This meta slasher film sendup gets rolling with a surprisingly clever premise before bogging down and occasionally becoming a little too pleased with itself and displaying a sense of cult movie entitlement. As the film opens, Max Cartwright (Taissa Farmiga) and her mother Amanda (Malin Akerman) are in a car accident in which only Max survives. Amanda was a struggling actress still trying to catch a big break but can't with the albatross that is CAMP BLOODBATH, a classic summer camp slasher movie from 1986 in which she played a victim. Three years after the car crash, movie nerd Duncan (Thomas Middleditch) invites Max to be the guest speaker at a screening of CAMP BLOODBATH and its 1987 sequel CAMP BLOODBATH 2: CRUEL SUMMER. A fire breaks out in the theater and with the exits engulfed in flames, Duncan, Amanda, her best friend Gertie (Alia Shawkat), her former best friend Vicki (Nina Dobrev), and sensitive jock Chris (Alexander Ludwig) try to escape by cutting through the screen. Once they're on the other side, they find that they're in CAMP BLOODBATH, with the film's camp counselors passing them in a van every 92 minutes, the precise length of the film. It's here that Max encounters her mother, playing a counselor named Nancy, and they're all pursued by the film's hulking, Jason-like killer Billy (Daniel Norris). The presence of Amanda and the others sets off a new chain of events within the film, one that Billy and the camp counselor victims must adjust to, and in the course of altering the outcome of the film, inadvertently cause the death CAMP BLOODBATH's virginal "final girl" Paula (Chloe Bridges), the only one able to kill Billy within the definitions and tropes of the slasher genre. The visitors must work together with the actors in the film to take on Billy, while Max takes advantage of the opportunity to spend more time with her mother, even if she exists as a character named Nancy.
Funny without being too spoofy, THE FINAL GIRLS is like a slasher film take on THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, with the meta aspects of everything from SCREAM to WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE to even the cult film POPCORN. After an inspired set-up, things slow down and grow repetitive as the filmmakers belabor the point, and isn't as consistently clever as it thinks it is. Still, there's a lot of affection in the script by M.A. Forton and Joshua John Miller (son of EXORCIST star Jason Miller, and best known for his days as a child actor in RIVER'S EDGE and as the vampire Homer in NEAR DARK), with nods to tons of slasher films (even a reference to the waterbed line from PIECES!), and any film that opens with an homage to the old-school Vestron Video logo obviously has its heart in the right place. Director Todd Strauss-Schulson (A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS) does a nice job staging inventive kills, but the more the film goes on, the more forced the winking and nudging becomes. THE FINAL GIRLS opens and closes strong but doesn't quite have everything it needs to be crowned the next cult classic. (PG-13, 91 mins) TIGER HOUSE (South Africa/UK - 2015)
A forgettable and at times laughable home invasion thriller, TIGER HOUSE almost gets by on the strong screen presence of THE MAZE RUNNER's Kaya Scodelario, who capably carries the film despite being seemingly aware that it's a losing battle. Scodelario is Kelly, a dropout from the wrong side of the tracks who's in love with Mark (Daniel Boyd), whose domineering mother Lynn (Julie Summers) doesn't approve of her son's choice in girlfriends. Kelly sneaks into Mark's house via a second floor bedroom window so the two can fool around, but their plans are thwarted when a team of gunmen led by Shane (Dougray Scott) and Callum (THE TRANSPORTER: REFUELED's Ed Skrein) barge in to take the family hostage as part of a plot to rob the bank that Mark's stepdad Doug (Andrew Brent) manages. Shane is badly injured during the initial invasion and spends most of the film lying on Mark's bed bleeding out, with Kelly hiding directly underneath. She eventually gets out and proceeds to make her way in and out of the house, up and down the floors, and into and out of the attic as she tries to avoid the invaders and start taking them out HOME ALONE-style once she finds a crossbow in the attic. TIGER HOUSE is pretty by-the-numbers for this sort of thing, at least until the unintentionally hilarious climax with the second floor of the house engulfed in flames while Callum is downstairs in the kitchen making a sandwich with no smoke in sight. It's amazing that there's no smoke alarms in this high-tech fortress, which Doug has equipped with a dozen security and sound monitors that ultimately never come into play. Shane's crew have to be the least observant team of inept chucklefucks in the history of the home invasion genre. Two of them could be standing in a room talking and Kelly somehow manages to walk right out of that very room undetected. At one point, Callum goes up into the attic to find Kelly only to end up locked up there when she manages to sneak out while his back is turned. Of course, there's a twist ending that's completely predictable, plus a showdown that blatantly cribs from RESERVOIR DOGS. TIGER HOUSE is watchable thanks to the tough and committed performance of Scodelario, but that's absolutely all it has going for it. It's not enough. (R, 83 mins)
WE ARE STILL HERE (US - 2015)
WE ARE STILL HERE is an anomaly in today's cult horror scene--a 1970s throwback that's completely lacking in irony, played totally straight, and cast with middle-aged actors. Writer-director Ted Geoghegan throws out a ton of references and shout-outs, cribbing elements of THE FOG, THE CHANGELING, THE WICKER MAN, and even STRAW DOGS, and displaying a particular affinity to the glory days of Lucio Fulci. The main characters share a surname with frequent Fulci screenwriting collaborator Dardano Sacchetti, other characters have the same names as those in Fulci's THE BEYOND and THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (both 1981), and the film involves the vengeful spirit of man named "Lassander Dagmar," an inversion of cult actress and Fulci veteran Dagmar Lassander. Anne and Paul Sacchetti (Barbara Crampton of RE-ANIMATOR and Andrew Sensenig) are still grieving over the death of their college-age son Bobby in a car crash a few months earlier. Seeking a change of scenery and needing a new place to rebuild their lives, they purchase an old house in rural upstate New York. It isn't long before Anne senses Bobby's presence in the house, and despite Paul's skepticism, she reaches out to May and Jacob Lewis (Lisa Marie and cult filmmaker and Wendigo enthusiast Larry Fessenden, whose involvement in a low-budget B horror movie is apparently required by law), hippie mediums whose son Harry (Michael Patrick) was a friend of Bobby's. May immediately feels a malevolent force in the house, and things get even weirder when the townies cast suspicious eyes on them at a local restaurant. The house was formerly a funeral home run by the Dagmar family, who were victimized by the locals in 1949 amidst allegations that they were abusing corpses and not giving the dead proper burials. The house has a history that was deliberately kept from the Sacchettis, and neighbor Dave McCabe's (Monte Markham) constant reminders that "This house needs a family" prove to be more sinister than folksy.
Though it's never specified and Geoghegan's use of period detail is subtle, we can assume the film is taking place in 1979, but to his credit, he never gets kitschy or winking about it. It's a slow-burning and very character-driven film that could've been made in 1981 and takes its time getting into the routine of Anne and Paul, giving you time to know them and feel their loss. WE ARE STILL HERE doesn't go for loud jump scares and is one of those films that has you looking all over the frame, waiting for something to materialize. Geoghegan's demonstrations of genre affection never distract from the story, though unlike the Fulci films he obviously holds near and dear, he feels the need to explain everything. The film's one stumble is an initially scary sequence that turns silly when Dagmar possesses one of the characters and instantly turns him into a demonic Basil Exposition, grunting reams of backstory explaining why he still haunts the house and why the locals must pay. It regains its footing quickly, and the finale is quite unexpectedly emotional. All in all, WE ARE STILL HERE with its effective scares and chilly, dread-soaked atmosphere, is one of the rare horror films of recent years that deserves its fawning fanboy accolades, especially with its unusual decision to appeal to grownups by focusing on people in their 50s as well as providing 80-year-old veteran character actor Markham with his meatiest role in years. WE ARE STILL HERE is the kind of well-done retro-shocker that Ti West fans think Ti West makes. (Unrated, 83 mins)
An absolutely atrocious EXORCIST ripoff, THE VATICAN TAPES was directed by Mark Neveldine, best known as half of Neveldine/Taylor, the duo behind the brilliant and insane CRANK (2006). Unfortunately, they've made nothing but unwatchable garbage since (CRANK: HIGH VOLTAGE, GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE) and in stepping out for his debut solo joint, Neveldine just has nothing to say and only succeeds in further proving CRANK was a fluke. How many more of these generic, PG-13 possession movies do we need? It's been 42 years since THE EXORCIST--anyone making a demonic possession movie has to realize they have nothing new to bring to the table, right? With the pointless THE VATICAN TAPES, we just get more of the same, only dumber: attractive young woman (Olivia Taylor Dudley as Angela) gets possessed by a demon after accidentally cutting her finger. As her erratic behavior increases--vomiting; speaking an archaic language she couldn't possibly know; trying to drown a baby in the maternity ward; willing a detective to smash light bulbs into his eyes--she's discharged by the hospital shrink (Kathleen Robertson) into the care of a priest (Michael Pena) who appeals to the church higher-ups until a cardinal (Peter Andersson) who, natch, is some kind of legendary possession whisperer, is dispatched from Vatican City. In between all that, there's lots of mandatory found footage snippets (with a bunch of footage the Vatican couldn't possibly have on file), as the framing story of the film has a vicar (Djimon Hounsou) watching the already-occurred events on what must be the Vatican's top secret "Exorcism's Greatest Hits" YouTube channel.
THE VATICAN TAPES is shameful in the way it wastes overqualified actors: I expect to find Dougray Scott scowling as Angela's overprotective military dad and Michael Pare slouching as a detective, but why is two-time Oscar nominee Hounsou slumming through this, completely wasted in such a frivolous, nothing supporting role that anyone could've played? Why is Pena prominently billed but stepping aside while Andersson's Cardinal does all the exorcising? Swedish actor Andersson, with his unusual screen presence and strange performance (he looks like a shaven-headed David Gilmour and practically growls his dialogue like Christian Bale doing his Batman voice), is the only remotely interesting element of this otherwise miserable waste of time, unless you count an absurd scene where Angela vomits three whole eggs ("The Holy Trinity!" the Cardinal gravely declares) in a moment more reminiscent of AIRPLANE! than THE EXORCIST. It's insultingly bad, and might even be worse than THE DEVIL INSIDE and THE LAST EXORCISM PART II. Lionsgate knew they had a turd on their hands--they shuffled this off to their Pantelion division, specializing in films aimed at Latino audiences, and only released it on 420 screens. There's nothing here specifically geared toward Latino moviegoers (or any moviegoers, for that matter), unless you count the presence of Pena, and if that was their only justification for slapping the Pantelion logo on this, then the level of audience contempt is just off the charts. Fuck this movie. (PG-13, 91 mins) Z FOR ZACHARIAH (US/Switzerland/Iceland - 2015)
Z FOR ZACHARIAH is a confused adaptation of the 1974 sci-fi novel by Robert C. O'Brien, whose Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH was made into the 1982 animated film THE SECRET OF NIMH. Director Craig Zobel (COMPLIANCE) and screenwriter Nissar Modi take so many liberties with O'Brien's novel--for no real reason--that by the end, you'll wonder why they even bothered. The novel centered on two characters: Ann Burden and John Loomis, the apparent sole survivors of a nuclear disaster. The film starts out the same way, with Ann (Margot Robbie) encountering John (Chiwetel Ejiofor) exploring near her farm in a contamination suit. Ann's farm rests in a deep valley that somehow managed to avoid radioactive contamination. John is a chemist who was working in an underground science lab. Ann welcomes John into her home and for a while, the two live a life of platonic domesticity, fishing, farming, and surviving. Things get complicated when Ann makes romantic overtures and a hesitant John is afraid of ruining what they have, instead holding her and telling her they've got plenty of time to take that next step. Zobel and Modi have already dramatically strayed from the novel: Robbie's Ann is about a decade older than the 15-16-year-old girl O'Brien created, and in the book, it's John who makes mostly unwelcome advances on the underage girl, leading to tension for the duration of the story that escalates into violence by the end. At the point where John tells her they should wait, the filmmakers complicate things in the most cliched way imaginable with the mid-film introduction of Caleb (Chris Pine), a character completely invented by the filmmakers. The presence of Caleb immediately creates a standard-issue love triangle, made even more hackneyed by the racial element that didn't exist in the novel because John was white and is now being played by a black actor, with Ejiofor's John even making a snide comment to Ann about her now having a white guy in her life.
If this sounds familiar, that's because instead of an adaptation of O'Brien's novel, Zobel and Modi seem to have just gone ahead and made a rural farmland remake of the 1959 film THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL, where an abandoned NYC is inhabited by two survivors--black Harry Belafonte and white Inger Stevens--whose peaceful existence is complicated by the arrival of a third, an erudite and vaguely bigoted white guy played by Mel Ferrer. They don't even bother to explain the novel's meaning of the title Z FOR ZACHARIAH. The actors bring their A-games: Ejiofor and Robbie are very good and even with the earlier deviations from the book, things are working because they work so well together. Through it's not his fault, the film skids into a ditch when Pine's Caleb shows up and whatever is left of O'Brien's story basically gets tossed so he and John can glower at each other over who's going to get in Ann's pants first. Shot in New Zealand and West Virginia, Z FOR ZACHARIAH looks great, but nobody seemed to have any idea what direction to head in with this thing, rendering the entire project pointless. (PG-13, 98 mins) I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE III: VENGEANCE IS MINE (US - 2015)
The 2010 remake of Meir Zarchi's 1977 grindhouse rape/revenge cult classic I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE was surprisingly not terrible, brutal as hell and one of the relatively better torture porn outings, with a committed, ferocious performance by Sarah Butler as a young woman who's gang-raped and, to put it mildly, goes medieval on the asses of the men responsible. One wouldn't think it would spawn a franchise but then, 2013's terrible I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2 was really just another remake, minus Butler, with the setting moved to Bulgaria and with Jemma Dallender as another victim of gang-rape who turns the tables on her attackers. Butler returns for this third installment, which ignores the second film and functions as a direct sequel to the first. Here, Jennifer (Butler) is now calling herself Angela and is in regular sessions with her therapist (Harley Jane Kozak sighting, and she's a long way away from PARENTHOOD and ARACHNOPHOBIA) and attending a weekly rape victims support group. She still encounters creeps everywhere she goes (even a homeless guy grunts "Nice tits" as she gives him some spare change) and is so stand-offish that her co-workers think she's a bitch. She finally befriends group member Marla (Jennifer Landon, Michael's daughter)--whose grating behavior has to be a nod to Helena Bonham Carter's Marla in FIGHT CLUB--only to lose her when she's killed by her crazy ex-boyfriend, who's set free due to lack of evidence. This sets off Jennifer/Angela's vigilante within, and she becomes an angel of vengeance, getting rid of all the male pigs that have caused so much pain and anguish in the group. Of course, hapless SVU detective McDylan (Gabriel Hogan) and hard-nosed homicide investigator Boyle (Michelle Hurd, a long way from the first season of LAW & ORDER: SVU) don't take long to figure out that Angela is a prime suspect, along with the bitter, frothing-at-the-mouth Oscar (Doug McKeon, a long way from ON GOLDEN POND), the lone male in the support group, there to find closure over the suicide of his teenage daughter, a victim who lost her will to live when her rapist got off on a technicality.
Though the reveal isn't handled very well, there's actually a fairly interesting third act plot twist that's telegraphed in distracting ways but probably looked great on paper. Even if director R.D. Braunstein and first-time screenwriter Daniel Gilboy didn't botch their admittedly ambitious whopper in the finale, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE III would still be a pretty dumb movie. The deck is completely stacked, with every human being with a penis a leering, salivating threat. Every cop is an idiot, the legal system is useless, Jennifer/Angela's character arc is a tired cliche, and Butler, so strong playing it straight in the first film, just goes for a grinning, crazy-eyes approach here and comes off as cartoonish, especially when she starts busting out the Freddy Krueger one-liners, like quipping "Just the tip!" when she spits out the bitten-off head of a guy's cock after starting to suck him off, slicing it in the middle and opening it up like she's peeling a banana with both hands; or "You don't deserve the lubricant but it won't go in otherwise" as she's about to shove a long pipe with a daunting circumference up the ass of a man regularly molesting his stepdaughter. Looking at her performances in the first and third films, it's obvious Butler's a strong heroine when playing tough and pissed-off, but she doesn't do nearly as good a job going over-the-top crazy. It's completely skippable, especially since the two big splatter moments (the "just the tip" bit is so graphically over-the-top and so instant-NC-17-worthy that it's actually funny) are likely to become YouTube favorites rather quickly. (Unrated, 91 mins)
TAKEN 3 (France/US - 2015) Directed by Olivier Megaton. Written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. Cast: Liam Neeson, Forest Whitaker, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Dougray Scott, Leland Orser, Jon Gries, David Warshofsky, Don Harvey, Dylan Bruno, Sam Spruell, Andrew Howard, Jonny Weston, Al Sapienza, Wallace Langham, Steve Coulter. (PG-13, 109 mins)
With no one else in his family left to be abducted by evil Albanian human traffickers and their vengeful relatives, retired CIA special ops badass Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) channels his inner Richard Kimble when he returns to his apartment, picks up a knife on the floor and finds the dead body of his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) just as the cops barge in and he looks guilty as hell. A fleeing Mills takes advantage of his extensive knowledge of the layout of every home in the neighborhood, eventually evading his pursuers via a secret door in someone's garage that leads to the L.A. River. Mills goes on a city-wide rampage to prove his innocence--causing millions of dollars of damage in the process--while being doggedly pursued by Deputy Marshal Sam Gerard--er, I mean, Detective Frank Dotzler (Forest Whitaker), who demonstrates his eccentricity and intelligence by constantly twirling a knight chess piece between his fingers and marveling at the wily Mills' ability to evade capture.
NEESON!
TAKEN 3 is the least and hopefully last of this Luc Besson action franchise. Neeson stumbled into a second career as an aging action hero with the surprise success of the first TAKEN back in 2009. That film seems like gritty neo-realism when held up against the events that unfold in TAKEN 3, in which everyone involved is simply going through the motions, starting with Neeson. The actor's seemingly effortless gravitas just fizzles here, and for the first time in his action-star phase, Neeson looks bored and completely checked out. One can't blame him, considering the idiocy of Besson's and Robert Mark Kamen's script and the abysmal direction of Besson protege and returning TAKEN 2 helmer Olivier Megaton, who previously steered another solid action series to its nadir with 2008's TRANSPORTER 3. It's bad enough that the story is essentially a ripoff of THE FUGITIVE (with one of the guilty parties missing a pinky instead of an arm), but TAKEN 3 is dumb even by Besson standards. There's one sequence where Mills' daughter Kim (31-year-old Maggie Grace, still apparently playing 20 or 21), who jokes about inheriting her father's "OCD gene," is on her way to school and makes her morning stop at a carryout for a peach yogurt drink (always grabbing the fourth drink from the front) only this time, there's a note from her on-the-run dad on the fourth container back saying "Drink this now." It's been drugged with something to make her sick a bit later, but he did so in order to get her to leave her class and head to the restroom to vomit, where he's waiting with an antidote, so he can talk to her. Is there some reason he couldn't just put a note on the container telling her to meet him in the ladies' room near her class? Why spike the yogurt smoothie and deliberately cause gastrointestinal distress? What if she didn't make it to the restroom? It just seems like more work than necessary. I'd say Mills was overthinking it, but there's absolutely no way that "overthinking" and "TAKEN 3" should be mentioned in the same sentence.
NEESON!
The plot is as standard-issue and by-the-numbers as it gets and a better script would've provided some more back-and-forth phone banter, mind games, and grudging respect between Neeson's Mills and Whitaker's Dotzler. Both actors are capable of more than TAKEN 3 allows them to do or cares for them to attempt. Of course Mills is being framed. Of course some stock Russian mobsters--led by ruthless ex-Spetsnaz killing machine Oleg Malankov (Sam Spruell)--are behind it all. And of course it has something to do with Malankov seeking revenge for some shady and collapsed business deal with Lenore's asshole husband Stewart, now played by Janssen's HEMLOCK GROVE co-star Dougray Scott (replacing Xander Berkeley), bland and lifeless here and looking like he still hasn't recovered from losing the role of Wolverine in 2000's X-MEN to second-choice Hugh Jackman after being stuck working on reshoots for the behind-schedule MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE II. As dumb and uninspired as TAKEN 3 is (don't miss Mills driving a car down an elevator shaft), it's really Megaton's directing style that's the biggest deal-breaker. There is no scene that Megaton can't chop into nanosecond increments that would give Michael Bay a bout of vertigo. Action sequences are just a blurry smear of colors and quick cuts. Featuring three nausea-inducing car chases that make GETAWAY look like THE SEVEN-UPS, TAKEN 3's action is lost in a headachy haze of CGI vehicle flips and shaky-cam incoherence, much of which seems to be orchestrated around Neeson's stunt double. There are a few shots where you can tell Neeson is involved (the brawl in the carryout, for example), but most of the time, there's some alarmingly Seagal-esque chicanery going on where you see Mills fighting but not his face, as Megaton cuts to a close-up of a grimacing Neeson before cutting back to Mills fighting, as "Neeson" is either shot from behind or his head is out of the frame. On one hand, sure, at 62, Neeson's not a young man anymore, but in his other action movies, he's made a point of doing as much as he could. One can hardly blame him for not caring enough about the quality of TAKEN 3 or rightfully concluding that it wasn't worth risking injury on something so subpar. TAKEN was a surprise, lightning-in-a-bottle blockbuster that became a modern action classic. TAKEN 2 was an unnecessary but stupidly enjoyable victory lap. TAKEN 3 shows the franchise in a downward spiral worthy of the last two DIE HARD movies and is just no fun for anyone, from the actors to the audience. Liam Neeson is the man, and in films like THE GREY and A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES, he brings a "thinking man's asskicker" complexity to his roles, and in something like NON-STOP, he manages to overcome the obstacles and still deliver a strong, convincing performance. But even Neeson can't conceal his TAKEN burnout with his half-hearted clock-punch of a performance here. Perhaps it's time for him to use the very particular set of skills that he's acquired over a long career and move on to something new.
