On Blu-ray/DVD: ARCTIC (2019), THE HOLE IN THE GROUND (2019) and AMERICAN HANGMAN (2019)

ARCTIC
(US/Iceland - 2019)

A showcase for the always-reliable Danish character actor Mads Mikkelsen, ARCTIC is a cold and punishingly harsh survivalist saga from Brazilian musician-turned-debuting filmmaker Joe Penna. Shot in some desolate locations in Iceland with nothing to see but vast, snow-covered nothingness, the film gets a committed and physically demanding performance from Mikkelsen, and opens in medias res with almost no backstory as his character, Overgard, goes about his daily routine after being stranded somewhere in the Arctic. He sleeps in a crashed plane, but spends his days mapping coordinates, checking various fishing lines, and hand-cranking a small distress beacon. The only sign of life in the area is an occasional sighting of a lone polar bear who invades his camp and steals some fish while he's away. He spots a rescue helicopter that gets caught in a snowy wind gust during a whiteout and crashes. The pilot is killed and the lone passenger, a woman (Maria Thelma), is severely injured and barely conscious. Overgard raids the chopper for food and equipment--including a sled--and takes the woman back to his plane. With no sign of a further rescue attempt and the woman's situation growing more dire by the hour, he makes the decision to embark on a several-day hike, pulling her on a sled over the snowy terrain to where he believes a remote seasonal rescue station might be.

That's really it as far as the story goes. Almost all of ARCTIC's effectiveness comes from Mikkelsen, who has minimal dialogue and lets his weary, exhausted, exposed face say everything. Penna put Mikkelsen and Thelma out in the brutal elements (except for a couple of composited moments that look like post-production reshoots and do somewhat stick out like a sore thumb), and in addition to fighting off a polar bear with a flare (another scene that's dampened by some obvious CGI), there's a long, arduous sequence where Overgard encounters a mountain that wasn't on the map, and tries to haul the woman and the sled over it FITZCARRALDO-style, eventually giving up and opting to go around it, which will add another five days to the trip at a time when every moment counts. Speaking of FITZCARRALDO, one is reminded of Werner Herzog while watching ARCTIC, as Penna isn't afraid to let things unfold in a way that captures the monotony and the hopelessness while never being dull. He tells you next-to-nothing about Overgard or the woman (we briefly see his pilot's license, and we're led to assume the dead chopper pilot was her husband), and we only learn who they are over the course of this journey, as Overgard is a man who's willing to risk his life to save a stranger. We've seen these triumph of the human spirit stories countless times before, and they live or die based on the star. Mikkelsen's work here isn't as showy as James Franco in 127 HOURS nor does he carry the iconic weight of the legendary Robert Redford in ALL IS LOST, but it's a study in low-key persistence and quiet determination. That, and the pervasive sense of isolation are the standouts in ARCTIC, a tough sell that Bleecker Street only got on 268 screens at its widest release, but it's a must see for fans of Mikkelsen and survivalist cinema. (PG-13, 98 mins)



THE HOLE IN THE GROUND
(Ireland/Belgium/Finland - 2019)

Released a week before Nicholas McCarthy's THE PRODIGY, this past spring's other "evil kid" movie, albeit on a much smaller scale (A24 put it on just 24 screens and VOD), THE HOLE IN THE GROUND has a handful of effective moments, but can't stop tripping over its own feet and more importantly, can't settle on what it wants to be. Right from the start, with a high aerial shot of a yellow vehicle driving down a road through a forest, director/co-writer Lee Cronin is letting us know that he's seen THE SHINING, and the entire film ends up feeling like warmed-up leftovers from other horror films, namely THE BABADOOK and HEREDITARY. Living in the outskirts of a rural Irish town, Sarah (Seana Kerslake) works in an antique shop and is a single mom to young Chris (James Quinn Markey). She's evasive about her past and has to style her hair to hide a large scar on her forehead that presumably came from an abusive, estranged husband. One gets the sense that she's fled rather than moved and doesn't want to be found ("I know Dad makes you sad," Chris tells her), and she's on edge enough that the town doc prescribes a mild anxiety medication. Sarah and Chris live in an old, dark house bordered by an expansive forest with a massive sinkhole. Chris wanders off near the sinkhole and from that point on, Sarah feels something is different about him. Her increasing paranoia isn't helped by two near-misses in the middle of a road with local crazy woman Noreen Brady (Kati Outinen), who gets right in Sarah's face and declares "It's not your boy." Noreen's husband Des (the great James Cosmo) apologizes for his wife, but the townies know all about Noreen: years earlier, she became convinced that her own son was replaced by an impostor and she "accidentally" ran him down with her car and has been in a virtually catatonic state since.

Shortly after, Sarah happens upon Noreen's dead body near the side of the road her head buried in the dirt. Chris' behavior grows more erratic, with Sarah finding all the proof she needs when he has no idea what to do during an affectionate game the two have played for years, where they each make a funny face to see who laughs first. There's some intriguing ideas here about motherhood, which is where the BABADOOK parallels are most prevalent (though Markey's Chris isn't grating like the BABADOOK kid), and the panic and dread Sarah feels in looking at Chris and wondering if he's just like his father. That psychological horror gives way to something more, with Chris eating spiders and crawling on the floor like one, and demonstrating enough strength to throw Sarah around the kitchen. Cronin wants to deal in both metaphor and reality, and the story begins working at cross purposes. The atmospheric look turns to murkiness as it goes on, with Cronin indulging in pointless directorial flourishes like a perpetually flickering light in a dark basement and an inevitable journey into the sinkhole, where something even more horrific awaits. A debuting Markey is fine, and the promising Kerslake delivers a strong performance--both stars could've benefited from more focused script instead of what feels like a greatest hits compilation of the last several years of acclaimed indie horrors. Though, to its credit, it does have one late-breaking development that kinda sorta prefigures Jordan Peele's US, which opened a month and a half later. (R, 90 mins)



AMERICAN HANGMAN
(Canada/UK - 2019)

It's not every day that you get a heavy-handed, SAW-inspired courtroom drama, but here's AMERICAN HANGMAN. A hectoring, finger-pointing lecture disguised as a suspense thriller, the film was written and directed by Wilson Coneybeare, a veteran of numerous Canadian kids TV shows in what appears to be a serious step away from his comfort zone in addition to being his first IMDb credit in a decade (back in the mid- '80s, he also wrote for the Don Adams-starring syndicated Canadian import CHECK IT OUT!). AMERICAN HANGMAN opens with two kidnapped men being carried into a concrete bunker of some kind. One is a guy named Ron (Paul Braunstein), who was sitting in his car in a fast-food parking lot, and the other is an elderly man (Donald Sutherland) who was unloading groceries in his driveway. Their captor (Vincent Kartheiser) snips off one of Ron's fingers and gives the two men five minutes to figure out their connection. When they can't come up with one, he shoots Ron in the head. All of this is captured by a dozen cameras in a complex tech set-up, with the captor broadcasting the events live across social media. It's soon picked up by cable news, the cops, and the public. The captor explains his actions: the old man is retired Judge Oliver Straight, who years ago sentenced a convicted child murderer to death. The convicted killer was executed that morning, but the captor, who says he's the victim's uncle, appoints himself "prosecutor," accusing the Judge of murder in sentencing the wrong man to die. Also on trial are the police and the media, who also joined in the mad rush to condemn the wrong man, and the millions of viewers who tune in as the stream goes viral are the judge and jury--"the voice of the people"--voting to sustain or overrule every objection and ultimately decide Judge Straight's fate.

AMERICAN HANGMAN plays like one of those CBS crime procedurals when they try to break from the formula and do something "deeper." It's pompously full of itself, taking rudimentary, fish-in-a-barrel shots at the "breaking news" culture of today's media, represented by ambitious USCN (United States Cable News) reporter Harper Grant (Lucia Walter), while at the same time utilizing every tired, generic trope in the book. The captor's motivation is supposed to be a third-act twist that's obvious from the start, and the wild goose chase he sends the cops on won't fool anyone who's seen THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. And Lt. Roy (Oliver Dennis), the cop put in charge of this as it unfolds over the course of the day, is also busy overseeing a shuttering precinct AND it's his last day before retirement (no word on whether he's "too old for this shit"). Judge Straight is apparently a man of renowned standing in his field, and the murder case in question was national news, but no one watching the stream in its early stages--the cops, the media, the public--recognizes him, and nobody seems to know that this is the day the girl's killer was set to be executed. And when Roy and his cops finally start getting an idea of who the captor is, one announces "He has a record for some sort of endangerment but he got off on a technicality, and get this...he's an IT guy!" like a bad LAW & ORDER: SVU episode, as Coneybeare is so preoccupied with pummeling the audience with messages that he loses any semblance of basic logic and common sense. Kartheiser, sporting dorky glasses and kind of unflattering bowl haircut that no normal, innocent non-creep would willingly have, isn't asked to do much other than yell Coneybeare's talking points, while Sutherland brings some effortless professionalism to a role that has him seated at a makeshift witness stand the entire time and was probably shot in a few days. He's obviously the best thing about AMERICAN HANGMAN, the kind of movie where a supporting character is named "Josh Harkridge" and we're still supposed to take it seriously. (Unrated, 99 mins)

On Netflix: OUTLAW KING (2018)

OUTLAW KING
(UK/US - 2018)

Directed by David Mackenzie. Written by Bash Doran, David Mackenzie, James MacInnes, David Harrower and Mark Bomback. Cast: Chris Pine, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Florence Pugh, Stephen Dillane, Billy Howle, Sam Spruell, Tony Curran, Callan Mulvey, James Cosmo, Steven Cree, Alastair Mackenzie, Chris Fulton, Lorne MacFadyen, Jack Greenlees, Josie O'Brien, Jonny Phillips, Tam Dean Burn. (R, 121 mins)

A longtime pet project of Scottish-born HELL OR HIGH WATER director David Mackenzie, OUTLAW KING tells the story of Robert the Bruce, King of Scots from 1306 until his death in 1329. The film takes place at the same time as the events depicted in Mel Gibson's BRAVEHEART (where Robert the Bruce was played by Angus MacFadyen). Sir William Wallace is invoked frequently, though his screen time is limited to a cameo by his severed arm following his execution. Like Wallace, Robert (played here by Chris Pine) took part in the rebellion against King Edward I of England (Stephen Dillane), who was asked to help choose a successor to Scotland's throne when the king had no heirs and promptly ended up claiming the land for himself. As the film opens in 1303, Robert is among the rebels begrudgingly pledging fealty to King Edward at the request of his acquiescing father (the great James Cosmo, also in BRAVEHEART and whose appearance in these sorts of medieval period pieces is apparently required by law), who sees it as the best option, as the alternative is execution.

The widower Robert, whose wife died several years earlier giving birth to their daughter Marjorie (Josie O'Brien), is also given King Edward's god-daughter Elizabeth Burgh (Florence Pugh) as part of the deal. The sense of peace and complacency doesn't last long: inheriting the title of the Earl of Carrack upon his father's death (their relationship is portrayed quite differently here than in BRAVEHEART), Robert is outraged to learn of the execution of Wallace and decides to reignite the rebellion against King Edward. Seeking an ally in rival John III Comyn (Callan Mulvey), Robert is denied and when Comyn threatens to turn him over to King Edward's forces, he impulsively murders him. He confesses his crime to the church, which agrees to give him absolution and pledge its fealty if he can defeat King Edward and reclaim Scotland. Crowned "King of Scots," Robert the Bruce and his loyal army are joined by displaced nobleman James Douglas (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) as King Edward's forces, led by his sniveling, power-crazed son Edward, Prince of Wales (Billy Howle) and the King's chief attack dog Aymer de Valance (Sam Spruell), proceed into Scotland, eventually capturing Elizabeth and Marjorie.

With its generous budget and epic battle scenes, OUTLAW KING probably would've benefited from a wide theatrical release instead of being relegated to the Netflix Original platform. While the script-- credited to five writers--is largely a spinoff of BRAVEHEART and doesn't really offer anything you haven't seen before (drink every time one of Robert's blood-soaked men yells), the film is technically ambitious and extremely well-made, with Mackenzie indulging in numerous long and complicated tracking shots (the opening sequence is almost nine uninterrupted minutes that establish numerous characters and conflicts in a rapid-fire fashion) and using natural lighting in some stunning and often breathtaking Scottish locations (he also cut it down from 137 minutes to 121 after a negative reception at the Toronto Film Fest). Anyone who's a fan of this sort of thing knows to expect a mud-caked bloodbath and on that end, especially with its climactic Battle of Loudoun Hill and its geysers of arterial spray, OUTLAW KING doesn't disappoint. Pine might initially seem miscast, but you get used to his mullet and he settles into the role nicely, especially in his scenes with LADY MACBETH star Pugh. She's terrific here as the supportive and fiercely outspoken Elizabeth and is quickly establishing herself as one of today's top young actresses from whom we'll be hearing a lot. Taylor-Johnson has a few standout moments as the almost-feral Douglas, while Dillane does a solid job of following in the footsteps of Patrick McGoohan, and gets off a couple of good jabs at his pathetic weasel of a son ("Well, you did manage to imprison a few women," he scoffs after the Prince's latest failed attempt to defeat Robert). Howle manages to create a villain you love to hate with his Prince of Wales, but it's a mostly cardboard display of bratty petulance that looks like he studied a highlight reel of Tim Roth in ROB ROY, Joffrey on GAME OF THRONES, and a few Donald Trump press conferences. There's apparently another Robert the Bruce film in the works for 2019, one that stars Angus MacFadyen in his most famous role, though it's hard telling if that's an actual film or just an IMDb page created by an "amacfadyenrulz69@hotmail.com." Rather formulaic in terms of its storytelling but entertaining and beautifully-made, OUTLAW KING is definitely above-average by the standards of Netflix Original films.

On Netflix: MALEVOLENT (2018)

MALEVOLENT
(UK - 2018)

Directed by Olaf de Fleur. Written by Ben Ketai and Eva Konstantopoulos. Cast: Florence Pugh, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Celia Imrie, James Cosmo, Scott Chambers, Georgina Bevan, Niall Greig Fulton, Nicola Grier, Stephen McCole, Daisy Mathewson, Charlotte Allen, Shelley Conn, Ian Milne. (Unrated, 88 mins)

A British import acquired by Netflix, MALEVOLENT doesn't break any new ground as far as ghost stories go, but Icelandic director Olaf de Fleur and rising star Florence Pugh (who won significant acclaim with 2017's LADY MACBETH) make sure to hit all the right notes in a first hour that holds your attention and has a few effective jump scares. But then MALEVOLENT shits the bed in a way we haven't seen since DON'T BREATHE broke out the turkey baster, with a shift in style and tone that's so jarring that you might think the last 30 minutes came from a different movie that was just thawed after being frozen in ice since 2007. Co-written by Ben Ketai (THE STRANGERS: PREY AT NIGHT), and set in Glasgow (in 1986, for no particular reason), MALEVOLENT focuses on two American siblings--college student Angela Sayers (Pugh) and her older brother Jackson (Ben Lloyd-Holmes)--who run a ghostbusting con act with Jackson's girlfriend Beth (Georgina Bevan) and nerdy tech guy Elliott (Scott Chambers), who can barely conceal his unrequited crush on Angela. With prerecorded sound effects, they pretend Angela has an ability to communicate with ghosts left behind, convincing them to leave the house. It's a scam they learned from their late mother (Nicola Grier), an unstable sort who committed suicide after clawing her eyes out. With their American father out of the picture, the Sayers' only family is their irascible Scottish grandfather (the great James Cosmo), who knows Jackson is a fraud just like his mother. D-bag Jackson's also heavily in debt to ruthless loan shark Craig (Ian Milne) and needs a lucrative supernatural hustle to settle a debt.

He gets his wish when they're contacted by widowed Mrs. Green (Celia Imrie), who was once the headmistress at a foster home for orphaned girls until her maniac son Herman (Niall Greig Fulton) killed six of them after torturing them and sewing their mouths shut. Mrs. Green lives alone on the massive property in the middle of nowhere, and she insists it's haunted by the constant cries of her son's victims. Figuring she's a crazy old woman, Jackson sees some easy money and Angela reluctantly goes along. This immediately proves to be a different gig, as Angela actually sees one of the dead girls walking around, even leading her to a hidden basement room where tattered wallpaper covers up disturbing drawings and messages left by the girls before they were murdered. So far, so good. There's nothing here that's original (J.A. Bayona's THE ORPHANAGE comes to mind more than once), but an excellent performance from Pugh (though she and Lloyd-Holmes do both occasionally let their American accents slip) and de Fleur establishing an ominous, foreboding atmosphere--eerie, droning sounds, hissed whispers of "Angela!" and garbled voices heard on walkie-talkies--give it some unexpected cred. But then there's a twist and someone is revealed to not be what they claim to be, and what was a serious and reasonably compelling supernatural horror film turns into an over-the-top, blood-splattered torture-porn throwback, more or less kicking Pugh's performance to the curb and becoming the trashiest horror film to feature the distinguished BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL co-star Imrie since one of her earliest roles from the beginning of her career in Pete Walker's HOUSE OF WHIPCORD. For about an hour, MALEVOLENT seems well on its way to being not a classic, but a pretty good sleeper scare for the season. But when it abruptly crashes and burns in the last 30 minutes, it's haunted not by the vengeful spirits of the dead orphaned girls but by the long-forgotten ghosts of played-out horror subgenres still sticking around a decade past their sell-by date.

On Blu-ray/DVD: IN DARKNESS (2018) and FLOWER (2018)

IN DARKNESS
(US/UK - 2018)

IN DARKNESS might be of interest to GAME OF THRONES superfans, as it stars three series alumni--Natalie Dormer, Ed Skrein, and James Cosmo--and is co-written by Dormer with her fiance, veteran British TV director Anthony Byrne (RIPPER STREET, PEAKY BLINDERS). It begins as an intriguing throwback to "blind woman in peril" standard-bearer WAIT UNTIL DARK, but Dormer and Byrne's script starts trying too hard by throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Dormer is Sofia McKendrick, a London-based pianist who's been blind since she was five. Self-reliant and a bit of a quiet loner, Sofia's world is turned upside down when she hears some loud thuds above, followed by upstairs neighbor Veronique (Emily Ratajkowski) taking a dive out of her window to her death. Only with the resulting media attention does Sofia learn that Veronique is the estranged daughter of Zoran Radic (Jan Bijvoet as Rade Serbedzija), a powerful Serbian businessman and reputed Bosnian War criminal with a shady charity foundation and ties to (of course) the Russian mob. Radic has a sibling henchmen duo--Marc (Skrein) and Alex (Joely Richardson)--tasked not only with killing Veronique but also with getting an incriminating USB stick out of her apartment. The cops rule Veronique's death a suicide, but Marc was in the building and in her apartment with her and came face to face with Sofia while she was getting on an elevator. Believing Sofia to be a witness, he attempts to befriend her with the intent of killing her, but backs off when he realizes she's blind and couldn't have seen him. That's not good enough for Alex or for Radic, who wants all loose ends tied up and needs whatever vital info is on the USB, with all parties are unaware that Veronique secretly stashed it with Sofia before her death.

The basic set-up of IN DARKNESS might've made for an old-fashioned nailbiter, but then it decides to get "tricky." It's fairly early in the film when it's revealed that Sofia is the only survivor of a Bosnian family brutally slaughtered by Radic 25 years earlier. We also learn that she's spent her entire life plotting to kill Radic and she intentionally sought out Veronique and got an apartment in the same building in the hopes that it would get her closer to her target, all under the watchful eye of caring and now-terminally ill adoptive father figure Niall (Cosmo). But that's just the beginning of IN DARKNESS' wildly improbable twists and turns. It gets more contrived with each passing scene, with some details left frustratingly vague--the film never does establish exactly what Marc and Alex do for Radic, nor does it adequately explore their strange relationship, where it's at least hinted that Alex is jealous when she finds out her brother has slept with Veronique. That's a shame because, while Skrein is bland and forgettable, an invested Richardson seems game for some perverse weirdness that never comes to fruition. Neil Maskell does an alright job as the rumpled, perpetually stubbled detective investigating Veronique's death, getting his inevitable wide-eyed Chazz Palminteri-in-THE USUAL SUSPECTS moment of realization when he finally pieces everything together. And it's a lot to piece together, as Dormer and Byrne can't stop piling up the surprise reveals with reckless abandon in the third act. One is so thuddingly obvious that you'll call it long before Sofia figures it out, and other is one of those that pretty much negates the entire movie and convincingly makes its case for the dumbest twist ending of 2018. (Unrated, 101 mins)




FLOWER
(US - 2018)

You know a movie's trying way too hard to be edgy when it opens with its 17-year-old heroine blowing the local sheriff, who asks "Where'd you learn to give a hummer like that?" and her reply is "Middle school." FIGHT CLUB already did a similarly tacky joke exponentially better (Helena Bonham Carter's immortal "I haven't been fucked like that since grade school"), but everything about FLOWER feels like you've seen and heard it years ago. If you can imagine Gregg Araki making a belated JUNO knockoff, then you'll have an idea what this has to offer. Directed and co-written by Max Winkler (Henry's son) and produced by the EASTBOUND AND DOWN and OBSERVE AND REPORT team of David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, and Jody Hill, FLOWER stars 23-year-old Zoey Deutch (Lea Thompson's lookalike daughter) as Erica Vandross, a teenage sociopath in a small California suburb who has a lucrative secret gig blackmailing local guys by giving them blowjobs in parked cars while her best friends Kayla (Dylan Gelula) and Claudine (Maya Eshet) sneak up and record her finishing them off. Kayla and Claudine spend their cut of the take on clothes, but Erica is stashing hers away to bail her father out of jail, where he's been sitting awaiting trial after trying to rob a casino. Erica's mother Laurie (Kathryn Hahn) has moved on and is dating doofus nice guy Bob, aka "The Sherm" (Tim Heidecker), who's about to move in, much to Erica's disapproval. Coming along as part of the "Sherm" package is his troubled son Luke (Joey Morgan), a withdrawn, overweight outcast who's been in rehab for a year trying to kick an oxy addiction. He has a panic attack his first night out of the facility but rejects Erica's offer for a blowjob to help calm him down. The two later grab a burger at the bowling alley, where Luke has another anxiety attack after spotting Will (Adam Scott), a regular at the lanes who's dubbed "Hot Old Guy" by chronic daddy issues case Erica. It turns out that Will used to be a high school teacher who lost his job three years earlier after allegations that he fondled a 15-year-old boy. The accuser? Luke.

This sets in motion a half-assed scheme to blackmail Will but Erica finds herself falling for him. Unforeseen problems ensue in ways that recall both HARD CANDY and the forgotten PRETTY PERSUASION, and those comparisons, combined with the obvious JUNO influence, end up making FLOWER feel like a 15-year-old Sundance offering that was found frozen in the mountains surrounding Park City and just now thawed. From the various transgressions and would-be shock tactics that fall flat ("If we don't act now, then other little kids might get butt-raped!" Erica says when everyone else wants to back out of their plan to extort Will) to the casting of the appealing Deutch, everything about FLOWER feels forced and affected, and by the time things pan out in a predictably tragic way that culminates in Erica and Luke donning cheap wigs and fleeing to the Mexican border, it's clear that FLOWER doesn't have much to say. Deutch is a tremendously appealing actress, but Winkler tries to make Erica similarly appealing when she's really not, and a film that really wanted to explore the kind of darkness inherent in the story would recognize that turning her into the white trash version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (© Nathan Rabin) is the wrong approach. As a result, nothing feels real or believable for a second, not even when Laurie--who's historically been more interested in being Erica's buddy than her mother--finally melts down and tears into Erica for chasing away all of her potential boyfriends and calling her a "selfish twat." There is one legitimately funny line when Erica is asked what she plans to do with her life and boasts "I'm goin' to DeVry, bitch! 98% acceptance rate!" but no film that imagines itself to be an edgy and shocking dark comedy would actually have Erica look at Luke with tears in her eyes and say "I don't wanna run...I don't wanna spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders." (R, 94 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: YOGA HOSERS (2016); ELIMINATORS (2016); and SIREN (2016)

YOGA HOSERS
(US - 2016)

Kevin Smith's 2014 man-surgically-transformed-into-walrus horror film TUSK was the result of Smith talking about a prank classified ad on his podcast and his listeners tweeting "#WalrusYes" if they wanted to see a movie about it. The TUSK spinoff YOGA HOSERS (the second of Smith's planned "True North" trilogy), released on just 140 screens, has an even more flimsy foundation, a horror comedy built around two minor characters: the Colleens, eye-rolling, can't even BFFs who work at the Canadian maple syrup convenience store chain Eh-2-Zed. Smith conceived YOGA HOSERS as a movie for his daughter Harley Quinn Smith (as Colleen McKenzie) and her friend Lily-Rose Depp (as Colleen Collette), and flat-out told the crowd attending its Sundance 2016 premiere that he wasn't making movies for audiences anymore. Mission accomplished. Possibly the worst horror comedy since 1987's BLOOD DINER, YOGA HOSERS is an unwatchable Kevin Smith home movie that manages to go 88 minutes without a single humorous moment, with the once-relevant and respected writer-director having no clue how teenage girls talk and pretty much relying on punchlines about Canadian accents that wouldn't have made it past the first read-through of the STRANGE BREW script 33 years ago. Did he think just having the Colleens repeatedly say "Soo-ree boot that!" would suffice?  He haplessly tries to turn things like "yoga hoser" and "This is so basic" into the new "snoochie boochies," and by the time Jason Mewes shows up as a cop (!), it's pretty clear that Smith has turned into an embarrassing dad trying too hard to be cool around his daughter and her friends. Even Colleen McKenzie shouting Dante-from-CLERKS' oft-invoked "I'm not even supposed to be here today!" only serves as a depressing reminder of what Smith used to be. Other things Smith found funny enough to include in YOGA HOSERS: every character getting a hash-tagged "InstaCam" intro accompanied by '80s video game music; Justin Long as a yoga instructor named "Yogi Bayer," who says things like "Yoga Fett, soo-ree not soo-ree!"; everyone talking about hockey and snacking on "Pucky Charms"; the Colleens singing Styx's "Babe" and making Colleen Collette's dad (Tony Hale) cry like a baby as his girlfriend (Natasha Lyonne) refers to her cleavage as a "bouncy-house"; SNL's Sasheer Zamata as their no-nonsense principal Principal Invincible; Stan Lee as a 9-1-1 operator who answers "9-1-1, eh!"; a villain who speaks in Al Pacino, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Adam West impressions; and Lily-Rose's dad Johnny Depp, under a ton of makeup, looking like a syphilitic Kurt Vonnegut and with a bizarre French-Swedish hybrid accent, reprising his not-even-remotely beloved Guy LaPointe private eye character from TUSK.

What happened to Kevin Smith? It takes a good half hour for some semblance of a plot to form, and it seems at times like it's trying to go for a YA version of Don Coscarelli's JOHN DIES AT THE END sort-of thing, minus the ambition, creativity, and comedy. The Colleens, after getting some info from LaPointe, are targeted by Satanists working with the reanimated Andronicus Arcane (Ralph Garman), a cryogenically frozen Canadian Nazi stirred awake by the sounds of GlamThrax, the Colleens' band with 35-year-old drummer Ichabod (Adam Brody), a character named as such for the sole purpose of calling him "Dickabod" immediately after his introduction. Arcane is a protege of evil Adrian Arcand (Haley Joel Osment in flashbacks), the leader of the Canadian Nazi party in WWII whose "La Solution Finale" involved putting Canadian Jews on ships in Hudson Bay and deliberately sinking them. Integral to Arcane's nonsensical scheme are the Bratzis, 12-inch-tall PUPPET MASTER-looking Nazis made of bratwurst and with concentrated sauerkraut for blood. The Bratzis attack by burrowing up the asses of their victims and out the mouth, when they exclaim things like "Wunderbar!" and "Das Boot!" The Bratzis are played via prosthetics and CGI trickery by Kevin Smith himself, and I'm done here. (PG-13, 88 mins)

ELIMINATORS
(US/UK - 2016)

Arriving not long after the entertaining sequel-but-actually-remake HARD TARGET 2, ELIMINATORS--not a remake of the 1986 Empire Pictures cult favorite--is the latest Scott Adkins actioner, casting him as Martin Parker, an American widower living in London with his young daughter Carly (Lily Ann Harland-Stubbs). Martin leads a quiet life and works a boring job as a parking garage security guard, but his mysterious past is out in the open after a home invasion leads to him killing the intruders and being placed under arrest with his face all over TV. This catches the attention of Charles Cooper (James Cosmo), a powerful arms dealer who knows Martin's true identity: he's really Thomas McKenzie, an FBI agent who infiltrated Cooper's operation and was eventually placed in witness protection and shipped off to London. Cooper heads to London and hires Bishop (WWE star Wade Barrett), the most dangerous hit man in Europe, to find Martin/McKenzie and take him out. A Universal/WWE production shot in the UK and with a plot that makes it a sort-of B-action version of A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, ELIMINATORS looks a lot more polished and big-screen-ready than most of Adkins' work for Millennium/NuImage, though director James Nunn (who previously worked with Adkins on the dismal GREEN STREET HOOLIGANS: UNDERGROUND) doesn't quite have the skills that an Isaac Florentine would've brought to the proceedings. After an engaging opening act, ELIMINATORS bogs down into one predictable plot development and contrivance after another, and for being Europe's most lethal hired assassin, Bishop sure seems to screw things up a lot and prove not very adept at getting the job done. It's pretty dumb and offers nothing new, but it's entertaining enough on a slow night as far as by-the-numbers Redbox and Netflix-ready action movies go. Adkins brings his A-game to this and once again shows he's ready for bigger things, and while he's been getting supporting roles in high-profile projects like DOCTOR STRANGE, it's really time for Hollywood to realize that its next big action star has been busting his ass in B-movies for at least a decade now. (R, 94 mins)

SIREN
(US - 2016)

A feature-length expansion/spinoff of the "Amateur Night" segment of the 2012 horror anthology V/H/S, SIREN isn't always successful but proves to be more engaging than its overrated source film and its two sequels. "Amateur Night" dealt with three dudebros whose plan to get a hooker and shoot an amateur porn video in their hotel room backfires when the woman turns out to be a demonic, monstrous succubus. SIREN thankfully jettisons V/H/S's found-footage angle and has four guys on a wild bachelor party weekend for Jonah (JOHN DIES AT THE END's Chase Williamson), which leads them to a private strip club/sex dungeon in the middle-of-nowhere at the mansion of wealthy Mr. Nyx (Justin Welborn). Nyx is a collector of things supernatural, with many seductive non-human freaks imprisoned as sex workers and staying in their human form for his adventurous customers with disposable income. Of course, among his girls are "Amateur Night"'s nympho demon Lily (Hannah Fierman reprises her role). While Jonah's douchebag brother Mac (Michael Aaron Milligan) and his more laid-back buddies Rand (Hayes Mercure) and Elliott (Randy McDowell) party and fall victim to drinks laced with hallucinogenic leeches, Lily takes a shine to Jonah, who decides to be a hero and break her out of what he assumes is some kind of sexual slavery/human trafficking operation. A grateful Lily repays the favor by declaring Jonah hers with a chirpy "I like you" even as she shapeshifts, sprouts wings and lets loose a long tail that she uses for some unpleasant ass-play on the groom-to-be in a memorably twisted sex scene. Even at a brief 83 minutes, SIREN still doesn't have quite enough to justify its expansion to its own movie, but it gets a lot from Fierman going all in with an admirably fearless performance. Director/co-writer Gregg Bishop finds his voice late in the game as SIREN becomes increasingly demented and starts to take on a vintage Full Moon quality, suddenly bearing a strong resemblance to the kind of quietly unsettling horror film someone like Stuart Gordon would've made in the 1990s, like CASTLE FREAK. Not a start-to-finish winner, but SIREN gets better as it goes on, and ends up being a not-bad little horror sleeper. (Unrated, 83 mins)