shuts up and takes it like a man because his wife and his unborn child are all that matter. And when they're threatened, he's willing to put himself through every punishment imaginable to ensure their well-being. It's a remarkable performance, given a boost in some of the many shockingly violent, often sickening scenes of Bradley snapping limbs, stomping heads, and scraping faces across concrete walls and floors. Like BONE TOMAHAWK, BRAWL isn't all grim and humorless. There's no shortage of quotable tough-guy, B-movie dialogue--when asked how he's doing after losing his job, Bradley shrugs "South of OK, north of cancer;" when a fellow convict wishes their prison was like a state-of-the-art facility in Norway, Bradley snaps "You should aim higher with your wishes;" and during a jaw-off with a Eliazar flunky, patriotic Bradley gets in his face and says "The last time I checked, the colors of the flag weren't red, white and burrito." Released unrated and almost certainly worthy of an NC-17 for its extreme violence, BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99 isn't for everyone and may not even be as accessible as the decidedly offbeat BONE TOMAHAWK (however accessible a cannibal horror western can be), but it's an unusual and compelling character piece in the guise of a bonecrushing exploitation grinder.
For a long time, THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES was shaping up to be the DAY THE CLOWN CRIED of found-footage. Filmed in 2007 and screened at that year's Tribeca Film Festival, the film was abruptly yanked from the schedule by MGM just a week before its planned February 8, 2008 release date (for some perspective on how long ago this was, that weekend's other major releases were FOOL'S GOLD, WELCOME HOME ROSCOE JENKINS, VINCE VAUGHN'S WILD WEST COMEDY SHOW, and IN BRUGES), even though a trailer had been out and multiplexes had promo material on display for several weeks. The found-footage genre was still in its post-BLAIR WITCH PROJECT era in 2008, and THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES would've preceded the next wave brought in by PARANORMAL ACTIVITY by over a year and a half had MGM released it on schedule. While no explanation was ever given for why the studio buried this like a dark family secret, the filmmakers--writer/director John Erick Dowdle and his producer brother Drew--had a hit later the same year with QUARANTINE, a remake of the Spanish found-footage horror phenomenon [REC], before going on to make the 2010 M. Night Shyamalan production DEVIL, the 2014 Paris catacombs-set found-footage opus AS ABOVE, SO BELOW, and the 2015 Owen Wilson thriller NO ESCAPE. The Dowdles got QUARANTINE on the basis of THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES, and while none of their subsequent films were blockbusters, their moderate success still wasn't enough to free POUGHKEEPSIE from the MGM shelf. It eventually got a stealth release on DirecTV in 2014, but just as word got around to horror fans that it was available, MGM pulled it once more without warning. Only now, in the fall of 2017, has the now-decade old film been made widely available, with Shout! Factory's Blu-ray and DVD release rescuing it from oblivion and finally giving it, for all intents and purposes, it's first actual, widespread exhibition.
You'd assume this must be a terrible movie, but the end result is quite surprising. It's unfortunate that the found-footage genre has played itself into overexposed irrelevance, because THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES is one of the best of its kind. There's no jump scares to be had and the gore is minimal, but its violence and intensity are such that it's quite dark, disturbing, and sometimes difficult to watch. It's hard telling if that's why MGM got skittish about releasing it, but the closest comparison I can draw to illustrate just how utterly real and horrifying this film can be is the sad and heartbreaking Australian found-footage outing LAKE MUNGO. Set up as a faux talking-head documentary, THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES chronicles the exploits of the east coast serial killer The Water Street Butcher, tracing his murders back to 1991 via a vast collection of homemade snuff videos found in his house in 1996. The madness begins with the abduction and murder of a little girl right from her front yard, escalates to a couple being kidnapped on their way home to Poughkeepsie from Pittsburgh, and soon, he's very intricately crafting the murder sites to deliberately mislead the investigators and misdirect the profilers when the FBI is called in. To throw them off even more, he changes his M.O. and kidnaps 19-year-old Cheryl Dempsey (Stacy Chbosky), holding her captive as a sex-and-torture slave in his basement. He even shows up at Cheryl's house and films himself talking to her mother, laughing and taunting her ("If there's anything I can do...") before running away once the mom realizes she's looking right at the man who kidnapped her daughter. The murders go on, with the killer deliberately leaving DNA behind as if he's trying to get captured, and that's when things take an unexpected and even more horrific turn, with Dowdle even working in 9/11 in a plausible, non-exploitative fashion.
THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES takes full advantage of one of the unsung ringers of modern-era horror: blurry video and garbled audio, which always gets under your skin if done right. This film excels at it, even if you have to cut them some slack that all of the VHS tapes are somehow 1.78:1. The unpredictable patterns of the murders, the rawness of the tapes that make them look like genuine snuff films, the intelligence and the patience of the killer, and the horrific conditions in which he leaves the victims (the couple is found with the man decapitated, his head surgically implanted into the woman's stomach with his face protruding like some demented tribute to TOTAL RECALL's Cuato) are the stuff of nightmares straight from the Hannibal Lecter or SE7EN playbooks. The same goes for the notes read by the investigating agents ("His genitals were removed and placed in the sock drawer of the master bedroom"), and one absolutely chilling scene that rivals the cell phone discovery in LAKE MUNGO, when an exhaustive study of the now-dead Pittsburgh-to-Poughkeepsie couple on surveillance footage from a gas station gives police their first look at the killer, a blurry image of a figure standing on the far edge of the frame, seemingly communicating to the camera in sign language in so subtle a fashion that it takes them a while to figure out that he's telling them where they'll find the bodies. There's a bit of a logic lapse later on involving the killer's fate, but it's a minor quibble in a very effective film that's so bleak and unflinching that it probably wouldn't have done well in theaters. This is grim, bleak shit that makes SE7EN look like the feel-good movie of the year. Maybe that's why MGM had no idea what to do with it. (R, 81 mins)
ARMED RESPONSE (US - 2017)
Fusing elements of a PREDATOR-type actioner with EVENT HORIZON, THE KEEP, and the short-lived, late '80s "haunted prison" craze (DESTROYER, PRISON, SLAUGHTERHOUSE ROCK, THE CHAIR) had some potential for some batshit craziness, but ARMED RESPONSE is a lethargic, drably-shot, ploddingly-paced bore that only comes alive in the last five minutes, by which point it's way too late to care. It's probably going for slow burn, but there's no tension, no suspense, and about 90% of the running time consists of people either walking down dark corridors with flashlights and military weapons at the ready, staring at rows of monitors, or arguing with one another. Gabriel (BROTHERS & SISTERS' Dave Annable) is still in shock over the death of his young daughter (some backstory that has no payoff) when he's visited by Isaac (Wesley Snipes), his old commander in Afghanistan. Isaac needs him to investigate some strange occurrences at "The Temple," a secret compound inside an abandoned prison. The Temple is the next stage in the evolution of the war on terror: a sentient, AI lifeforce whose technological capabilities to weed out the truth trumps all lie detectors and "enhanced interrogation" techniques. Gabriel is a former MIT whiz kid who designed the security system inside The Temple, and he may be needed to get Isaac and his team, among them no-nonsense Riley (Anne Heche) and hothead Brett (WWE star Seth Rollins), in and out of the facility. It seems the last team stationed at The Temple were slaughtered when The Temple went rogue. Security footage shows the team being attacked by unseen and apparently supernatural forces, and soon those forces start coming for them. The Temple is able to detect wrongdoings and buried secrets, and like the last crew, Isaac and his officers committed swept-under-the-rug war crimes in Afghanistan and The Temple intends to make them pay, as illustrated by such dialogue as "There's a presence in the code!" and "The Temple has judged us deserving of punishment!" and "The Temple has reached a tipping point." So will most viewers by that time.
There's potential for some insightful, layered commentary here, but ARMED RESPONSE goes the generic route, offering a bunch of cliched military hardasses in lieu of characters or interesting ideas. The whole idea behind "The Temple" is half-baked and never really clearly expressed, and it only gets remotely interesting when Gabriel has to reboot the system and The Temple slowly regains its power, with its cinder block walls coming to life and reaching out to unlucky victims, yanking their arms out of their sockets. That kind of craziness would've been helpful in the 85 minutes up to that point, but director John Stockwell, a former actor (CHRISTINE, MY SCIENCE PROJECT, TOP GUN) who made some successful movies (CRAZY/BEAUTIFUL, BLUE CRUSH, INTO THE BLUE) before his post-2011 slide into the world of VOD/DTV (CAT RUN, IN THE BLOOD, KICKBOXER: VENGEANCE) just seems to be coasting through, and the end result looks like an updated and slightly higher-end version of something Roger Corman's Concorde would've released in 1989. Snipes and Heche are the big names here, and while they're in the whole movie and don't pull any Bruce Willis or Steven Seagal phone-ins, they're definitely sidelined in favor of the bland Annable. The film was produced by WWE Studios (hence, Rollins' involvement) and upstart Erebus Pictures, a production company formed by none other than KISS icon and NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE villain Gene Simmons, who also briefly appears in either a bald cap or sans wig (looking a lot like late-career Michael Ansara) in a flashback as a suspected terrorist. Simmons is also all over the accompanying making-of featurette, and if you watch that beforehand, you might think that he's the star of the movie. (R, 94 mins)
OPEN WATER 3: CAGE DIVE (Australia - 2017)
After a ten-year hiatus, Lionsgate dusts off the OPEN WATER franchise for another go by taking an Australian shark attack movie called CAGE DIVE and slapping the "OPEN WATER 3" prefix on it. It's very similar to what they did with 2007's OPEN WATER 2: ADRIFT, where they took a sharkless German film called ADRIFT, with a bunch of people stranded in the ocean, unable to get back on a yacht after they all jumped off and no one pulled the ladder down. Neither in-name-only "sequel" has anything to do with Chris Kentis 2004 micro-budget indie hit OPEN WATER, and CAGE DIVE, is more or less a remake, with some added melodrama and the requisite found footage angle, taking advantage of the Trend That Wouldn't Die. Probably hastily prepped for VOD after the surprise success of the long-shelved Weinstein castoff 47 METERS DOWN, CAGE DIVE opens with the remains of a digital video camera found on the ocean floor, its memory card still intact. Faster than you can say "I wonder who the real sharks are," we're watching shaky, handheld footage of Americans--siblings Jeff (Joel Hogan) and Josh (Josh Potthoff), and Jeff's girlfriend Megan (Megan Peta Hill)--traveling to Australia to visit Jeff and Josh's Sydney-born cousin (Pete Valley) before heading off to a cage dive, digital camera in tow since Jeff wants to get them all on a daredevil reality show. They head out on a group excursion, and while the three of them are in the cage, a freak tidal wave appears out of nowhere, capsizes the boat, and the few survivors who weren't killed in the impact are soon eaten by great white sharks until only Jeff, Josh, and Megan remain, treading water. Of course Jeff never stops filming, even as hypothermia and delirium set in, and writer/director Gerald Rascionato (also credited with producing, photographing, editing, and casting) also makes time for turgid melodrama with Jeff finding out what the audience already knows from his camera being left on earlier: Megan is cheating on him with Josh, which really puts a damper on his plans to propose to her on the trip. OPEN WATER 3: CAGE DIVE has some convincing shark action, but relies too heavily on characters doing stupid things (luck sends a lifeboat drifting their way, so of course Megan sets it ablaze when she freaks out and mishandles a flare) to the point where you'll eventually start rooting for the sharks, in which case, you'll get a happy ending. (R, 81 mins)
BLADE RUNNER 2049 (US - 2017) Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green. Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Jared Leto, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Barkhad Abdi, Edward James Olmos, Wood Harris, Hiam Abbass, David Dastmalchian, Tomas Lemarquis, Sean Young. (R, 164 mins) Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER, based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is so highly and rightfully regarded as an influential sci-fi masterpiece to this day that it's easy to forget that it only did middling business in theaters in the summer of 1982 and the reviews weren't all that great. Over time, thanks to incessant cable and TV airings and the reconstruction of the "director's cut" in 1992 (assembled from the workprint and Scott's notes; he was busy working on 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE at the time and wasn't directly involved in it other than being consulted) and later with Scott's official "final cut" in 2007, the film's reputation and significance grew. The compromised theatrical version was a thorn in the side of both Scott and star Harrison Ford, who wasn't pleased about adding hard-boiled voiceover narration and made every effort to ensure that it sounded as if it was doing it at gunpoint. The director's cut removed the narration and added the much-debated unicorn scene, meant to ambiguously convey that perhaps Deckard (Ford), the titular blade runner, was himself a replicant just like those he was assigned to pursue and "retire." In the unlikely event you haven't seen BLADE RUNNER since it was in theaters and all you know is the now-obsolete theatrical version, then you're going to be completely baffled as to what's going in BLADE RUNNER 2049, which uses the director's cut as its springboard. With Scott onboard as executive producer, the original film's co-writer Hampton Fancher (his first credit since 1999's THE MINUS MAN) contributing to the script, and acclaimed filmmaker Denis Villeneuve (PRISONERS, SICARIO, ARRIVAL) at the helm, BLADE RUNNER 2049 established its bona fides before filming even began. Villeneuve promised to remain true to the beloved original and he more or less does. It in no way insults or diminishes the memory of the 1982 classic, and it throws in plenty of winking callbacks, but at the end of the day, it's still a 35-years-later sequel that doesn't succeed in justifying its existence.
Set 30 years after the first film, BLADE RUNNER 2049 opens in an even more dystopian California. Due to repeated replicant rebellions like the one led by Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty, the Tyrell Corporation went bankrupt. Replicant production began once more when what was left of Tyrell's operation was purchased by billionaire industrialist Niander Wallace (Jared Leto). Blade runner K (Ryan Gosling) arrives at the isolated desert farm of Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista), an old-school Nexus 8 replicant with an indeterminate lifespan. After a violent confrontation, K does his job and takes him out before reporting back to LAPD headquarters for a "baseline" debriefing required of replicants. Yes, that's right. BLADE RUNNER 2049 immediately answers the million dollar question: blade runners are replicants, and they're now integrated into society, even though they're regarded as second-class citizens, or "skinjobs" and "skinners." Investigation of Morton's property reveals a box of human skeletal remains near a tree. Examination of the remains indicate that it was a woman who died giving birth, and further analysis of the DNA shows proof that the skeleton is that of a replicant, thus blowing the doors off everything known about the bioengineered "skinjobs," who can apparently sexually reproduce, one last experiment pulled off by the Tyrell Corporation before it imploded. K's investigation into the whereabouts of the woman's child leads him to numerous places--very slowly--and also involves his hologram love interest Joi (Ana de Armas); a "memory designer" (Carla Juri) who knows about a specific real or imagined event that's been planted into K's memory; Wallace's ruthless enforcer Luv (Sylvia Hoeks as Milla Jovovich) who's also out to find the now-adult child; and even a visit to a retirement home with Gaff (Edward James Olmos), who's still passing the time and busies his hands by making tiny origami animals.
Eventually, K ends up in the radioactive ruins of Las Vegas, where Deckard has been in hiding for 30 years after running off with now-deceased replicant Rachael (Sean Young) at the end of the first film. To say anymore would involve too many spoilers, but let's begin with the positives: it's just as visually stunning as you'd expect, thanks in large part to the work of the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, the Susan Lucci of D.P.s who's been nominated for 13 Oscars and has yet to win. The world of BLADE RUNNER 2049 is just as vividly dystopian as its predecessor in its own ways, this time mixing its neon-drenched cityscapes with dusty wastelands and the almost Overlook Hotel-esque appearance of the abandoned casino resort Deckard calls home. Ford's appearance here is not unlike Charlton Heston's extended cameo in BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES: BLADE RUNNER 2049 runs an ass-numbing 164 minutes, and in one of the most delayed entrances this side of Marlon Brando in APOCALYPSE NOW, Ford's first appearance doesn't even happen until nearly two hours in. Atmospheric slow-burn is one thing, but the ponderous and relentlessly gabby BLADE RUNNER 2049 is oppressively overlong, with scenes going on much longer than necessary and too many instances of characters introduced making overly verbose expository proclamations from the shadows only to slowly emerge in the light (Leto only has two scenes, and he enters both of them in this fashion). Everyone in this movie is a slow talker, and it probably adds 30 minutes to the running time.
Knowing now that Deckard is a replicant doesn't change the events of the first film since the director's cut more or less said as much, but Ford still managed to create a compelling and complex character. Here, Deckard just looks befuddled and grouchy. In other words, he looks like Harrison Ford, reliving his Han Solo and Indiana Jones glory days in present-day nostalgia trips that don't quite measure up to the classics that came before (STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS was fun, but have you ever met an INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL fan?). K is a character that, on paper, plays to the strengths of Gosling's moody persona as seen in DRIVE and ONLY GOD FORGIVES, but Nicolas Winding Refn made those enigmatic Gosling characters a lot more interesting in those films than Villeneuve does here. K's love for Joi is an interesting concept that never really feels developed, but then, nor do any of the characters. BLADE RUNNER is a hypnotic experience that feels new and compelling and fresh with each revisit. It's timeless. But for all the talk of replicants finding their humanity in BLADE RUNNER 2049, there's nothing here even remotely as memorable or gut-wrenching as Rutger Hauer's "Tears in Rain" monologue before his final, resigned declaration of "Time to die." And while Vangelis' synth score is one of the 1982 film's most memorable components, the score here by Hans Zimmer is so aggressively, overbearingly bombastic that it almost qualifies as self-parody. Vangelis enhanced the mood and the vision and contributed to the hypnotic nature. Zimmer's score stampedes and bulldozes over everything to the point where it's an overwhelming, suffocating distraction that actually detracts from the effectiveness of numerous scenes. I gave BLADE RUNNER 2049 time, fidgeting through its laborious first hour and legitimately intrigued by a major plot reveal that finally seems to set things in motion, but it resumed dragging ass shortly thereafter and Zimmer's score got even more obnoxious, and no matter how captivating the visuals were, I finally had to accept the fact that it was well past two hours into this thing, its contrivances and developments were getting more half-baked and nonsensical (I'm still not sure what's going on with the replicant "revolution" that gets brought up near the end and is instantly dropped) and the point had passed where I ran out of excuses and had to admit to myself that I wasn't connecting with it at all. BLADE RUNNER was slow in a methodical way that was never boring. BLADE RUNNER 2049 is so concerned with replicating that feeling that it never finds its footing and never gets any momentum going. Maybe I'll look at it again in a year.
