OVERLORD (US - 2018) Directed by Julius Avery. Written by Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith. Cast: Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Pilou Asbaek, Mathilde Ollivier, John Magaro, Bokeem Woodbine, Iain De Caestecker, Dominic Applewhite, Jacob Anderson, Gianny Taufer, Erich Redman, Meg Foster. (R, 110 mins) Long-rumored to be another installment in executive producer J.J. Abrams' CLOVERFIELD universe, OVERLORD is not, perhaps thankfully so after the toxic reception given to the disastrous Netflix dumpjob THE CLOVERFIELD PARADOX earlier this year. Set in 1944 in the hours leading up to "Operation Overlord," the D-Day invasion of Normandy, OVERLORD is a solid throwback to '80s-style horror that's equal parts BAND OF BROTHERS, THE DIRTY DOZEN, RE-ANIMATOR, THE KEEP, the WOLFENSTEIN video game series, and John Carpenter's THE THING. The Carpenter element is mainly in its third-act siege scenario, some periodic thumping synth beats, and the presence of Wyatt Russell, Kurt Russell's look-and-sound-alike son with Goldie Hawn. Young Russell's been plugging away for some years now, with showy supporting roles in COLD IN JULY, EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!, and INGRID GOES WEST, but this is the first time his casting is a deliberate homage to his legendary dad. The day before the planned Normandy invasion, a squadron of Army paratroopers is shot down over France en route to destroy a German radio tower atop a church in an occupied France village in order to shut down enemy communication prior to the operation. The plane goes down with a few survivors, but their commander, Sgt. Eldson (Bokeem Woodbine) is killed by German officers, leaving the rest to carry out the mission: second-in-command Cpl. Ford (Russell), quiet Boyce (Jovan Adepo of FENCES), loudmouth Noo Yawk smartass Tibbet (John Magaro as Leo Gorcey), photographer Chase (Iain De Caestecker), and aspiring writer Dawson (Jacob Anderson), who doesn't last long thanks to a mine.
The remaining four end up taking refuge with Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier), who lives with her kid brother Paul (Gianny Taufer), and a gravely-ill aunt who's barely seen but whose guttural wheeze is heard throughout the house (the actress, very fleetingly seen and rendered unrecognizable under makeup, is credited as Meg Foster, but IMDb seems to think it's a different Meg Foster--one with only one other acting credit way back in 2009--than the veteran cult movie actress, though I'm inclined to think it's "the" Meg Foster until that's confirmed otherwise). Ford sends Tibbet and Chase to check their assigned rendezvous location and while he and Boyce are hiding in the attic, Chloe is visited by sadistic SS officer Wafner (Pilou Asbaek, best known as GAME OF THRONES' Euron Greyjoy), who routinely demands sexual favors. Boyce leaves to check on Tibbet and Chase and ends up discovering a secret lab under the church where Nazi scientists are conducting bizarre experiments on local villagers and captured POWs, including Rosenfeld (Dominic Applewhite), one of their squad who was presumed dead. He rescues Rosenfeld, but the labyrinthine lab is filled with disfigured creatures capable of superhuman strength, and Boyce realizes that Chloe's "sick" aunt is a botched casualty of the inhuman experimentation. Stealing a sample of a mysterious serum, Boyce makes it back to the house where they run afoul of Wafner, leading to a chain reaction of increasingly horrific events that necessitate overhauling the mission to destroy both the radio tower and the evil goings-on in the underground lab.
The plot hinges on Hitler's plan to create a Thousand Year Reich, which is only slightly more outlandish than, say, Quentin Tarantino's rewriting of history in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, and while it doesn't really break any new ground, OVERLORD is an enjoyably goofy and gore-soaked spiritual '80s-style throwback. To put it more simply, if I saw OVERLORD when I was 12, I'd probably still consider it a classic today. Director Julius Avery (SON OF A GUN), working from a script by Billy Ray (SHATTERED GLASS) and Mark L. Smith (THE REVENANT), keeps the pace fast and intense and allows everyone in the ensemble a chance to shine, whether it's Magaro acting like a drafted Bowery Boy, Ollivier getting a badass moment with a flamethrower, or Russell coming off like R.J. MacReady (I'd love to watch Kurt Russell watching OVERLORD). The CGI sometimes disrupts the mood, but there's enough practical splatter mixed in that it's not a dealbreaker. OVERLORD is obviously the end result of a variety of influences, but it does a nice job of keeping its homage factor in check so it's not just a lazy checklist of references. It could be that seeing Nazis get their asses handed to them is just something we need right now, and despite the pre-release hype and that not-very-promising first trailer inexplicably showcasing AC/DC's "Back in Black," it's really not about Nazi zombies, which would be pointless to even attempt, because you can't top 1977's SHOCK WAVES. Is OVERLORD a classic or a "game-changer?" No, but it's two hours of enjoyable, cut-the-bullshit popcorn thrills for genre fans.
A timely and extremely uncomfortable cringe comedy take on SINGLE WHITE FEMALE for the Instagram era, INGRID GOES WEST manages to stay on course and never lose its way despite some wild shifts in tone. It's got some career-best work from PARKS AND RECREATION co-star and deadpan icon Aubrey Plaza as Ingrid Thorburn, a desperately lonely young woman introduced crashing a wedding in tears and pepper-spraying the bride, a supposed bestie who didn't even invite her. Ingrid is slapped with a restraining order and committed to a mental facility, and we soon learn the two were barely acquaintances after Ingrid commented on one of her posts and immediately began stalking her, attempting to ingratiate herself into her life in a purely one-sided friendship. Ingrid spends her days scrolling through Instagram and liking every pic she sees. She's also still mourning the recent death of her mother, and after happening upon a magazine article about trendy "social media influencer" Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), she immediately follows her on Instagram. When Taylor responds to her comment, Ingrid cashes in her mother's $60,000 life insurance policy and impulsively moves to L.A. to find Taylor, tracking her through her posts and following her home, and as soon as Taylor and her artist husband Ezra (Wyatt Russell) step out, Ingrid lets herself in, kidnaps their dog and waits for the reward offer to call and set up a meeting. Ingrid and Taylor become fast friends, going on road trips and hitting the trendy L.A. spots, with Ingrid completely making herself over in Taylor's image and quickly growing discontented when Taylor can't devote all of her attention to her.
Things take an even darker turn with the arrival of Taylor's douchebag, drug addict brother Nicky (Billy Magnussen), who derisively refers to Ingrid as "Olga" and quickly senses that something is off about her. Ingrid also gets involved with Dan (O'Shea Jackson Jr), her Batman-obsessed landlord who's unaware of just how mentally unstable she is. Making his feature debut, director/co-writer Matt Spicer does a commendable job of keeping a sense of balance to INGRID GOES WEST. The comedy shifts from commercial to cringe to unbelievably dark in ways that would cause a less-focused filmmaker to completely drop the balls they're attempting to juggle. Spicer gets a lot of help from a fearless Plaza, who somehow manages to elicit sympathy even at Ingrid's worst moments. The sense of desperation and isolation Ingrid feels is palpable, spending all of her time alone in total silence, eyes glazed over while she stares at her phone, not even looking at what she's "liking" and retreating further away from the world with each click. As the cycle begins again with Taylor, Ingrid recognizes history repeating itself but can't stop it. This is just how she is, and the nature of social media brings out the worst of it. We never learn much about Ingrid's past and what we do learn isn't really reliable since she's a compulsive liar. Spicer and co-writer David Branson Smith find intriguing parallels between Ingrid and Taylor as well as Ingrid and Ezra, who knows Taylor better than anyone and confides in Ingrid that his wife's existence isn't what it appears to be to her Instagram followers. Spicer closes with a terrific final shot with a focus on Plaza's smiling face that leaves the resolution open-ended but hints that Ingrid is headed for some next-level crazy. The story arc gets a little predictable the longer it goes on, but for Plaza and Olsen fans and connoisseurs of cringe (it's also somewhat reminiscent of the underrated OBSERVE AND REPORT) should consider INGRID GOES WEST required viewing. (R, 98 mins) SINGULARITY (Switzerland/US - 2017)
A thoroughly incoherent sci-fi hodgepodge that manages to rip off BLADE RUNNER, I ROBOT, THE MATRIX, THE HUNGER GAMES, DIVERGENT, THE TERMINATOR, and TRANSFORMERS in its first 15 minutes, SINGULARITY's behind-the-scenes story is more interesting than the film itself. The story is a jumbled mess, dealing with Kronos, an AI program designed to save Earth, but immediately deciding on its own volition that humanity isn't worth saving and promptly blowing up everything and killing billions of people. 97 years later, the world is a post-apocalyptic wasteland with small clusters of humans still existing, though we only see two: Andrew (Julian Schaffner) and Cania (Jeannine Wacker), a fearless warrior with a wardrobe provided by Katniss Everdeen. They're making their way to Aurora, a supposed safe haven where humanity will attempt to rebuild itself, but Andrew is actually an advanced synthetic lifeform so real that even he's unaware that he isn't human. Their journey is overseen from a command center inside the Kronos program, where the uploaded avatars of misanthropic Kronos designer Elias Van Dorne (John Cusack) and his flunky (Carmen Argenziano) monitor their whereabouts to discover the secret location of Aurora. Savvy moviegoers will notice something strange almost immediately and it becomes glaringly apparent with each passing appearance of Van Dorne: Cusack doesn't seem to be in the same movie as everyone else, and that's because he's not.
Remember in 1984 when Paramount desperately shoehorned newly-shot footage of red-hot Eddie Murphy into the two-years-shelved Dudley Moore comedy BEST DEFENSE? It's a similar situation here, only with an ice-cold Cusackalypse Now. SINGULARITY began life as a very low-budget Swiss sci-fi film titled AURORA, shot way back in 2013 and never released. It was written and directed by 21-year-old Robert Kouba and starred Schaffner, Wacker, and veteran character actor Argenziano, the latter probably the biggest American name the largely Kickstarter-funded production could afford. Trailers for AURORA were posted online in 2014 and 2015 but it remained shelved until US outfit Voltage Pictures acquired it and brought Kouba and Argenziano back to shoot new scenes with Cusack in Los Angeles in 2017. With the added Cusack footage, the restructured film was rechristened SINGULARITY and dumped on VOD and on eight screens in the fall of 2017. Whatever changes Voltage had Kouba make don't appear to have helped, and there's really nothing to see here unless you want to witness the depressing sight of Cusack being Raymond Burr'd into a terrible sci-fi movie that isn't improved by his barely-there presence. There's no way he was on the set for more than a day (there's a credit for "Catering, L.A." so he at least stuck around for lunch), with his entire screen time spent in front of a greenscreen and occasionally watching four-year-old footage of Schaffner and Wacker, never once coming into contact with either of them. Throughout, Cusack looks disheveled and tired, uttering nonsense like "Yes...his code continues to evolve" in ways that would make Bruce Willis look away in pity. As a fan of old-school exploitationers, there's a part of me that's amused that these kinds of GODZILLA and Roger Corman moves still occasionally go on today (for further fun, check out 2015's BLACK NOVEMBER to see Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger, Anne Heche, and Wyclef Jean get Raymond Burr'd into a long-shelved Nigerian-made political drama), but on the other hand: John Cusack...what the hell are you doing? There's some OK cinematography in some of AURORA's Swiss and Czech Republic location work, and the opening sequence of a neon cityscape accompanied by Vangelis-inspired synth farts courtesy of The Crystal Method's Scott Kirkland (who also wasn't involved in AURORA) might give the impression that it's a passable BLADE RUNNER riff if you're barely paying attention or you've had several beers. But in its released condition, SINGULARITY is nothing more than Cusack--once a bankable, A-list actor who could get movies made (remember HIGH FIDELITY?)--scraping bottom. What's wrong, dude? Seriously. Should we be concerned? (PG-13, 92 mins)
THE CRUCIFIXION (US/UK - 2017)
Ten years ago, director Xavier Gens made an immediate splash with genre fans for the bold and ballsy FRONTIER(S), his contribution to the wave of extreme French horror. Immediately after, he directed the Luc Besson-produced actioner HITMAN, though he was, of course, given the Hollywood welcome by being fired in post-production after clashing with Fox execs. It would be five years before he resurfaced with the dismal THE DIVIDE, a repugnant post-apocalyptic SALO knockoff that could easily have been titled LAST BOMB SHELTER ON THE LEFT. Gens directed a short segment of THE ABCs OF DEATH prior to another extended leave from the big screen, directing a few episodes of the Euro TV series CROSSING LINES before recently returning with the barely-released THE CRUCIFIXION. One of the dullest horror movies of the year and maybe the least-warranted demonic possession film since THE VATICAN TAPES, THE CRUCIFIXION is inspired by the "Tanacu Exorcism" in Romania in 2005, where a priest and four nuns were accused of murder when an exorcism on an allegedly possessed nun resulted in her death. Here, the case is investigated by fictional American journalist Nicole Rawlins (British actress Sophie Cookson, from the KINGSMAN films), a non-believer who journeys to Romania to interview jailed priest Father Dimitru (Catalin Babliuc) and the family and friends of the late Sister Adelina Maranescu (Ada Lupa) to prove God isn't real. She's haunted by calculated, predictable jump scares and loud noises and has weird sexual dreams about Father Anton (Corneliu Ulici), a young priest who worked with Father Dimitru.
That's about all that happens. THE CRUCIFIXION is one of the most relentlessly gabby films of its kind, which would be fine if the mystery was engaging or if Cookson was even remotely believable as a dogged, hard-nosed reporter. Her whole motive has to do with guilt over not accepting Christ when her mother was dying of cancer a year earlier, so of course the whole point is to convince her to believe, which would almost put this tame, tired dud firmly in faithsploitation territory if not for Nicole's erotic dreams and one lone F-bomb when she's suddenly possessed out of the blue in the last ten minutes of the film. Written by the CONJURING twin sibling duo of Chad and Carey W. Hayes in the most clumsy and cumbersome fashion possible (Nicole's editor/uncle, skeptical about her story idea, ten seconds after we're introduced to both of them: "This is just a chance for you to nail faith to the wall, and it's NOT going to bring your mother back!"), THE CRUCIFIXION is the kind of sleep-inducing trifle that evaporates from your memory while you're watching it. FRONTIER(S) is pretty badass, but between THE DIVIDE and now THE CRUCIFIXION, Gens, once hailed as a wunderkind and the horror genre's next big thing, is looking an awful lot like a one-hit wonder. (R, 90 mins)
SHIMMER LAKE (US - 2017) Written and directed by Oren Uziel. Cast: Benjamin Walker, Rainn Wilson, Stephanie Sigman, John Michael Higgins, Ron Livingston, Rob Corddry, Wyatt Russell, Adam Pally, Mark Rendall, Matt Landry, Isabel Dove, Angela Vint, Neil Whitely, Julie Khaner. (Unrated, 86 mins) With screenwriting credits on 22 JUMP STREET and the awful horror spoof FREAKS OF NATURE, one wouldn't think Oren Uziel would make his directing debut by branching out with a Coen Bros. knockoff, but the Netflix Original SHIMMER LAKE isn't bad despite hinging on a gimmicky set-up. Set in the days following a botched bank robbery in a small rural town, SHIMMER LAKE plays in reverse, starting on Friday when everything has fallen apart and ending on Tuesday, the day of the robbery. It's like an arc of the FX series FARGO if showrunner Noah Hawley gave it the MEMENTO treatment (this reverse set-up was also done quite well earlier this year in the little-seen western BRIMSTONE). By the end, it's little more than smoke and mirrors to cover up a story that wouldn't be all that interesting or even remotely clever if told in a straight chronological fashion. Indeed, it often requires clumsy exposition to get the viewer up to speed, as in an early scene taking place on Friday where the sheriff is talking to FBI agents and drops this cumbersome chestnut: "We'll see if it matters when we find Andy's--my brother's--dead body!" If they're looking for Andy and have obviously already been working together, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that the FBI guys already know that Andy is his brother? Nobody would say that sentence like that unless they were characters in a story being told in reverse.
SHIMMER LAKE opens on Friday, and the first time we meet Andy Sikes (Rainn Wilson), he's hiding in his basement with a duffel bag full of money, pleading with his young daughter Sally (Isabel Dove) not to tell anyone he's there. Up in the kitchen, Andy's clueless wife Martha (Angela Vint) is talking to Sheriff Zeke Sikes (Benjamin Walker of ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER), who's torn between upholding the law and looking out for his brother. As the story plays out, starting on Friday and working back to Tuesday, all of the details are gradually doled out until everything comes together at the beginning. Zeke and devoted, puppy-dog-like deputy Reed (Adam Pally) are forced to work with snide, condescending FBI agents Walker (Ron Livington) and Biltmore (Rob Corddry) to investigate a bank robbery that took place on Tuesday and resulted in Zeke taking a bullet in the shoulder. Andy is a disgraced former county prosecutor who lost his job in a corruption scandal after taking a payoff in a case involving Ed Burton (Wyatt Russell, Kurt's lookalike son with Goldie Hawn), the former star QB and local superstar who became a drug-dealing shitbag after high school. Ed was charged with murder and drug possession in a meth lab explosion at nearby Shimmer Lake that killed his five-year-old son Ed Jr., but Andy happily accepted a bribe to knock it down to manslaughter. Ed was ultimately released from prison after serving just eight months. With both men desperate for cash, Ed and Andy decide to rob the town bank, owned by local businessman Brad Dawkins (John Michael Higgins), who also happens to be the judge in Ed's trial and agreed to go with the absurd reduction in charges only because he's planning a Senate campaign and Ed and his stupid, drug-added buddy Chris (Mark Rendall) have blackmailed the married, family man judge with a videotape showing him in a compromising position with his secret side piece--a young boytoy known around town as "Meth Billy" (Matt Landry).
As Uziel moves the story back one day at a time, pieces will fall into place and some running gags will be established (on Friday, Reed is introduced freaking out over the perceived insult of being forced to sit in the backseat of Zeke's cruiser because he's giving the mailman a ride to work, and the events of Thursday reveal why he's so pissed off about it), and many sides to Ed's long-suffering, still-grieving wife Steph (Stephanie Sigman of MISS BALA and Netflix's NARCOS) will be revealed, along with several twists that make you see previous (future?) events in a different light. Despite the presence of many people known for their comedic skills, SHIMMER LAKE rarely goes for big laughs and instead exhibits the kind of morbid, pitch-black humor seen in the the great Coen Bros. classics like BLOOD SIMPLE and FARGO. In the end, it's pretty minor and slight, but the performances are good, with Wilson doing a good job conveying that distinct sense of Jerry Lundegaard nervous panic, and it has some surprises up its sleeve, even when you concede that the film wouldn't be much were it not for its backtracking Leonard Shelby structure.
Richard Linklater's "spiritual sequel" to DAZED AND CONFUSED is an inferior follow-up that's actually more in line with his Ethan Hawke/Julie Delpy BEFORE SUNRISE/SUNSET/MIDNIGHT trilogy. 23 years is a long time, and Linklater doesn't succeed in recapturing that lightning-in-a-bottle magic that he had with DAZED AND CONFUSED back in 1993. Gone are the insight, the wit, the quotable dialogue, and the standout cast. Look at DAZED and see how many future stars are in it, starting with Matthew McConaughey's scene-stealing Wooderson, the source of the actor's iconic "Alright, alright, alright!" mantra. That film had one of the most perfectly-cast ensembles you'll ever see. By contrast, EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! is populated by mostly interchangeable actors playing not-very-interesting characters. Other than Wyatt Russell (Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn's son) as affable, TWILIGHT ZONE-loving stoner Willoughby, Judson Street as angry spaz Jay (a cartoonish character who wears out his welcome in record time), and Zoey Deutch (Lea Thompson's lookalike daughter) as a cute theater major, nobody stands out or really makes much of an impression. Linklater's script doesn't help, giving the actors--most of whom look 30--florid, philosophical speeches that sound overwritten and completely unnatural for college jocks--or anyone (I'm also reasonably sure that jocks weren't driving around Texas singing along to Sugar Hill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" in the summer of 1980 either, in a scene Linklater obviously loved so much that he couldn't end it). These guys talk like they've seen a bunch of Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith movies that haven't happened yet.
Set at the end of August 1980 at the fictional Southeast Texas College, the film follows the baseball team's antics the weekend before classes start, with the focus on freshman Jake (Brody Jenner), who's a combination of Jason London's Pink and Wiley Wiggins' Mitch from DAZED. There's a lot of babes, beer, bong hits, and ballbusting, things you've seen in a thousand other movies of this sort, but rarely with such grating self-importance. The closest thing to keen insight is every few minutes, someone has to chime in with a reminder that "You guys were the kings of your high school, but here you're just a big fish in a small pond," or some such variant. Linklater had much more success revisiting the characters played by Hawke and Delpy every nine years in the BEFORE films, but here, a couple of decades later, he tries to reignite that DAZED spark and it just doesn't work. It's been too long and 55-year-old Linklater's understandably not in the same headspace now. DAZED was a retro slice-of-life collage that vividly captured a time and place and brought it to life. This just feels like middle-aged nostalgia. There's ANIMAL HOUSE hijinks, the period detail is terrific, and there's a killer soundtrack filled with classic tunes, but it's lacking everything special that made DAZED AND CONFUSED the beloved film that it's become. Nobody's going to remember EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! after it's over and nobody's going to be talking about it 23 years from now. (R, 117 mins)
ROAD GAMES
(UK/France - 2016)
ROAD GAMES isn't a remake of Hitchcock disciple Richard Franklin's 1981 Australian thriller ROAD GAMES, a minor classic set on the desolate roads of the Outback where a trucker (Stacy Keach) and his faithful dingo pick up a hitchhiker (Jamie Lee Curtis) and play cat & mouse games with a serial killer. This new, completely different ROAD GAMES has absolutely nothing to do with that film, nor does it spend much time on the road. Jack (Andrew Simpson) is a young Brit hitchhiking through France when he meets fellow hitcher Veronique (Josephine De La Baume). They're having a hard time finding any takers thanks to a serial killer prowling these little-traveled rural backroads, though they luck out when roadkill-collecting oddball Grizard (Frederic Pierrot) picks them up and welcomes them for dinner at his middle-of-nowhere farm with his depressed and distant American wife Mary (RE-ANIMATOR cult star Barbara Crampton). It doesn't take long for Jack and Veronique to figure out that something is decidedly off with this couple, starting with Mary clinging to Jack and displaying a bizarre demeanor toward Veronique. The next morning, Jack isn't buying Grizard's story that Veronique decided to leave and go on without him, and he's drugged and abducted by a weirdo neighbor (Feodor Atkine). Jack eventually escapes, goes back to Grizard and Mary's farm while they're away and finds Veronique bound and gagged in a room filled with stabbed mannequins. Then things get weird.
There's some bizarre moments like that scattered throughout ROAD GAMES, but it never really comes together due to writer/director Abner Pastoll's misguided approach that's slow-burn to a fault. There's a lot of dawdling and bullshit for the first hour or so before things get legitimately interesting. The big reveal is pretty decent, but would've been better had Pastoll not blown it earlier (hint: wasn't Jack's bedroom locked from the inside?). Then he gets too cute at the very end, with a really dumb post-credits stinger and a ridiculous "un film de Abner Pastoll" in credits that are otherwise in English, a joke that hasn't been funny in 40 years. There's also no reason for this to be called ROAD GAMES, other than hitching a ride on the familiarity some old-school horror audiences might have with a cult film that may not be widely known but is very much admired and revered by those who have seen it. ROAD GAMES has its moments, but the best is probably the end credits, in the beloved John Carpenter font, with aerial footage of those French backroads that are reminiscent of the theatrical version of BLADE RUNNER's end credits, with music by French synth rockers Carpenter Brut. It's the kind of closing credits party that can trick you into thinking you saw a much better film than you did. Pastoll closes big, and has a couple of effective bits along the way, but honestly, you can just queue this up on Netflix and go straight to the end credits at the 89:51 mark. You'll swear it's a great movie and you won't even have to sit through the rest of it to be let down. (Unrated, 95 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
THE PACK (US/Australia - 2016)
Despite the title and the fact that it deals with a pack of feral dogs on the attack, THE PACK isn't a remake of the 1977 Joe Don Baker-headlined horror film, though that would be preferable. It seems like the idea of a family in a rural Australian farmhouse under siege by a pack of vicious dogs is a can't-miss, but director Nick Robertson and writer Evan Randall Green do everything they can to execute the premise in the most humdrum fashion imaginable. THE PACK is a slow burner than confuses the slow burn with "nothing much happening at all." It's a good 35-40 minutes before the attacks even start, with a bunch of "character development" involving the family's precarious financial situation and the possibility of foreclosure. The bank is offering them a hefty sum to vacate the land and sell it to a developer, but the dad (Jack Campbell) is too much of a proud, stubborn jackass to take the deal. Mom's (Anna Lise Phillips) small veterinary practice isn't enough to make ends meet, the teenage daughter (Katie Moore) is resentful that her folks can't afford an apartment for her like they promised, and the young son (Hamish Phillips) just wants everyone to stop bickering. None of this means jack shit when the dogs finally attack and cut the power, leaving the cast to wander around in darkness, peering out windows trying to see if the dogs are around. A cop arrives and is immediately torn apart by the dogs, then the phones go dead and of course, no other backup is sent when he fails to respond or report back to the station. Dad tries to do...who knows...with his pickup truck but is attacked in the process. Dogs get in the house and quietly wander around, their keen sense of smell unable to detect that someone is hiding on the other side of a door. The slow-burn horror crowd might be a little more forgiving of this than some, but this is just an aimless, ambling dud that never catches fire, never generates suspense, and never gets scary. It seems difficult to make this is bland and indifferent as it is, but there's somehow more tension in the family's bickering early on than there is in the wild dogs waiting outside to tear them apart. There's really not much more to say about this, other than it's one of the most disposable, generic, and instantly forgettable genre titles of the year. (Unrated, 88 mins, also streaming on Netflix)
