On Blu-ray/DVD: UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB (2018) and DOWN A DARK HALL (2018)

UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB 
(US - 2018)

2015's UNFRIENDED had some problems (like teenagers who looked to be in their mid-20s, and a late-film collapse into cheap jump scares and tilted BLAIR WITCH camera angles), but the real-time, Skype-set fright flick was more compelling than it had any business being. Unfolding entirely on a computer screen, the inevitable sequel UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB tells a different story with a similar set-up, jettisoning the supernatural angle of its predecessor to focus on an online game night that goes horrifically off the rails. Acquiring a laptop through the dubious means of grabbing it after it was left behind at a coffee shop, Matias (John Mayer lookalike Colin Woodell) plans on joining some college friends on Skype for Cards Against Humanity. At the same time, he's trying to smooth things over with his deaf girlfriend Amaya (Stephanie Nogueras), who's tired of his lax efforts in learning to sign. The laptop, which he tells everyone he got on Craigslist, repeatedly glitches out and messages keep coming through for its rightful owner. Things escalate in a gradual fashion, with Matias finding some truly disturbing videos on the laptop as he's getting some increasingly hostile instant messages from the laptop's owner, the apparent culprit behind an abduction seen in one of the videos of a missing girl who's currently all over the local news.

UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB is grounded in relative reality, even if it glosses over the more intricate aspects of its technological capabilities and doesn't really have anything to do with social media. Without divulging spoilers, Matias and his friends--paranoid conspiracy theorist AJ (Connor Del Rio), aspiring DJ Lexx (Savira Windyani), just-engaged couple Serena (Rebecca Rittenhouse) and Nari (Blumhouse regular Betty Gabriel), and London-based Damon (Andrew Lees)--soon get in way over their heads with a cabal of superhackers intent on making them--and Amaya--pay for Matias' bad judgment. There's some forced humor and a little of Del Rio's grating AJ goes a long way, but some sly jokes land, like writer and debuting director Stephen Susco (whose past scripts include THE GRUDGE, TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D, and BEYOND THE REACH) opening with a static shot of what we soon realize are Matias' failed login attempts to his ill-gotten gain, starting with passwords like "password" and "login," and ending with desperation Hail Marys like "FeelTheBern" and "Covfefe." Like a lot of films of this sort, UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB probably only works once, but it succeeds on a base, visceral level, especially once the stakes get serious and almost inconceivably cruel, leading to a late reveal reminiscent of a great late '90s paranoia thriller that's never really gotten the respect it deserves. Four endings were shot, and some different ones apparently played in various theaters around the country. Three are presented on the Blu-ray as alternate endings, and only one is even remotely uplifting. By no means is this some modern horror classic, but co-producer Timur Bekmambetov has a knack for shepherding these kinds of things where others (like Nacho Vigalondo's OPEN WINDOWS, which couldn't wait to ditch its core premise) have fallen short. Bekmambetov would finally perfect this online scare formula with the late summer sleeper hit SEARCHING, but like UNFRIENDED, this mean and uncompromising sequel surpasses expectations. (R, 92 mins)



DOWN A DARK HALL
(Spain/US - 2018)

Based on a 1974 YA novel by Lois Duncan (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Hotel for Dogs), DOWN A DARK HALL has some intriguing ideas but the story never comes together, getting bogged down in sentimentality and shot in such a murky, dimly-lit way that it's often impossible to tell what's going on. Updated to the present day with era-appropriate can't-even and "#whatever" 'tude, troubled teen Katherine "Kit" Gordy (AnnaSophia Robb) has been suspended from school, had a misdemeanor arrest, is facing an arson charge, and, as the school psychologist points out, is so disengaged from school that she got an F in gym. Kit's never gotten over the death of her beloved father when she was nine, and her mom (Kirsty Mitchell) and stepdad (Jim Sturgeon) are at a loss as to what to do with her. Dr. Sinclair (Jodhi May) recommends she be sent to the remote, isolated, and ominously gothic-looking Blackwood Boarding School, run by Madame Duret (Uma Thurman, apparently entering the "sinister boarding school headmistress" phase of her career). There's only four other students--Izzy (ORPHAN's Isabelle Fuhrman), Sierra (Rosie Day), Ashley (Taylor Russell), and pyromaniac mean girl Veronica (Victoria Moroles)--all with behavioral and psychological issues, though Madame Duret is certain she can find the artistic, creative young women within. It isn't long before aspiring painter Sierra is crafting brilliant, ambitious canvases, brainy Izzy is solving impossible mathematical equations, and Kit, who long ago abandoned her interest in music, is playing emotionally-draining and difficult pieces on the piano, almost as if a spirit has possessed each of them them and is bleeding the art out of them. And of course, they start seeing ghosts in the hallways along with other supernatural happenings, all of which are written off by the clearly up-to-something Madame Duret.

Directed by Rodrigo Cortes (BURIED, RED LIGHTS) and co-written by Chris Sparling (BURIED, ATM, THE SEA OF TREES), DOWN A DARK HALL benefits from some well-crafted, Guillermo del Toro-esque production design in the long corridors of Blackwood, but once the horror kicks in, too much of the film is spent trying to watch Kit wander around in almost total darkness until an occasional spectral jump scare appears in the frame. Robb (SOUL SURFER) is convincingly angry without coming across as too obnoxiously bratty, and Thurman has some fun with a freewheeling, all-purpose Euro accent as Madame Duret, but DOWN A DARK HALL has too many tedious stretches, and once its ghostly goings-on are explained, it doesn't really hold up to much scrutiny even by horror genre standards, especially considering that the recruitment of these "gifted" girls has been going on undetected for quite some time. It looks great when you can see what's going on, and the setting, the characters, and the climax definitely have some enjoyable shout-outs to SUSPIRIA, but even with the easy box office of YA-based horror, it's not really a mystery why Summit and Lionsgate relegated this misfire to VOD this past summer with its 2016 copyright still displayed in the credits. (PG-13, 96 mins)

In Theaters: UPGRADE (2018)

UPGRADE
(US/Australia - 2018)

Written and directed by Leigh Whannell. Cast: Logan Marshall-Green, Betty Gabriel, Harrison Gilbertson, Melanie Vallejo, Benedict Hardie, Linda Cropper, Richard Cawthorne, Christopher Kirby, Clayton Jacobson, voice of Simon Maiden. (R, 100 mins)

An imaginative take on the revenge thriller, the high-concept UPGRADE wouldn't have been out of place as Vidmark Entertainment title in the new release section of your favorite video store in the early '90s. That's meant as a compliment, as it's a fast, mean, and cynical indictment of our reliance on technology that has a message but doesn't take itself so seriously that it forgets to be entertaining. In other words, it's a B-movie like they used to make. In a vaguely-defined near-future America with self-driving cars, omnipresent surveillance drones, and MINORITY REPORT touch-screens everywhere, proudly blue-collar and stubbornly Luddite mechanic Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) is a man out of his time. He hates technology, still listens to music on vinyl, drinks Budweiser, and refuses to use his wife Asha's (Melanie Vallejo) self-driving, autonomous car. Asha's the primary breadwinner, working for a robotics corporation called Cobalt, but Grey makes some decent money restoring old muscle cars for rich guys with money to burn. Asha is stunned to learn that Grey's latest client is Eron Keen (Harrison Gilbertson), a brilliant and reclusive young tech mogul who owns Vessel, a groundbreaking company whose achievements have far surpassed Cobalt. On the way home from delivering Keen's car, Asha's malfunctions and goes offline, speeding up and crashing until a rescue unit arrives and proceeds to kill Asha and shoot Grey in the back of the neck, leaving him to die.

Awakening after a three-month coma to find he's paralyzed from the neck down, Grey has no interest in being taken care of by machines or his mother (Linda Cropper), which leads to an attempted painkiller overdose. While recovering in the hospital, Grey is visited by Eron, who offers to make him a test subject in a secret experiment involving "STEM," his latest biomechanical creation. It's a small, insect-sized implant that will fuse with his spine and serve as the missing "bridge" between his brain and body, allowing him to walk again. The catch: it's still experimental and top-secret, so when he's not alone, he still has to be in the wheelchair and appear to be quadriplegic to everyone, including his mother. Once he learns to walk again, Grey is in for another surprise: STEM is alive, existing as a HAL 9000-like voice (Simon Maiden) that only he can hear. STEM not only assists in Grey's mobility but also with the investigation into Asha's murder, which is at a dead-end with Cortez (Betty Gabriel), the lone wolf cop who caught the case. Watching drone surveillance footage through Grey's eyes, STEM is able to identify one of the killers--all of whom have surgically implanted shotguns embedded in their arms that fire out of the palms of their hands--and directs Grey to his address. A scuffle ensues and Grey is getting his ass handed to him, at which point STEM informs him "I need your permission to operate independently." With permission granted, Grey becomes a one-man killing machine, reborn and unstoppable thanks to STEM's all-knowing, all-seeing technology, especially once STEM warns him that a concerned Eron is trying to take him offline and has him visit a hacker with specific directions to override its creator's capabilities.

Written and directed by SAW and INSIDIOUS writer/co-star Leigh Whannell, UPGRADE has its share of jokey, crowd-pleasing moments, with some insanely over-the-top splatter kills and one very nicely-done car chase. Whannell's script does let Grey's transformation from "everyman who can't fathom ending someone's life" to "wisecracking vigilante smartass" happen a little too abruptly, as he's only offing the second guy responsible for Asha's death before he's already dropping bon mots like "Don't you know I'm a fucking ninja?" The technophobic chip on Grey's shoulder is a little overplayed early on, with Whannell working too hard to present him as a working class hero of the future, but the message gets less ham-fisted the more UPGRADE goes on, with a pair of late revelations and an unexpected ending that's downbeat enough that you have to wonder if Whannell had to fight to keep it. It's a potentially star-making role for Marshall-Green (PROMETHEUS, THE INVITATION), whose performance is both gritty and funny, whether he's interacting with the voice of STEM to create a back-and-forth buddy movie that exists only in his head, or in some of his inspired, Buster Keaton-like physical acting when Grey cedes control of himself to STEM, pulling off the effect that his entire body is a puppet on a hardwired string. And after making a memorable impression in the second and best PURGE installment, her unforgettable work as Georgina in GET OUT, and with her tough, incredulous Cortez here, it's time for Gabriel to be rewarded with her own movie. Goofy, fast-moving, and ultraviolent, UPGRADE pulls off a lot with a pretty low budget. There's definitely some word-of-mouth sleeper hit potential, not to mention a very probable cult following once it hits streaming and then lands in cable rotation for the next few decades.

In Theaters: GET OUT (2017)

GET OUT
(US - 2017)

Written and directed by Jordan Peele. Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Lakeith Stanfield, Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel, Lil Rel Howery, Richard Herd, Erika Alexander, Trey Burvant. (R, 104 mins)

GET OUT is getting the best reviews of any 2017 release thus far, and when a genre film shows any degree of insight and razor-sharp social commentary, it's easy to overrate it. But GET OUT is one of the best and smartest fright flicks to come along in a while--caustic, uncomfortable, and refusing to pull punches, but remembering to be entertaining and witty at the same time. It deftly balances the majority of its time being genuinely unnerving but also with more than its share of funny moments, some engineered to make you laugh out loud and others designed to make you uneasy. The directing debut of KEY AND PEELE's Jordan Peele, who also scripted, GET OUT stars Daniel Kaluuya (SICARIO and the "Fifteen Million Merits" episode of BLACK MIRROR) as Chris Washington, a 26-year-old photographer who's about to go away for the weekend to meet the parents of Rose Armitage (GIRLS' Allison Willliams), his girlfriend of four months. He's a bit nervous--he's black, she's white, and she hasn't told them--but she assures him that they won't have a problem with him. The ride there includes a collision with a deer and an unpleasant run-in with a local cop (Chris is quick to comply, realizing it doesn't take much for a situation to escalate from zero to Trayvon Martin), but once at the estate of the wealthy Armitages, things are pleasant if awkward. Rose's mom Missy (Catherine Keener) is a psychiatrist who wants to hypnotize Chris to help him quit smoking, and her neurologist dad Dean (Bradley Whitford) means well but tries too hard to ingratiate himself, with everything from repeatedly calling Chris "My man," to numerous mentions that he "would've voted for Obama a third time," and asking how long Chris and Rose's "thaaang" has been going on.

Chris has a strange dinner conversation with Rose's brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) where Jeremy tells him he has the physique to be a monster MMA fighter. He's also taken aback by the presence of two oddly-behaving black employees--groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) and housekeeper Georgina (Betty Gabriel)--who aren't very good at conversation and have dead, vacant stares in their eyes. Dean says he hired them to help out when his parents were ailing and after they died, he didn't have the heart to let them go ("I know how it looks," Dean says). The Armitages hold a party for all of their wealthy and almost across-the-board elderly friends, all of whom try too hard to appeal to Chris, whether it's feeling his biceps, mentioning how much they like Tiger Woods, or making winking assumptions about how well-endowed he must be. Chris seems to be used to well-intentioned whites trying too hard but something isn't sitting well with him. He believes Missy hypnotized him without his knowledge and he recognizes Logan (Lakeith Stanfield), the young black companion of a 30-years-older white woman, as Andre, an old acquaintance of a friend of a friend who went missing six months ago. Chris takes a pic of him to send to his dog-sitting buddy Rod (a scene-stealing Lil Rel Howell) but he forgets to turn off the flash and it causes a brief seizure where Logan, who dresses like an old man and has no idea how to fist-bump, snaps out of his stupor and seems to briefly take on another personality until he's attended to by Missy. Rod theorizes that "rich white people are brainwashing brothers into becoming sex slaves," and while Chris laughs it off, his paranoia grows more intense by the minute and he can't ignore his gut feeling that something is very wrong here.

Of course, something is wrong but GET OUT doesn't quite go in the direction the trailers and your initial assumptions might indicate. It invokes a few classics from the 1970s, from THE WICKER MAN to MESSIAH OF EVIL and one in particular that's too much of a spoiler to mention. Despite its modern themes, it actually feels like a 1970s movie in both its working in of social issues and the emphasis on building suspense instead of focusing on gore and cheap jump scares (though a couple of jump scares here work quite well). In the end, GET OUT ends up being more about class division than racial injustice, a scathing rebuke not just of white privilege but also the entitlement of the wealthy for whom money--and people--are no object. No one is immune from criticism--even Chris is shown time and again to be a pushover and someone who doesn't want to rock the boat. Peele's script piles on the unease and the dread until it's almost suffocating, broken up by Rod's comic relief that's actually a welcome breather from the choking tension (Rod's Jeffrey Dahmer rant is one for the ages). Performances are pitch perfect across the board, whether it's Whitford's vaguely passive-aggressive glad-handing as Dean or Gabriel's often heartbreaking turn as Georgina, whose constant smile always seems a little too forced, masking a sadness that isn't lost on Chris. Alternately frightening, funny, and thought-provoking, with the kind of crowd-pleasing finale that horror movies used to know how to deliver, GET OUT isn't a quite an instant classic, but it's one of the stronger genre offerings of late, and one that establishes Peele, already a respected comedian and satirist, as a serious filmmaker to watch.