On DVD/Blu-ray: DETOUR (2017) and MEAN DREAMS (2017)

DETOUR
(UK/UAE - 2017)

About a decade ago, British filmmaker Christopher Smith seemed to be establishing himself as a promising genre figure with the subway tunnel horror flick CREEP (2005), the office-team-building-retreat slasher film SEVERANCE (2006), the lost-at-sea mindfuck TRIANGLE (2009), and the medieval witchcraft saga BLACK DEATH (2011). Smith was building some momentum (SEVERANCE and TRIANGLE quickly found cult followings, and the excellent BLACK DEATH got some critical acclaim), but things sort-of sputtered out for him. He seemed to settle into hired-gun mode with the 2012 miniseries LABYRINTH, based on the Kate Mosse novel. LABYRINTH wasn't seen in the US until it aired on the CW in 2014, and he followed that with an unexpected departure in the barely-released 2014 family comedy GET SANTA, the biggest outlier in his filmography so far. The modern-day noir DETOUR is a return to form of sorts for writer/director Smith. He gets to play with time and linear structure a bit and he explores themes of doppelgangers that figured so prominently in TRIANGLE. And he allows himself some room to show off a little by throwing in some obvious split-screen shout-outs to Brian De Palma. For a while, Smith gets dangerously close to making DETOUR a little too smug and cute for its own good, right down to main character Harper (Tye Sheridan, grown up a bit since JOE and MUD) having a poster for the 1966 Paul Newman movie HARPER on his bedroom wall and later seen watching Edgar G. Ulmer's 1945 Poverty Row cheapie classic DETOUR on TV.

But just when you're about to justifiably give up, Smith talks you off the ledge and DETOUR's gimmicky structure actually starts showing a purpose, and the characters have a lot more going on under the surface. The film gets better as it goes along, really reaching its stride in the second act before the third, where it doesn't quite fizzle out but offers one improbable plot twist too many. Harper is a rich California college kid whose mother is in a coma after a car accident and whose stepdad Vincent (Stephen Moyer) seems to already have a mistress and is counting the days until his wife finally dies. Out drinking at a shithole bar in a rough part of town, Harper makes the acquaintance of Johnny Ray (Emory Cohen of THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES), an abusive, bullying psychopath with a long-suffering stripper girlfriend named Cherry (Bel Powley of THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL). Drunk Harper talks about hypothetically paying Johnny $20,000 to follow Vincent to Vegas and kill him. He's understandably caught by surprise when Johnny and Cherry turn up at his front door the next morning ready to hit the road and whack his stepfather. Harper tries to reason with Johnny but Johnny's the kind of unstable lunatic who's always looking for a fight, won't take no for an answer and no matter what you say, it's wrong ("You wanna fuck her?" Johnny asks Harper about Cherry. Harper: "No!" Johnny: "What, you think she's ugly?"). At this point, Smith breaks the film into two diverging narratives--one showing Harper, Johnny, and Cherry heading to Vegas to kill Vincent and a second where Harper turns his back and Johnny and goes back into his house, choosing to confront Vincent himself. Both narratives head in unexpected directions that keep DETOUR consistently interesting before settling into a more conventional mode for the finale. There's some nice twists involving the characters and their motivations, and Irish actor John Lynch (Shades in Richard Stanley's 1990 masterpiece HARDWARE) has a memorable turn channeling GANGS OF NEW YORK-style Daniel Day-Lewis as an enraged pimp to whom Johnny owes $50K under the threat of taking Cherry away from him and selling her to a guy who'll keep her locked up and "use her for a hillbilly fuck-mat." Cape Town and other South African locations don't really convince as stand-ins for California or Nevada, but despite that and a few other missteps, DETOUR is a not-bad little thriller that fits nicely into the Smith oeuvre and should find some admirers on Blu-ray and streaming. Magnet released this on VOD and on five screens in the US to an abysmal opening weekend gross of $145. (R, 97 mins)




MEAN DREAMS
(Canada/US - 2017)

There's a bit of a Terrence Malick-circa-BADLANDS vibe to this Canadian thriller shot in Sault Ste. Marie and set in the rural outskirts of upper peninsula Michigan. It's not just in its quiet opening shots of character walking through a cornfield, but in its tried-and-true lovers-on-the-run scenario. That sense of serene calm doesn't last long as young high-school dropout Jonas Ford (Josh Wiggins of MAX) toils in the fields on his family's on-life-support farm, dealing with an embittered dad (Joe Cobden) and an alcoholic mom (Vickie Papavs). He finally finds some light in his dark existence when he meets Casey Caraway (Sophie Nelisse of THE BOOK THIEF), a teenage girl who moved into the next house down the road with her widower father Wayne (the late Bill Paxton, in his next-to-last film), who's just been hired as a new cop in town. Wayne objects to all the time Casey's been spending with Jonas and makes it clear he's not welcome anymore, but things really escalate when Jonas, who has seen Wayne hiding a duffel bag full of drugs in his garage, intervenes when he catches Wayne beating Casey. Jonas goes to the police chief (Colm Feore), who completely blows him off, and ends up on an unintended ride-along after breaking into Wayne's garage and hiding under the tonneau cover of his truck bed as Wayne drives off for a meet with some dealers, kills them, and keeps the drugs and the money for himself. Through not the most plausible means, Jonas manages to get away with the money and takes off with Casey, with an enraged Wayne not far behind.

The script by Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby doesn't offer much in the way of surprises, but director Nathan Morlando (CITIZEN GANGSTER) really establishes a moody, downbeat atmosphere of rural despair that gives its lovestruck heroes sufficient reason to impulsively run away. The romance moves a little too quickly and Jonas blows right by some red flags ("Do you lie a lot?" he asks, to which Casey replies "All the time"), and it has moments that strain credulity, like Jonas getting a nasty cut in his abdomen and Casey stitching it up and disinfecting it after robbing a pharmacy at gunpoint. The choking feeling of desperation and needing to get as far away as possible is made somewhat more plausible by Paxton's vicious performance as an all-around bad guy (his very presence in this is a shout-out to the 1992 cult movie ONE FALSE MOVE and 1998's A SIMPLE PLAN), easily one of the most despicable characters the beloved actor was ever tasked with playing. MEAN DREAMS doesn't have an original thought in its head, but it's well-made, Wiggins and Nelisse are appealing young stars, and Paxton always made anything better just by being in it. He'll be missed. (R, 105 mins)

On DVD/Blu-ray: WEREWOLF: THE BEAST AMONG US (2012), THE BARRENS (2012) and CHAINED (2012)

WEREWOLF: THE BEAST AMONG US
(US - 2012)

Passable DTV time-killer from Universal, intended as a semi-sequel of sorts to their 2010 revamp of THE WOLFMAN, but also as a tie-in with their just-released Universal Classic Monsters Blu-ray box set.  Shot in Romania, WEREWOLF is a period horror piece set in old school Transylvania where a team of ace werewolf hunters led by Charles (Ed Quinn) are hired to rid the village of a rampaging werewolf who seems to be targeting the town's undesirables and lowlifes.  A werewolf waging class warfare?  Give it bonus points for originality.  Charles is constantly being pestered by Daniel (Guy Wilson), who's eager to assist in the hunt instead of hanging around town as the medical assistant to the local doctor (Stephen Rea).  WEREWOLF: THE BEAST AMONG US isn't really all that good, but it takes some unpredictable turns in the last third that make it interesting, at least until the belated and nonsensical appearance of a vampire that seems more like a bone tossed to the UNDERWORLD crowd rather than any wink to the classic monster rallies of the 1940s (there also seems to be a lot of JAWS references throughout).  Directed by 1990s Roger Corman associate and DTV vet Louis Morneau (CARNOSAUR 2, MADE MEN, BATS, THE HITCHER II, JOY RIDE 2), who also co-wrote the script with fellow Corman grad Catherine Cyran (SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE III, BLOODFIST II, IN THE HEAT OF PASSION II), WEREWOLF is clearly dealing with a low-budget, with dubious CGI werewolf and splatter effects farmed out to a Chinese effects team, and the cast is comprised of mostly TV actors who seem to have gotten the gig based on their resemblances to bigger stars:  Quinn's Charles is patterned enough on the 2004 VAN HELSING that he seems like Halfway Hugh Jackman, while his team contains a guy who comes off as Relatively Robert Downey, Jr and another who's Kinda Kate Beckinsale, and the village has a guy who's Somewhat Sean Bean.  THE CRYING GAME Oscar nominee Rea is by far the biggest name, though you also get Nia Peeples as Daniel's brothel-managing mother, and an eye-patched Steven Bauer (SCARFACE) in a rather insignificant role as one of Charles' werewolf-tracking posse.  Pretty forgettable overall, but OK for its type.  You're still better off just watching one of the classic Universal monster movies.  (Unrated, 94 mins/R, 93 mins, R-rated version streaming on Netflix)

THE BARRENS
(US - 2012)

Darren Lynn Bousman (SAW II-IV, REPO: THE GENETIC OPERA) wrote and directed this horror film that ostensibly deals with the Jersey Devil, the mythical winged creature that's said to haunt the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.  However, Bousman is more interested in remaking Kubrick's THE SHINING in the woods instead of a hotel, right down to the jeopardized boy being named Danny and his crazed dad yelling "Danny-boy!"  Philadelphia dad Richard (TRUE BLOOD's Stephen Moyer) is taking the family--second wife Cynthia (Mia Kirshner), their six-year-old son Danny (Peter DaCunha), and Sadie (Allie MacDonald), Richard's angry 17-year-old daughter with his late first wife--on a camping trip to the Pine Barrens even though no one really wants to go.  Richard wants to scatter his dad's ashes in a lake where the two fished when he was a kid.  He also has suspicions that Cynthia might be having an affair, Sadie is just being sullen and 17, and Danny is too worried about their dog who's been missing for two weeks.  Richard has a strange bite on his arm and acts increasingly irrational over the weekend.  He's convinced the Jersey Devil has been stalking him since childhood and it--or the acceleration of the infection from the mysterious bite--may or may not be possessing him or driving him to the brink of madness.  I'm not really sure Bousman knows, either.  THE BARRENS is slow and dull (yeah, it's another one of these post-Ti West slow-burners--Jesus, did I just coin the term "post-Ti West"?), and even though it comes alive in the climax, it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  The whole Jersey Devil angle seems oddly shoehorned into a SHINING ripoff (even the poster art depicts Moyer recreating an unforgettable SHINING shot), and it takes far too long and far too many red flags for Cynthia to get with the program and realize that this trip was a terrible idea, and that the shit's hit the fan and she needs to save her family from her insane husband.  Bousman made two of the better SAW sequels (SAW II and SAW III), and his REPO splatter musical has become a cult classic, but THE BARRENS just feels like too many half-baked ideas cobbled together with no real purpose.  If Bousman wanted to make a SHINING homage, then he should've just made one and not bothered with the Jersey Devil element.  What's the point?  (R, 94 mins)

CHAINED
(US/Canada - 2012)

Unrelentingly grim and depressing thriller from writer/director Jennifer Lynch (David's daughter, and the director of 1993's controversial BOXING HELENA and 2009's underrated SURVEILLANCE) that tries to be another HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (with shades of the 2010 DTV obscurity BEREAVEMENT) but just gets too silly and too stupid for its own good.  In a performance that's occasionally brave but for the most part horribly self-indulgent, Vincent D'Onofrio is Bob, a cab driver who abducts women and takes them to his isolated rural home to rape and murder them before burying the bodies in a crawlspace under the house.  One afternoon, he kills a mom (Julia Ormond) and keeps her young son (Evan Bird) as a prisoner.  He renames the boy "Rabbit" and makes him take care of the house and clean up the messes left behind by his atrocities.  Years go by, Rabbit is now in his late teens (and now played by Eamon Farren), and Bob decides to train his "adopted" son as his protege. 

 

 

Originally slapped with an NC-17 rating, CHAINED is pretty repulsive but still isn't as gory as most of these things go.  It seems more concerned with establishing that HENRY feeling of claustrophobic tension, but it just doesn't work. Lynch lets D'Onofrio run wild, doing some weird accent that sounds like a lisping Noo Yawker with a severe head cold. There's a backstory involving Bob's abusive father forcing him to have sex with his own mother, and one seemingly throwaway line of dialogue lets the cat out of the bag that there's going to be an inane twist ending. There's a couple of squirmy shots of Rabbit giving Bob a sponge bath, Bob playing with what appears to be a piece of a severed limb, and we do get a shot of a nude D'Onofrio covered in blood and sprawled atop one of his victims. I'm a big fan of D'Onofrio while at the same time conceding that he can be a divisive actor. A lot of people disliked him on LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT, but I thought he was brilliant. He excels with a good script and a disciplined director, but when he's not kept on a tight leash, things like CHAINED happen. Unfortunately, he's at his most mannered and affected here, and a lot of CHAINED's problems wouldn't be had he played it straight and not made the "Hey, check me out! It's THE VINCENT D'ONOFRIO SHOW!!!" decision to use a distracting, ridiculous accent and bust out every tic and twitch in his repertoire. On the plus side, Farren is effective as the tortured Rabbit and just by exhibiting some quiet restraint, manages to make a stronger impression than his veteran co-star. (R, 94 mins)