From the folks at Quiver Distribution, the company that gave us THE FANATIC, comes the pre-fab cult heist flick MONEY PLANE, which would've been much more entertaining as a viral fake trailer instead of the actual terrible movie it's selling. Feeling drawn-out even at a mere 82 minutes, MONEY PLANE manages to corral the kind of slumming cast that Uwe Boll would put together if he was still in the game. But the guilty party here is director/co-writer Andrew Lawrence, the least-known of the Lawrence brothers, though he does provide Joey and Matthew with supporting roles. MONEY PLANE seemingly wants to be the SNAKES ON A PLANE of heist movies by letting you know that it's on the joke, but it fumbles so badly that it has a character exclaim "Whoa!" and it's not the one played by Joey Lawrence. After a botched attempt to steal a $40 million painting from an art museum only to find that it's already gone when they get there, man-bunned professional thief Jack Reese (Adam Copeland, aka WWE's "Edge") and his crew realize they've been set up. The mastermind? Self-aggrandizing crime lord Darius Emmanuel Grouch III, aka "The Rumble" (Kelsey Grammer), a cigar-sucking, art collecting asshole who bought a huge debt belonging to recovering gambling addict Reese and now expects him to work it off (cue The Rumble growling "I own you"). The job? Reese and his crew--Isabella (Katrina Norman), Trey (Patrick Lamont Jr), and Iggy (Andrew Lawrence)--are going to steal $1 billion in cryptocurrency and $40 million cash from the "Money Plane," an illegal "casino in the sky" that caters to rich criminals and is untouchable since it only flies in international airspace. The stakes? If Reese doesn't play ball, The Rumble will have his wife (Denise Richards) and daughter (Emma Gordon) killed.
Anything goes on the Money Plane (The Rumble: "You can even bet on a man fuckin' an alligator!"), and the clientele includes the world's highest-paid assassins and international weapons dealers, so Reese fits right in going incognito as a notorious human trafficker. But he manages to break away and commandeer the cockpit (he's also an experienced pilot) as Isabella and Trey are left to hack the database while Iggy does tech support on the ground. Overseen by the coldly lethal Concierge (Joey Lawrence), things start off easy on the Money Plane with Texas Hold 'Em but soon graduate to the kinds of games more akin to HOSTEL, like bets being placed a man vs. a cobra, or how long some poor guy can stay alive in a piranha tank (you can imagine how those turn out), and Trey is forced to go against J.R. Crockett (Matthew Lawrence), the Money Plane's "undefeated Russian Roulette champ" (wouldn't his being "undefeated" already be understood?). Copeland, who looks like he's in a perpetual state of shock, is a dull hero who spends most of the film confined to the pilot's seat. Thomas Jane shows up for a day's work as Harry, Reese's pipe-smoking Air Force buddy who gets a bunch of exposition that never ends up coming into play ("Remind me again why you made me your daughter's godfather!"), and there's no way Richards was on the set for more than an afternoon. But it's a scenery-chewing Grammer that's the main selling point here, dropping bon mots like "How about I just blow your brains out and I'll create my own damn Pollock?" and barking "Bring me my money!" every time he appears. Like Samuel L. Jackson bellowing "I have had it with these motherfuckin' snakes on this motherfuckin' plane!," watching a shouty Frasier Crane drop F-bombs and take out his own henchmen in a fit of rage is the stuff of a great YouTube clip, but if you drink every time he says "money plane," you'll be passed out before you even get the chance to see him hoist an assault rifle and declare "It's Rumble time!" He quite obviously knows this is dog shit and is just amusing himself, but it also seems like he and Jane (working that prop pipe like John Cusack with a vape pen) are the only ones in on the joke. (Unrated, 82 mins)
WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS (Italy - 2020)
At the age of 80, Nobel Prize-winning South African novelist and essayist J.M. Coetzee tries his hand at screenwriting with WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS, based on his 1980 novel. The book--also turned into an opera in 2005 by Philip Glass--was conceived as a period apartheid allegory, set in a non-specified military outpost manned by officers of "The Empire," forever on guard for an attack by desert nomads--derisively termed "barbarians"--that never comes. Coetzee cited Dino Buzzati's 1940 novel The Tartar Steppe as a major influence, itself made into the 1976 film THE DESERT OF THE TARTARS by Italian director Valerio Zurlini. If you've seen the Zurlini film, the idea of the perpetual wait for a threat that looks increasingly existential and absurd with each passing year will certainly be familiar. And where Coetzee repurposed the idea for apartheid with his novel, he does so once again for the film with allusions to more present-day political concerns. Directed by Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra (his 2015 film EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT was a Best Foreign Film Oscar-nominee), WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS opens at a small town-turned-Empire outpost run by an unnamed magistrate (Mark Rylance), who's been left in charge for years and has found it's become a comfortably cushy assignment. The nomads roaming far out in the desert keep to themselves and the few that do make it near the walled-off outpost and attempt petty theft are generally given a night in jail and sent back on their way with no harm. The magistrate has developed a peaceful rapport with the locals and everybody gets along fine until the sadistic Colonel Joll (Johnny Depp) arrives for an "inspection," which involves "enhanced interrogation" of an uncle and nephew accused of trying to steal some sheep, resulting in the uncle being killed and the nephew nearly beaten to death. Deciding he still hasn't quite made his point, Joll commandeers a small group of officers and forces the nephew to guide them back to their camp, where Joll instigates an attack that results in more brutality and death.
One of the survivors (Gaya Bayarsaikhan) is brought back, bloodied and blinded by a heated fork that Joll repeatedly prodded near her eyes until she lost most of her sight. When Joll leaves the outpost, the magistrate is left to clean up the mess, nursing the girl back to health and returning her to her people. It's an arduous journey and when he arrives back at the outpost, Joll has returned, and with him is psychotic protege Officer Mandel (Robert Pattinson), both waiting to charge him with treason and abandoning his duties. The magistrate is thrown in jail with the other "barbarians" they've rounded up as they prepare for an attack from the nomads that wouldn't have happened had Joll not gleefully goaded them into it. WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS plays the heavy hand at times--you almost expect a CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST moment where Rylance's dour magistrate will observe "I wonder who the real barbarians are"--and for the most part, it moves at the pace of Merchant-Ivory. But it's a slow-burner that's beautifully shot by the great and ageless Chris Menges (who won Oscars for his work on THE KILLING FIELDS and THE MISSION) and has a trio of excellent performances by Rylance, Pattinson, and especially Depp in his best work in quite a while. It's also among his least-mannered characterizations, a welcome surprise considering his wardrobe and quirky sunglasses make him look like he took a wrong turn on his way to a steampunk convention.
Coetzee takes some liberties with his own work, drastically toning down the magistrate's rather healthy sexual appetite on the page and making him generally chaste for the screen, though it's implied that he's a regular with an area prostitute (Isabella Nefar) and he spends enough time tending to and washing the blinded woman's bloodied, battered feet that this may end up at the top of Quentin Tarantino's Best of 2020 list. The Italian-made WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2019, but US distributor Samuel Goldwyn Films sat on it for a nearly a year--no doubt due in part to the pandemic, but possibly because of Depp's very public personal dramas. But then in June 2020, multiple women accused Guerra of sexual harassment and rape in incidents dating back to 2013. Given the potential for negative publicity and toxic blowback, it's little wonder that WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS is being given an ignominious DTV burial after nearly a year in limbo, but it's a quaint throwback to the kind of old-school desert epics they used to make, and worth a look for patient fans of the three stars. (Unrated, 114 mins)
NEMESIS (US - 1993) Directed by Albert Pyun. Written by Rebecca Charles (Albert Pyun). Cast: Olivier Gruner, Tim Thomerson, Deborah Shelton, Brion James, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Merle Kennedy, Yuji Okumoto, Marjorie Monaghan, Nicholas Guest, Vince Klyn, Thom Mathews, Marjean Holden, Tom Janes (Thomas Jane), Jackie Earle Haley, Jennifer Gatti, Borovnisa Blervaque, Mabel Falls, Branscombe Richmond. (R, 96 mins) In the late '80s, Imperial Entertainment was primarily known for acquiring Italian (DEMONS 2, THUNDER WARRIOR 3, SPECTERS) and low-budget American genre fare (BLACK ROSES, THE DEAD PIT). Run by brothers Sundip R. Shah, Sunil R. Shah, and Ash R. Shah, Imperial eventually expanded to film production with the 1988 Sho Kosugi actioner BLACK EAGLE, which co-starred Belgian full-contact karate champ Jean-Claude Van Damme. Van Damme, who played the bad guy in the 1986 camp classic NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER, already had BLOODSPORT in the can when he shot BLACK EAGLE, but they were ultimately released two weeks apart, with BLOODSPORT coming first and becoming an unexpected hit. Though he only had a supporting role in BLACK EAGLE, Van Damme's presence was hyped and it served as a symbolic passing of the torch of action B-listers from ninja icon Kosugi to kickboxing poster boy Van Damme. Van Damme was already committed to Imperial's WRONG BET, which was ultimately retitled LIONHEART when it was picked up by Universal in early 1991 after Van Damme scored three more B-movie hits with CYBORG, KICKBOXER, and DEATH WARRANT. And with that, the "Muscles from Brussels" moved on to the big leagues and was out of Imperial's price range, though they still had another project intended for him. Enter Olivier Gruner, a French kickboxing champion with a passing resemblance to Van Damme and little else. Imperial plugged Gruner into Van Damme's starring role in 1990's ANGEL TOWN (more on that below) and in 1993, Gruner teamed with Van Damme's CYBORG director Albert Pyun for NEMESIS, which would ultimately be the star's first and last great film.
Pyun's best days came early, directing 1982's surprise hit THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER but never really capitalizing on it. He ended up doing several films for Cannon in the latter half of the '80s (DANGEROUSLY CLOSE, DOWN TWISTED, ALIEN FROM L.A.), which led to CYBORG and, post-Cannon, the troubled CAPTAIN AMERICA for Menaham Golan's doomed 21st Century. Pyun's career after NEMESIS and into the 2000s was incredibly prolific but largely inept (best represented by his trio of Bratislava-shot rapsploitation outings affectionately referred to as his epic "Gangstas Wandering Around An Abandoned Warehouse" trilogy by film critic Nathan Rabin). In recent years, he's been slowed down by multiple sclerosis but maintains a strong presence online while trying to get his latest dream project--a self-referential Pyuniverse tribute titled CYBORG NEMESIS--off the ground. NEMESIS was an idea Pyun had been working on since his Cannon days, though with a teenage girl as the hero. He already had Megan Ward in mind to star, having worked with her on the Full Moon sci-fi film ARCADE (shot before NEMESIS but released after). With Cannon on life support and 21st Century faring even worse, he took the idea to the Shah brothers at Imperial. They liked the script but had one demand: lose the teenage girl and retool the character for Olivier Gruner, and in exchange, you'll be left alone to make the movie you want to make.
In a perfect world, NEMESIS would've catapulted Gruner and Pyun into the big leagues, but it wasn't meant to be. With the possible exception of THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, it's arguably Pyun's best film. NEMESIS opens in the future Los Angeles of 2027, with cybernetically-enhanced cop--he's still "86.5% human--Alex Rain (Gruner) in a brilliantly-choreographed shootout with freedom fighters from a rebel faction known as the Red Army Hammerheads. Severely injured, Rain undergoes repairs and an upgrade and goes off the grid in New Baja for nearly a year. That's where he tracks down and kills prominent Hammerheads figure Rosaria (Jennifer Gatti), before he's found and reactivated by his old boss Farnsworth (Tim Thomerson) and his two flunkies Maritz (Brion James) and Germaine (Nicholas Guest). The assignment: retrieve stolen, top-secret national security intel needed for a US-Japan summit that's scheduled in three days. The culprit: Jared (Marjorie Monaghan), an android and Rain's former lover, who plans to sell it to current Hammerheads leader Angie-Liv (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), who's based on the Pacific Rim island of Shang-Lu. In true ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK fashion, Rain has until the summit to find Jared and the intel or a bomb implanted in his heart will explode. In addition a surveillance unit implanted in his eyeball will monitor his activities and ensure he doesn't go rogue.
There's more, including a duplicitous android named Sam (Marjean Holden); Rain forming an unholy alliance with Rosaria's vengeful sister Max Impact (Merle Kennedy); and Julian (Deborah Shelton), a cyborg associate of Jared, whose intentions are not what Rain has been told. Little is what it seems to be in the world of NEMESIS, a film that takes elements of cyberpunk and Hong Kong-inspired action and mashes them up into a wholly original film that feels like it was directed in tag-team, relay fashion by John Woo, Ridley Scott, Charles Band, and Cirio H. Santiago, and that's meant as a compliment. Though it may look like a B-grade BLADE RUNNER knockoff on the surface (even borrowing James, memorable as escaped replicant Leon in the 1982 classic), NEMESIS is overflowing with more ideas and imagination that it can handle (note how several of the male characters have female names, and vice versa, and how one major male character is revealed to be a reconfigured female cyborg--is NEMESIS the world's first non-binary existential sci-fi action movie?). In many ways, it's the 1990s equivalent of TRANCERS, Band's 1985 cult classic that starred Thomerson and utilized key elements of BLADE RUNNER and THE TERMINATOR but was more inventive and intelligent than it had any business being. Like TRANCERS, NEMESIS got a limited theatrical release but never went wide, topping out at 86 screens in late January 1993. And like TRANCERS, NEMESIS spawned a series of straight-to-video sequels of precipitously declining quality (two featuring future JOHN WICK director Chad Stahelski), all but one directed by a stumbling Pyun and none starring Gruner.
NEMESIS ended up finding a cult following once it hit video, though its devotees did a good job of keeping it to themselves (it's also of interest today for brief supporting turns by Jackie Earle Haley, over a decade before his comeback, and a then-unknown Thomas Jane, billed as "Tom Janes"). But with Van Damme enjoying significant A-list success at the time, Hollywood studios decided they didn't need another European kickboxer, leaving Gruner vying for video store shelf space with Don "The Dragon" Wilson (BLOODFIST) and Loren Avedon (THE KING OF THE KICKBOXERS and NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER 2 and 3). He had a busy career throughout the '90s as a C-lister whose films could be regularly found in the one-copy "Hot Singles" section of the new release wall at Blockbuster: 1995's kickboxing western THE FIGHTER was an early effort by DTV action maestro Isaac Florentine and paired Gruner with BEVERLY HILLS 90210 and future SHARKNADO star Ian Ziering; he had the title role in 1997's MERCENARY, opposite an unlikely John Ritter, which led to 1998's MERCENARY 2: THICK AND THIN, teaming him with HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE's Robert Townsend. There were also titles like INTERCEPTOR FORCE, THE CIRCUIT, INTERCEPTOR FORCE 2, and THE CIRCUIT 2: THE FINAL PUNCH, and he capped off another tenuously-connected DTV action trilogy with 2000's CRACKERJACK 3, which was probably a shock to fans of the Thomas Ian Griffith-starring CRACKERJACK as the second installment--where Griffith was replaced by Judge Reinhold (!)--was retitled HOSTAGE TRAIN. Gruner also co-starred in the one-season, 1999 TV series CODE NAME: ETERNITY, a Canadian import that aired on what was then known as the Sci-Fi Channel.
Born in 1960, Gruner isn't headlining these days, but he's occasionally directed himself in titles even the most ardent Redbox devotee probably never heard of, like SECTOR 4: EXTRACTION and EXECUTIVE PROTECTION, and he still turns up in bottom-of-the-barrel fare like Pyun's ABELAR: TALES OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE, and had cameos in garbage like DIAMOND CARTEL and SHOWDOWN IN MANILA, where he turns up about an hour in with Don "The Dragon" Wilson and Cynthia Rothrock as part of a team of mercenaries that may as well have been called THE AVAILABLES. Early in his career, Olivier Gruner served a purpose as a second-string Jean-Claude Van Damme, at least until Van Damme started going straight-to-DVD, thus negating the need for a Gruner, which is clearly reflected in the declining quality of the gigs he started getting in the 2000s. And unlike Van Damme, Gruner never evolved into a good actor. But for a brief moment, he got to headline a legitimate cult classic with NEMESIS, which has just been released on Blu-ray in an extras-packed edition with two (!) alternate versions, because physical media is dead.
ANGEL TOWN (US - 1990) Directed by Eric Karson. Written by S.N. Warren. Cast: Olivier Gruner, Theresa Saldana, Frank Aragon, Tony Valentino, Peter Kwong, Mike Moroff, Lupe Amador, Daniel Villarreal, Jim Jaimes, Gregory Cruz, Mark Dacascos, Claudine Penedo, Lorenzo Gaspar, Tom McGreevy, William Bassett, Nick Angotti, Robin Ann Harlan, Julie Rudolph, Linda Kurimoto, Bruce Locke, Stephanie Sholtus, Lilyan Chauvin. (R, 106 mins) Gruner's career began inauspiciously with ANGEL TOWN, a project initially developed by Imperial Entertainment for Van Damme. Set in the mean streets of East L.A., it's essentially a SHANE scenario that drops a JCVD-like, former Olympic-qualifying kickboxer into the middle of a low-budget COLORS ripoff. Gruner is Jacques Montaigne, who arrives in Los Angeles to pursue a graduate degree in engineering. Unable to find any decent student housing, he ends up in a barrio neighborhood, renting a room at the home of Maria Odones (Theresa Saldana), a widow who lives with her son Martin (Frank Aragon) and her grandmother (Lupe Amador). Maria lost her anti-gang activist husband to a driveby shooting six years earlier, and since then, feared gang leader Angel (Tony Valentino) has persisted in harassing the family and trying to coerce Martin into joining his gang. Maria refuses to leave, finding an ally in embittered, wheelchair-bound Vietnam vet neighbor Frank (Mike Moroff). Jacques is hassled from the start, and quickly makes enemies after beating the shit out of several of Angel's crew, but as the violence escalates and the body count rises (starting with Grandma having a fatal heart attack after a home invasion), Jacques calls in a favor from Henry (Peter Kwong), an old Olympic buddy who now owns an L.A. gym. They work with Martin, teaching him to defend himself and after Maria is gang-raped by Angel's goons, Jacques, Martin, Henry, and Frank prep for the inevitable RIO BRAVO siege at the Odones house.
ANGEL TOWN has the makings of a solidly formulaic martial-arts outing, but until an admittedly lively finale, it's mostly awful. Director Eric Karson had made perfectly competent action movies before with Imperial's BLACK EAGLE and the 1980 Chuck Norris vehicle THE OCTAGON, but he's having an off-day here. Amateurishly-shot flashbacks set in France make little effort to hide that it's still Los Angeles, whether it's a cemetery with visible American names on the headstones or Karson's seemingly spur-of-the-moment solution being to plaster a misspelled decal reading "Parisien" onto a cab and having guys running around in checkered pants and berets in a depiction of Paris that's about as convincing as a Pepe Le Pew cartoon. Gruner being a terrible actor doesn't help, but for the most part, the fight scenes seem stilted and awkward (why is one brawl on a tennis court accompanied by wailing jazz trumpet?) and the dramatic elements sometimes have an almost surreal, Tommy Wiseau-like quality to them. Every scene at the university is mind-bogglingly bad, with a bizarrely misanthropic dean who openly insults the graduate students with no provocation and comes off like a woke doomsday scenario today, telling one young woman "I knew your father...he always wanted a boy...what a disappointment you must've been," and another "How can you be expected to bleed and think at the same time?"
Like a less hysterical companion piece to MIAMI CONNECTION, ANGEL TOWN is the kind of movie that feels like it was made by people who don't get out much, and where the serious drama comes off as unintentionally funny, while the intentional humor falls completely flat, particularly one bit that probably would've seemed cringe-worthy in 1990, let alone today: a Middle-Eastern student calls Jacques "frog," to which Jacques replies by grabbing the kid's tie and informing him "That's Mr. Frog to you, rag-head!" I realize this was a time of escalating Middle East tensions with Saddam Hussein, but even Cannon handled their shameless jingoism with a little more dignity and grace. It's Gruner's debut, so you almost have to cut him a little slack for having no acting experience and with a small-time outfit desperate to find a new Van Damme after he left them for greener pastures, but he's just in over his head here. Not even an experienced pro like RAGING BULL co-star Saldana (right before she enjoyed a bit of a career resurgence as Michael Chiklis' wife on the acclaimed ABC series THE COMMISH the next year) can elevate the C-listers around her, including Valentino, who, for the most part, comes off as the poor man's Trinidad Silva. ANGEL TOWN generated a minor controversy during its limited release in early 1990 when rival gangs caused a riot on its opening night at an L.A. drive-in, but that's really the most noteworthy thing about it. It was a fixture in video stores throughout the '90s, but with Gruner's deer-in-the-headlights thesping and its many moments of MST3K-worthy yuks, perhaps MVD's recent Blu-ray resurrection can give it a second life on the midnight movie circuit.
THE PREDATOR (US - 2018) Directed by Shane Black. Written by Fred Dekker and Shane Black. Cast: Boyd Holbrook, Trevante Rhodes, Jacob Tremblay, Keegan-Michael Key, Olivia Munn, Sterling K. Brown, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, Augusto Aguilera, Jake Busey, Yvonne Strahovski, Brian Prince, Mike Dopud, Lochlyn Munro, Garry Chalk, Duncan Fraser, Francoise Yip. (R, 107 mins) 1987's classic PREDATOR hasn't had a lot of luck with sequels. 1990's PREDATOR 2 has its fans but it's always felt like a script for a post-LETHAL WEAPON/DIE HARD Joel Silver project that had the Predator shoehorned into it, and 2010's PREDATORS (headlined by action icons Adrien Brody and Topher Grace) was instantly and justly forgotten (and if we're counting offshoots, there's 2004's terrible ALIEN VS. PREDATOR and 2007's improved ALIENS VS. PREDATOR: REQUIEM, which isn't a great movie but I'm reasonably certain I'm the only person who didn't hate it). When it was announced that veteran screenwriter (LETHAL WEAPON, THE LAST BOY SCOUT, and THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT) and smartass auteur (KISS KISS, BANG BANG and THE NICE GUYS) Shane Black had a PREDATOR project in the works, hopes were high for what came to be rather unimaginatively titled THE PREDATOR. Principal photography wrapped well over a year ago, with a planned March 2018 release, but 20th Century Fox delayed it due to poor test screenings. Black was ordered to scrap the entire third act, with reshoots taking place in March, followed by another delay with still more reshoots being done in July, just two months before the new release date. The reshoots were extensive enough that a character played by Edward James Olmos ended up being eliminated completely, but even going in without that knowledge, you'll be able to spot the exact moment that THE PREDATOR stops being a Shane Black film and starts being a rushed, compromised franchise product with the requisite bush-league CGI (the CGI in the new finale is really bad and doesn't even look finished, because it probably isn't). At least when his buddy Robert Downey Jr got him his IRON MAN 3 comeback gig, Black was still able to make the film he wanted to make.
It's a shame because for about 2/3 of the way, THE PREDATOR is a blast, and a distinctly "Shane Black" throwback to the kinds of '80s and '90s action movies we don't see much of anymore. Co-written with Black's old buddy Fred Dekker (they wrote 1987's Dekker-directed cult classic THE MONSTER SQUAD), it's pretty much a feature-length trigger warning: it's profane and vulgar, filled with quippy banter, tasteless jokes with sexist and/or racially insensitive punchlines ("What's the difference between a joke and five black guys? Your mother can't take a joke"), politically incorrect insults ("Hey, Twitchy," one guy says to another with Tourette's), an autistic kid dropping F-bombs, gratuitous gore, graphic decapitations and disembowelings, and a callous, wanton disregard for human life. It's got everything that was great about big action movies of the era of the original PREDATOR (itself a troubled shoot that really didn't come together until very late in production), and of course, it's neutered by the reliance on focus groups and an unnecessary concern with setting up a new franchise. One can't really judge Black's original third act until we see it, presumably on the Blu-ray bonus features, but there's no denying that what's here doesn't really work either. But the first 2/3 is ridiculously enjoyable, filled with typically quotable Black dialogue, some inspired callbacks to earlier PREDATOR films ("Lawrence Gordon Middle School," Jake Busey as the son of his dad Gary's doomed PREDATOR 2 character, someone spotting a bunch of motorcycles and yelling "Get to the choppers!"), and some hilarious sight gags, sometimes buried in the background, sometimes front and center, including one involving a severed arm that had the entire audience rolling.
Military sniper Quinn McKenna (LOGAN's Boyd Holbrook) is on a covert mission to take out members of a Mexican drug cartel when the operation is botched by the appearance of spacecraft that crash lands in the jungle. A camouflaged Predator slaughters the rest of his team, but McKenna, realizing he's made contact with an alien life form, manages to get away with its protective helmet and arm gear and mails it to a PO box back home. The box ends up on the doorstep of McKenna's estranged wife Emily (Yvonne Strahovski), where their autistic, genius son Rory (ROOM's Jacob Tremblay) figures out how it operates, inadvertently sending a signal revealing its location to another, larger Predator (this one featuring a modified design that looks more like a Rastafarian Rawhead Rex), with two dreadlocked Predator tracking dogs (an interesting addition) in pursuit. Meanwhile, McKenna is being railroaded by his military superiors and a black-ops government outfit run by the snarling Traeger (a gum-and-scenery-chewing Sterling K. Brown of THIS IS US) and dumped on a military prison transport to keep quiet. Traeger's goons grab biologist Dr. Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn) and take her to a secret installation where the crash-landing Predator is being kept under sedation. Of course, it escapes, and, with Traeger and dueling Predators in pursuit of young Rory, she eventually teams up with McKenna and "The Loonies," a Dirty Half-Dozen group of military malcontents who've taken over the prison transport: Nebraska Williams (MOONLIGHT's Trevante Rhodes), who shot his commanding officer because "he was an asshole;" joke-cracking troublemaker Coyle (Keegan-Michael Key); chatty Jesus freak Nettles (Augusta Aguilera); British card trickster Lynch (Alfie Allen); and Baxley (Thomas Jane), whose Tourette's leads to his blurting things like "F-f-f-fuck me in the face with an a-a-a-a-aardvark!" and "Eat your pussy!" the moment he makes eye contact with Bracket.
With the kind of one-liners that recall Bruce Willis barking "She's so fat, I had to roll her in flour and look for the wet spot" in THE LAST BOY SCOUT and its over-the-top splatter, THE PREDATOR wears its hard-R status with beaming pride, and those looking for something that's as much a PREDATOR sequel as it is a Shane Black joint won't be disappointed...for a while, at least. However, it's hard to imagine anyone being really satisfied with either of the film's endings, whether it's a shoddy-looking greenscreen battle atop a spaceship or an awkward, tension-deflating coda (complete with Holbrook's hair being a completely different color than it was in the rest of the movie) that seems more suited for a post-credits stinger that should've been cut. THE PREDATOR does a good job of juggling its many characters until the final act, when the film loses Black's style and becomes another rote, quick-cut blur of action and explosions that's completely at odds with the late '80s/early '90s aesthetic that dominated the preceding 75 or so minutes. Whether it's sloppy editing or a disgruntled Black reshaping the ending of the film with a gun pointed at his head, the film loses the thread, loses track of some its characters, and starts collapsing in the home stretch. Despite this, THE PREDATOR is 2/3 of a really fun movie with affectionate nods to PREDATOR and PREDATOR 2 (love that Alan Silvestri cue), and the bygone days of 30 years ago that feel akin to something an in-his-prime Joe Dante would've made if he was a misanthropic, sarcastic wiseass. In the end, the best comparison to make with this film is that it's the EXORCIST III of the PREDATOR franchise, a film where studio-mandated, third-act reshoots done by the director under duress are completely at odds with the tone and style of the rest of the movie, yet enough of its creator's voice remains in the first 2/3 that it's still worthwhile. Now that we've seen William Peter Blatty's intended ending of EXORCIST III, it's easy to see why the studio intervened. The end result is not a washout by any means, but time will tell if we ever get to see Black's initial cut of THE PREDATOR. As it is now and as a whole, it's a mild recommendation, but with some caveats.
BEFORE I WAKE (US - 2018) Directed by Mike Flanagan. Written by Mike Flanagan and Jeff Howard. Cast: Kate Bosworth, Thomas Jane, Jacob Tremblay, Annabeth Gish, Dash Mihok, Topher Bousquet, Lance E. Nichols, Jay Carnes, Courtney Bell, Michael Polish, Natalie Roers, Kyla Deaver, Antonio Romero, Hunter Wenzel. (PG-13, 97 mins) For a while, it was looking like American audiences were never going to see BEFORE I WAKE. Filmed in late 2013 and generating some buzz once director/co-writer Mike Flanagan's OCULUS opened in the spring of 2014 to acclaim from critics and horror fans, BEFORE I WAKE found itself a casualty of Relativity's financial problems. After shuffling the film's release date numerous times while attempting to avoid bankruptcy, Relativity eventually threw in the towel in 2015, leaving BEFORE I WAKE and several other films--including COLLIDE, THE DISAPPOINTMENTS ROOM, and MASTERMINDS--stuck in legal limbo. While those films were eventually acquired by other distributors, BEFORE I WAKE was left behind, released everywhere else in the world except the US. In the meantime, Flanagan moved on and made three more movies: HUSH, OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL, and GERALD'S GAME. HUSH and GERALD'S GAME were two of the more successful Netflix Originals and as a result, Netflix did Flanagan a solid by picking up BEFORE I WAKE for its extremely belated release more than four years after it was completed and still sporting a 2014 copyright. One of the very few of the current crop of "masters of horror" who might actually be worthy of the title, Flanagan kept his OCULUS mojo going with BEFORE I WAKE, a horror fantasy that's thoughtful and ambitious if a bit uneven. There's one subplot that doesn't really go anywhere and there's a stretch in the second half where the pace really lags but it culminates in a climax that's raw and emotionally devastating. Flanagan cares about his characters. He's especially adept at writing strong female characters (Karen Gillan in OCULUS and Carla Gugino in GERALD'S GAME), and that's the case here with Kate Bosworth turning in the best performance of her career.
BEFORE I WAKE opens with a man (Dash Mihok) pointing a gun at a child as he sleeps. Cut to Jessie (Bosworth) and Mark Hobson (Thomas Jane), a couple looking to become foster parents. They're still grieving the tragic loss of their young son Sean (Antonio Romero) in a bathtub drowning. They're unable to have more children and still wish to provide a loving home to a child in need. They get their wish with Cody Morgan ("introducing" a very young-looking Jacob Tremblay, two years before his breakthrough as Brie Larson's son in ROOM), the sleeping child in the opening scene. Cody is a quiet, sensitive orphan with an intense interest in butterflies. He warms to the Hobsons quickly, though he has contraband stashed away in a closely-guarded shoebox: after he's put to bed each night, he guzzles energy drinks and pops No-Doz to keep from falling asleep. Jessie finds out, and assuming it's because of the trauma he's endured, assures him he can sleep safe and sound in their home. What Jessie and Mark soon discover is that Cody can manifest his dreams in reality. After he falls asleep, they're visited by numerous butterflies fluttering around the living room that vanish into thin air as soon as Cody wakes. Seeing a picture of Sean, the curious Cody asks if he's in Heaven like his mother. That night, as Cody sleeps and dreams, Sean appears in the living room to greet his parents. He's physically there, smiling, hugging them, and then he disappears once Cody is awake. "I didn't mean to...I'm sorry," Cody tells them, powerless against his dreams and his ability to make them real. Of course, if his dreams are real, then genre logic must dictate that his nightmares are as well, and that becomes apparent with the arrival of a demonic figure Cody calls "The Canker Man" (Topher Bousquet), who comes into his room at night and terrorizes him with the ominous promise that "I'll always be a part of you!"
While Flanagan goes for Blumhouse-style jump scares with the sudden appearances of The Canker Man and some ghostly-looking, eyeless kids, he's got other things in mind. He explores issues of the cycle of abuse, with the ability to see and hold Sean causing Jessie to use Cody's gift to her advantage, knocking him out with Ambien every night and making sure to talk about Sean and show Cody pictures and DVDs of him to ensure that he'll dream about him and return her dead son to her once again. An outraged Mark is quick to point out that drugging Cody and using him as her personal "home movie projector" is the definition of abuse. There's an unexpected occurrence 2/3 of the way through and a developing mystery centered on what happened to Cody's mother and all of his subsequent foster parents, and in the home stretch, Flanagan does a good job of channeling elements of Steven Spielberg, M. Night Shyamalan, and Guillermo del Toro (it's really surprising that Doug Jones isn't playing the Canker Man) without it coming off like a hackneyed ripoff. But it's the unexpected, gut-wrenching emotional impact of the final act, and the outstanding performances by Bosworth and Tremblay (Flanagan seeing long before ROOM that this is a remarkable young actor) that really separate BEFORE I WAKE from its jump-scare genre brethren, even if all of its disparate elements don't quite come together (that bully subplot is underdeveloped, to put it mildly). Finally seeing BEFORE I WAKE and putting it in its proper context as far as Flanagan's filmography is concerned, you can see recurring themes and obsessions popping up time and again (specifically, family ties and strong women triumphing over traumatic pasts). It's a flawed but powerful and ultimately quite moving film that further, even if retroactively, establishes Flanagan as one of the top genre filmmakers working today.
The story of the USS Indianapolis is familiar to anyone who's seen JAWS, where Robert Shaw delivers arguably the greatest monologue in film history as salty shark hunter Quint recounts his experiences on the doomed ship near the end of WWII. After completing orders to deliver the materials for the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, the Indianapolis, without sonar and with no customary escort due to the top-secret, classified nature of the mission, was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-58 between Tinian and Okinawa. It sank within 12 minutes, as Captain Charles Butler McVay ordered the crew to abandon ship, leaving them stranded for five days in shark-infested waters. Of the 1196 on board, nearly 300 died in the initial attack. Of the remaining 900 left in the water, only 317 survived, the rest dying from dehydration, saltwater poisoning, drowning, and, as JAWS fans know, shark attacks. It's a horrific tragedy that deserves a more dignified presentation than USS INDIANAPOLIS: MEN OF COURAGE. The 1991 CBS TV-movie MISSION OF THE SHARK, with Stacy Keach as McVay, did a better job with the limited expectations of being a made-for-TV movie. This film, starring Nicolas Cage as McVay, is undoubtedly sincere in its intentions but can't overcome a trite, cliched script and rock-bottom visual effects that makes it look like an Asylum production debuting on Syfy. The explosions are laughable and the CGI sharks jump out of the water looking like deleted SHARKNADO files e-mailed to director Mario Van Peebles.
The film is divided into three sections, with the interminable opening act devoted to the camaraderie and ballbusting among an interchangeable and impossibly dull group of sailors, focusing on two--wholesome, all-American Bama (Matt Lanter) and gregarious D'Antonio (Adam Scott Miller), who does everything short of yell "Hey, you's boys wanna play some stickball?" to let you know he's from Brooklyn--who fall in love with the same woman (Emily Tennant). The second is the sinking of the ship and the five days stranded in the water, where Van Peebles turns the film into a cheap jump-scare shark attack horror movie, and third is a courtroom drama when the Navy, looking for someone to scapegoat for their failure to answer multiple distress calls (they thought it was the Japanese trying to deceive them), decides to court-martial McVay, saying he could've "zig-zagged" the ship to avoid the torpedoes. McVay's story is a sad one--he committed suicide in 1968 after over two decades of harassment and death threats by the families of the dead sailors even though he was fully supported by the survivors as well as by I-58 commander Mochitsura Hashimoto (Yutaka Takeuchi), who testified that there was no way McVay could've avoided the torpedoes. McVay and the men aboard the USS Indianapolis deserved something a little more polished and professional-looking than a WWII movie that looks like it was directed by Anthony C. Ferrante. The writing isn't much better--try not to laugh at the torpedoes hitting the ship a nanosecond after a guy playing dice in the mess hall rolls snake eyes. Or at decisions being made in darkened and ominous film noir-lit rooms filled with cigar-sucking fat cats ("War's good for business, and business is good for America!"). Or at McWhorter, the Chief Petty Officer played by Tom Sizemore in what's apparently an extended tribute to William Bendix (and of course, McWhorter's wife just had a baby that he describes as "nine pounds of rompin' stompin' dynamite!" which is code for "McWhorter's never going to meet his kid"). There are scattered moments where USS INDIANAPOLIS rises above its schlocky, Redbox-ready nature: Thomas Jane does some nice work in a small role as Lt. Adrian Marks, the pilot who disobeyed orders and made a daring water landing to rescue as many survivors as he could, and Cage, who's subdued and surprisingly restrained throughout, shares a scene with Takeuchi very late in the film where both actors are demonstrating such raw emotion that they almost convince you that they're in a better movie. With more money, a better script, a supporting cast of actors that you could actually tell apart, more directorial flair (Van Peebles' heart may be in the right place, but his bland direction is pure clock-punching and irrefutable proof that his NEW JACK CITY and POSSE days of being a filmmaker of note are long gone), and a time machine to go back to around 2000 when Nicolas Cage movies were still major events, the well-meaning USS INDIANAPOLIS could've been a strong WWII movie instead of what has to be the cheapest-looking $40 million movie ever, looking like total amateur hour despite having 30 credited producers and the participation of RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION cinematographer Andrzej Sekula. (R, 130 mins) THE HOLLOW POINT
(US - 2016)
There's absolutely no reason why this shouldn't be a nifty little desert noir B-movie in the vein of '90s video store mainstays like RED ROCK WEST and BLACK DAY BLUE NIGHT, but the barely-released THE HOLLOW POINT just never gets its shit together. Content to churn out a nearly decade-too-late ripoff of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego (APOLLO 18, OPEN GRAVE) and first-time screenwriter Nils Lyew waste an inspired and entertaining performance by the great Ian McShane in total Al Swearengen mode as Leland Kilbaught, a gruff, grubby, hard-drinking, burned-out sheriff of Los Reyes County, right along the Arizona-Mexico border. Kilbaught's got a reputation among the locals for not really caring much about the rules, and after he shoots Clive Mercy (Nathan Stevens) in the head during a traffic stop, he's relieved of his duties and new sheriff Wallace (Patrick Wilson) is sent in to replace him. Kilbaught knows what Clive was up to--running armor-piercing ammo into Mexico as a flunky for a cartel operation. Clive's equally hapless loser brother Ken (David Stevens) ends up killing a mid-level cartel figure after a botched ammunition run before skating back to Los Reyes County and hiding out. Complicating matters is that Wallace, who's from the area and couldn't wait to get away, knows his ex-wife Marla (Lynn Collins) is hooked up with Ken, which puts her at serious risk when the cartel sends unstoppable killing machine assassin Atticus (John Leguizamo as Javier Bardem) to find Ken and kill anyone who knows him, including Marla and sleazy used car dealer Shep Diaz (Jim Belushi), who also has connections to the cartel.
Other than a truly startling moment when Atticus hacks off Wallace's right hand with a machete, the only thing THE HOLLOW POINT has going for it is McShane, who single-handedly saves it from total oblivion. Lyew's script is an incoherent mess, Lopez-Gallego, who also serves as his own editor, couldn't generate any dramatic momentum if his career depended on it, occasionally resorting to stupid POV shots like the one from inside a spinning washing machine at a laundromat. The entire film is so sloppily-constructed that we never get a full grasp of who's who or why they're even in danger. Leguizamo is just Anton Chigurh with a better haircut and Belushi, sporting a cheap suit and a hideous combover, can play this kind of obnoxious shitbag in his sleep. But McShane valiantly tries to save the day, with his gravelly line readings and snide deliveries of mellifluously poetic bon mots like "You are not an unfortunate man...you're an auspicious parasite!" and "Buenos Diaz!" He seems to be having a blast playing this character, making it almost criminal that his efforts are squandered on such an uninspired and otherwise completely forgettable project. (R, 97 mins)
THE LADY IN THE CAR WITH GLASSES AND A GUN
(France/Belgium - 2015)
Mystery novelist and screenwriter Sebastien Japrisot (1931-2003) was considered "the French Graham Greene" and is still held in high regard by fans in his home country. Though the 2004 film A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT is probably the best known adaptation of his work to modern arthouse audiences, the late '60s/early '70s saw a string of French films that were either based on Japrisot's work or were original screenplays penned by the author himself, including two of Charles Bronson's biggest hits from his star-making European sojourn: 1968's FAREWELL, FRIEND aka HONOR AMONG THIEVES and 1970's RIDER ON THE RAIN. One such film was 1970's THE LADY IN THE CAR WITH GLASSES AND A GUN, the final work by veteran journeyman Anatole Litvak, scripted by Japrisot and based on his novel. LADY was remade in 1992 as the Estonian/Russian THE LADY IN THE CAR, which doesn't appear to have ever been released west of the Baltic Sea, and 2015 saw this remake that didn't really generate much interest in France or elsewhere. Director Joann Sfar sticks close to the novel and doesn't really do much to differentiate this version from Litvak's other than adding some more explicit sex and violence. In fact, he even makes a concerted effort to keep the story set in an early '70s setting and trots out some De Palma split-screen and other stylish and colorful tricks. The whole point of the project seems to be to emulate 1970 as much as possible while deliberately avoiding the self-conscious retro fetishism.
There isn't much reason for this remake to exist, but it's an enjoyable thriller with an appealing performance by Freya Mavor (Samantha Eggar in the 1970 version) as Dany Doremus, a frumpy wallflower in gaudy, oversized specs (of course, she's drop dead gorgeous when she takes them off). Dany is a secretary for wealthy Paris businessman Michel, played by Benjamin Biolay (Oliver Reed in the original). Michel has an important report Dany needs to type, so he has her come to his house and stay the night, since he and his wife Anita (NYMPHOMANIAC's Stacy Martin; Stephane Audran in the original) and their daughter are going out of town for a few days. Michel has Dany drive them to the airport in a vintage Thunderbird with instructions to take it back to their house and take a few days off work with an extra bonus for all of her trouble. Instead of taking the car back to Paris, she impulsively heads to the south of France because she always wanted to see the sea. On a road she's never taken to a place she's never been in a car she's never driven, everywhere she goes on the way, people insist they've seen her the previous day and she's even already signed in to a hotel where she tries to book a room. She's also attacked and has a wrist broken in a gas station restroom and can't trust a seemingly concerned mystery man (Elio Germano; John McEnery in the original) she meets in the hotel lobby. Things get even more bizarre when a body turns up in the trunk of the T-Bird. Is she suffering from amnesia or is there a conspiracy to drive her insane? The ludicrously contrived final explanation is so simple, quaintly old-fashioned, and beholden to coincidence and convenience that it's no wonder this didn't really get much play with today's twist-accustomed moviegoers. But right down to the score with some very Morricone-style 1970s cues, the 2015 version of THE LADY IN THE CAR WITH GLASSES AND A GUN is a slight but fun and entertaining throwback that wears its love of early '70s French thrillers on its sleeve and tries hard to please its audience. It's just too bad that its audience is still back in the 1970s. (Unrated, 95 mins)
STANDOFF
(Canada/US - 2016)
There's a lot of dumb things you need to overlook, but STANDOFF is the kind of compact B thriller that would've played the bottom half of a double bill back in the old days, and that's meant in a nice way. Visiting the graves of her parents who were killed in a car accident, 12-year-old Isabelle, nicknamed Bird (Ella Ballentine) witnesses several service attendees on the other side of the cemetery get gunned down by cold-blooded hit man Sade (Laurence Fishburne). Realizing he has a witness--and she was taking photos--he chases her to a ramshackle farmhouse where PTSD-plagued Iraq War vet Carter Greene (Thomas Jane) is drinking himself into a stupor with the intention of building up the courage to blow his brains out. Sade shoots Carter in the ankle, and a shotgun-toting Carter grazes Sade's side. Carter's got one shell left and heads to the top of the stairs with Bird, shatters some light bulbs and scatters them on the steps in case Sade decides to sneak up on them. Sade, meanwhile, waits in the living room for the perfect time to take them both out. Hence, STANDOFF.
Written and directed by Adam Alleca, who hasn't done anything since scripting the 2009 remake of THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, STANDOFF has a simple set-up that can't fail: stick the characters in a powderkeg of a situation in an enclosed space and just let it boil. Alleca's script sometimes falls victim to some overbaked tough-guy posturing and pissing contests as Sade and Carter repeatedly shout at each other and Sade constantly invokes how they're both soldiers following orders. Fishburne, whose dialogue and his delivery of it seem to suggest that Alleca wrote the part for Samuel L. Jackson but Fishburne was probably more economically priced, has a blast playing a thoroughly despicable shitbag, while Jane does a nice job as a shattered man whose life has completely fallen apart after his combat experiences and his procrastinating about picking up a tire in the high grass, inadvertently leading to his young son's death when he tripped over it and cracked his head open on a rock. Sure, it's a hackneyed plot device that Carter, whose wife left him after their son died, sees saving Bird as his last shot at redemption, just like it's hopelessly maudlin to have the son's death symbolized by his red balloon floating away (also, why isn't anyone looking for the missing sheriff's deputy that Sade kills?), but STANDOFF overcomes its missteps by excelling where it matters, with the actors (young Ballentine is very impressive) and the intensity of the situation. Alleca also shows his horror influences with several striking shot compositions throughout, and some interesting and unexpected stylistic touches and some occasionally Argento-inspired colorgasms. These positives allow you to overlook things like Sade hectoring Carter with philosophical nuggets like "You don't look the devil in the face without takin' a ride to the bottom floor," which is probably the best bit of Satanically-based life coaching this side of mercenary-of-the-future Jack Palance incomprehensibly bellowing "If you're gonna dine with the devil, you're gonna need a looooong spoon!" in 1993's CYBORG 2. Fishburne and Jane were among the small army of producers, which also includes actor Hayden Christensen and, of all people, Rich Iott, a former Republican congressional candidate from Ohio and occasional Nazi fashion enthusiast. (R, 86 mins) FLIGHT 7500 (US/Japan - 2016)
When a passenger has a violent seizure, vomits blood, and dies shortly into a Los Angeles-to-Tokyo flight, a supernatural presence makes itself known in this dismal and long-shelved English-language horror film from J-Horror auteur Takashi Shimizu, best known for 2002's JU-ON and its 2004 American remake THE GRUDGE. Filmed in 2011 with a trailer arriving online and in theaters early the next year for its planned August 2012 release under its original title 7500, FLIGHT 7500 was yanked from the release schedule by CBS Films and simply vanished until its premiere overseas in 2014. Lionsgate ended up acquiring the film for the US and sat on it for another two years before quietly dumping it as a DTV title with no publicity at all. The end result looks a lot like what might happen if M. Night Shyamalan remade one of the later, dumber AIRPORT sequels, filled with characters for the most part so loathsome that you hope the plane crashes five minutes after takeoff. With a running time of just 79 minutes, FLIGHT 7500 plays like something that's been truncated and mangled in the editing room, obviously the kind of film that was simply abandoned by everyone involved. The Shyamalanian plot twist at the end is a hoary cliche that negates everything that happened before, like the death of the seizing passenger or the douchey dudebro who tries to steal his Rolex. There's some talk of that passenger carrying a "death doll" that has something to do with Japanese folklore, but that's forgotten as soon as it's mentioned. Then a couple of dead passengers turn into zombies and the survivors are chased by what looks like the output of an '80s metal band's malfunctioning fog machine, but nothing comes of it and nothing is ever fully realized or even remotely explored for that matter, at least in this version.
In the midst of all the paranormal inactivity, Shimizu and screenwriter Craig Rosenberg (THE QUIET ONES) start focusing on the uninteresting characters' melodramatic, daytime soap-ready backstories--flight attendant Leslie Bibb coming to the realization that pilot Johnathon Schaech is never leaving his wife and kids for her; flight attendant Jamie Chung and her prolonged engagement; paramedic Ryan Kwantan and wife Amy Smart trying to get over their second miscarriage; ENTOURAGE's Jerry Ferrara and his germphobic bitch of a Bridezilla wife Nicky Whelan (who continued her unintentional "airline disaster-as-metaphor-for-her-career" motif by later co-starring in the Nic Cage remake of LEFT BEHIND) on their honeymoon; and sullen, tattooed goth chick Scout Taylor-Compton serving as this film's Basil Exposition when it comes to the spirit world and the whatever else thing this is trying to say. A film so bad that the post-production clusterfuckery has to be more interesting than anything in the finished product, FLIGHT 7500 might've had some good ideas at some point, but what's here is an incoherent disaster that's been chopped down as much as it can while still barely qualifying as feature-length. On top of that, after Capt. Schaech orders lights out for the duration of the flight, most of the film takes place in such murky darkness that you can hardly see half of what's going on. Some good films just have bad luck and get lost in the shuffle when it comes to finding a place on the release schedule--this is not one of them. Still, I can't help but think that having George Kennedy turn up as a ghostbusting Joe Patroni would've salvaged the whole thing. (PG-13, 79 mins)
Blumhouse, the Jason Blum-led production company behind the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, INSIDIOUS, and PURGE films, has a serious backlog of delayed and shelved titles through various distributors. One such distributor is Universal, who released several Blumhouse titles directly to Netflix with no fanfare in late 2014. This week, the studio quietly released to Netflix another batch of Blumhouse product that's been sitting around for anywhere from one to three years. The best of the bunch is THE VEIL, written by Robert Ben Garant (JESSABELLE) and directed by the long-absent Phil Joanou (THREE O'CLOCK HIGH, STATE OF GRACE), helming his first feature film since 2006's GRIDIRON GANG. THE VEIL takes its cue from Ti West's relatively recent THE SACRAMENT in that it obviously references the 1978 Jonestown tragedy in Guyana, but goes in a different and more supernatural direction. In 1985, 47 members of the Heaven's Veil religious cult committed mass suicide by poisoning, including the cult's crazed leader, the shaggy-haired and shades-wearing Jim Jacobs (Thomas Jane). 30 years later, lone survivor Sarah Hope (Lily Rabe), who was only five years old at the time of the mass suicide, is contacted by a team of documentary filmmakers headed by Maggie Price (Jessica Alba). Maggie and her cameraman brother Chris (Jack De Sena) have also had their lives affected by the Heaven's Veil incident--their father was the lead FBI agent investigating Jacobs and the man who led the raid on the compound. It had a profound effect on him and he committed suicide three years later, his body found by young Maggie. Maggie has scoured her father's personal files on Heaven's Veil and in some photos never released to the public, there are visible movie cameras, though any film that was shot was never recovered. As desperate to confront her past as Maggie is to see what truths are to be uncovered on any lost films, Sarah accompanies the group to the ruins of the Heaven's Veil compound where they indeed discover reels of film that show Jacobs experimenting with a brain-death-inducing drug and an antidote that pulls one back from the edge of death with what he claims are newfound, otherworldly, spiritual abilities. It doesn't take long before some unlucky members of the group discover the hard way that Jacobs' spirit haunts the Heaven's Veil grounds, with the intent of procuring new vessels for his and his followers' spirits to carry on their work in the present day.
Admittedly, the early going isn't promising, starting with Jane's character being named "Jim Jacobs" (not a far leap from the real Rev. Jim Jones or Stuart Whitman's "Rev. Jim Johnson" in 1980's GUYANA: CULT OF THE DAMNED) and wearing the signature dark sunglasses (do all suicide cult leaders go to the same Sunglass Hut kiosk at the mall?). But rather than go through the pointless, found-footage Jonestown re-enactment that West did with THE SACRAMENT, Joanou and Garant at least try to do something different with the idea, even if it seems a little reminiscent of EXORCIST III or PRINCE OF DARKNESS at times. Joanou also admirably avoids going full found-footage and instead shows Maggie and the others start watching the grainy, damaged films that seamlessly become flashback sequences. It's a rudimentary technique but it at least avoids the stale, shaky-cam, tilted-angle nonsense that permeates the found-footage subgenre. There's a tremendous sense of atmosphere and chilling imagery throughout, using old-school standbys like shadows, fog, and trees with ominous branches. Dead characters revived and inhabited by the spirits of long-gone Heaven's Veil members walk together and approach their next victims in scenes where Joanou invokes Mario Bava films like the "Wurdalak" segment of BLACK SABBATH and PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES. THE VEIL doesn't break any new ground, but it's a good mix of predictable Blumhouse jump scares and a welcome throwback to horror tropes of old, with a legitimately dramatic climactic twist that leads to a downer ending that pulls no punches. The experienced Joanou (other credits include U2: RATTLE AND HUM and FINAL ANALYSIS) may seem like he's slumming in low-budget horror, but he's done his homework and knows what works, and in the end, it's really just a catchily repetitious synth score away from being a mid-level John Carpenter film. We're not talking about a new cult classic or anyone's new favorite horror flick by any stretch of the imagination, but for a movie buried by its studio and dumped straight to Netflix, THE VEIL is better than anyone would expect it to be. (R, 94 mins)
VISIONS
(US - 2016)
Completed in 2014 and hopefully the world's first and last oenosploitation horror film, VISIONS is a relentlessly dumb paranormal activity potboiler whose sole saving grace is that it isn't found-footage. A year after surviving a freak car accident that killed a baby in the other vehicle, Eveleigh Maddox (Isla Fisher) and her husband David (Anson Mount) have purchased a vineyard in Paso Robles where they plan to rebuild their lives now that Eveleigh is expecting. It's not long before she's plagued by (spoiler alert) visions, such as a bloody hand print on the wall, exploding wine bottles, an attack by a mannequin, and being stalked by a robed figure with an unseen face. A preoccupied David doesn't take Eveleigh's claims seriously and pushes hard to get her back on antidepressants with the help of her doctor (Jim Parsons--yes, that Jim Parsons), but against the advice of her new prenatal yoga pal Sadie (Gillian Jacobs). Eveleigh does some investigating and discovers that the house's previous owners abandoned it due to ghostly occurrences, and that the paranormal poppycock dates back to the late 1800s, when the home was owned by the great-grandparents of local vintner Napoli (John De Lancie), who conveniently said nothing about this early in the film when he hosted a housewarming party for the Maddoxes.
Written by Lucas Sussman, whose last screenplay credit was collaborating with Darren Aronofsky on David Twohy's impressive 2002 WWII submarine horror film BELOW with , and directed by SAW series vet Kevin Greutert, VISIONS can't decide what it wants to be and is ultimately all red herrings and no payoff. There's an entire subplot about Eveleigh thinking the neighbors are running a meth lab and it serves no purpose whatsoever. The supernatural silliness makes no sense once the twists and turns are abruptly laid out in the climax, which seems headed in a ROSEMARY'S BABY direction before it suddenly shifts gears and turns into a ripoff of the French "extreme horror" outing INSIDE, which may have been a better idea all along. It's never made clear why the paranormal activity is confined to the house or why it's doing what its doing (is it the ghost of Paul Masson, avenging the sale of a wine before its time?) and its ultimately all smoke and mirrors to cover up a really weak script that wastes an overqualified cast of TV vets and others who should have better things to do. Joanna Cassidy turns up as a wine distributor who also--gosh, wouldn't ya know it?--happens to be a medium when the plot requires one, and in easily the most frivolous role of her career, Eva Longoria in a pointless, two-scene bit part as Eveleigh's unattached and on-the-prowl friend. Being stuck on NBC's TELENOVELA is one thing, but what did the former DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES star do to get busted down to minor supporting roles in crummy horror movies where she plays the second best friend to the lead actress? Did she lose a bet with Jason Blum? (R, 83 mins)
CURVE
(US - 2016)
Shot back in 2013, CURVE is essentially a two-character piece that starts out as a HITCHER ripoff that morphs into a survivalist thriller version of 127 HOURS before wrapping up as a grisly revenge outing. It gives singer and DANCING WITH THE STARS vet Julianne Hough a chance to get gritty as Mallory, a bride-to-be taking the deserted highway route from San Francisco to Denver, where her fiance is currently working. Of course she has engine trouble but that's remedied by a convenient hiker named Christian (Teddy Sears) who happens to stroll by. She offers him a ride to the next town and things go pleasantly enough until he openly ponders if she'd be able to "deep throat his cock," which Mallory correctly interprets as a major red flag that Christian is a depraved psycho. Unable to get him out of the vehicle, Mallory instead crashes through a guard rail on a road, sending them sailing into the woods below. Christian is thrown from the passenger seat but Mallory's leg is trapped and she's unable to move, so after taunting her a little, Christian leaves. Days go by, with Christian periodically returning to the scene of the accident to hector her some more, because if he killed her, then there'd be no third act where she manages to free herself and track him down at a lodge where he's killed several other people and has a girl (Madalyn Horcher) strapped face-down on a bed.
It doesn't really score any points for intelligence or originality, but CURVE is never dull and Hough is surprisingly credible in the lead. Her fans might be surprised to hear her dropping vulgarities, eating a rat, and drinking her own urine as she's trapped in her car for days on end, but director Iain Softley (HACKERS, THE SKELETON KEY) and first-time screenwriters Kimberly Lofstrom Johnson and Lee Patterson don't offer much in the way of logic or consistency. Why would Christian leave Mallory alive in the car? And why is the highway completely deserted early on, but when Mallory gets in a position to expose Christian, you can suddenly see several cars whizzing by, including a cop (Drew Rausch) who, right on cue, becomes Christian's next victim? Sears doesn't do much as the dull antagonist besides widen his eyes and smirk. It's nice that he doesn't overplay it, but since we know nothing about the character, and what little we do know is unreliable info, it's hard for both Sears and the audience to get a handle on the hows and whys of Christian. Has he left a trail of dead bodies in his wake? Is he from the area? Is anyone after him? Who knows? For the most part, CURVE is a forgettable retread of other, better movies, but Hough does a surprisingly convincing job of stretching outside her comfort zone and really gives it everything she's got. (R, 85 mins)
