Film Review: Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Copyright: RLJ Entertainment

So far, Bone Tomahawk is one of the best films of 2015.

Films like it are only enforcing my strong belief that we�re living in the golden age of neo-western film. Furthermore, it seems that the standards set by films like The Salvation, The Retrieval, and the Das finstere Tal are constantly upgraded by other filmmakers who dare to push the genre into its next developmental chapter.

Here�s one way to describe it: Bone Tomahawk is a film that somehow managed to get connected with the spirit of Quentin Tarantino circa 1991 and offer him a chance to use a cast of choice to make a western horror dead-pan delivery dark comedy. The man that got the opportunity to channel this spirit is S. Craig Zahler, who made his debut with this film.

Before this, Zahler worked as both writer and cinematographer. But, in this film, his directorial results can only be described as flawless.

Using a simple story, set at the end of the 19th century, which follows a group of men going after a tribe of cannibalistic Native Americans with the purpose of retrieving a woman, the director made a killer film. There�s no better way to describe this movie than to call it sharp. All in the world Zahler made can cut right to the bone. This includes the bone tomahawks shaped from the jaws of horses that the cannibals use, but also the way characters perceive the world and their roles in it, and even goes all the way to the language they use. To say that the film is witty would be a gross simplification of the completely unburdened nature of the script.

Similar to other neo-western stories, it is liberated from the nonsense of contemporary films that might be called horrors. Here, the terror is fused with humor and the completely foreign way in which the people of that (relatively recent) time understood and approached their environment. At one moment, a member of the party, without any hesitation, kills two strangers who they notice in the dark approaching their campsite, even though they agreed to disarm themselves a moment before. His rationalization is simple: the two were robbers or a scouting party for other robbers.

No one else would approach a campsite without making their presence known and there is no room for special circumstances. While there is some protest, all appreciate his logic and just pack up and leave. In other words, the Wild West was as different to the modern mentality as much as the middle Ages were. This film doesn�t make a big deal out of it, just recognizes it as a stone cold fact.

The second thing that makes Bone Tomahawk into such a masterpiece is its humor and the way it bursts out of the characters, who all act brilliantly and I don�t want to commend anyone in particular (OK, maybe Richard Jenkins). In some ways, the humor is integral to the idea of violence and suffering � from the modern perspective, the things that the main characters do are irresponsible, cruel and wildly risky, but to them, they are just the way the world works. In the West, dying violently was kind of expected and you were expected to roll with the punches until you end up in a ditch surrounded by a beautiful sunset in the prairie.

The genius of S. Craig Zahler lies in the fact that he managed to present this type of grim and pointless historical idea in a wildly fun, funny and gory film.

Film Review: Extinction (2015)

     Copyright: Vertical Entertainment

The best way to describe the movie Extinction is to perceive it as a weird dream about a script about a time after a zombie apocalypse. The film opens in the present time, where an outbreak of some kind transformed patients into rabid killers, brought the army onto the streets and people were being evacuated to the protected zones.

Two friends, Patrick and Jack, along with a pregnant woman, try to reach safety. A decade later, society has fallen apart and the world has entered a new ice age (for whatever reason), most are dead, but Jack and Patrick are neighbors, living apparently secure lives while one of them is also raising a child, the nine-year-old Lu.

But, here�s the twist � the two men are not communicating with each other in any way, even though only a road separates the two houses.

The twist-based approach isn�t something new in zombie films. Ever since The Walking Dead revived the interest in the genre and started the latest zombie craze, there have been numerous films trying to find a fresh angle from which they can present the same theme. One of the latest ones was Maggie, which relatively successfully went for the father-daughter family drama as the main cornerstone of the plot.

Extinction and its director Miguel �ngel Vivas went for the mystery of a broken relationship between two friends, which obviously had to be something huge if it managed to overshadow the death of the human civilization. Vivas, who previously worked on a home-invasion thriller called Kidnapped, placed a lot of attention to the characters and their state of mind. This is why almost half of the film passes while we see how Jack is a caring father to Lu while Patrick gradually goes insane. Flashbacks examine their relationship and slowly move to the present point.

But, Vivas had to use some horror elements as well, so in one moment, additional survivors and new infected mutants come onto the stage. From then on, the film switches gears into the standard under-siege flick, dispersing almost all potential about the two main characters the director tried to build. Both Matthew Fox and Jeffrey Donovan present solid characters, but their acting stop being important in that point.

As the action unravels, the film goes full bore into the action-survival mode, which doesn�t really leave a lasting impression mainly because the entire film (both houses and the small surrounding area outside) looks like a giant sound stage with plenty of fake snow. In this environment, the panic, fear, and the confusion, in my opinion, just don�t connect that well with the audience.

Like a dream of the zombie movie, Extinction dares to innovate but lacks the cognitive effort needed to make whole the different random parts it tries to encompass.

Film Review: Dark Places (2015)

Copyright: A24

From its onset, the Dark Places movie emits that particular vibe that tells that this film will not be a huge success with the audience. As a dark mystery and a thriller, it begins on a really somber note, showing a mass murder of the Day family in which a brother was accused and sentenced for killing his mother and two sisters.

The remaining sister Libby Day, then a small girl, is two decades later a grown woman, (played by Charlize Theron), who still lives off of the charity coming from random people who learn her cruel fate. Libby, now a jaded and detached individual, learns that in spite of this, the money is drying out, so she is forced to listen to an offer from a shady organization, who desires to reopen her case and find out what really happened that night when the murders took place.

The introduction of this group is one of the most impressive and unexpected elements of the film, which is both out of place (in a good way) and extremely intriguing. It is a shame that later on, the same element loses all relevance to the story.

Naturally, as Libby returns to the backwater part of Kansas where the crime took place, grizzly memories, but also new and worrying events, begin to unravel. Like the The Drop, it slowly build that unnerving tension, even though nothing really threatening happens.

As a thriller, Dark Places is pretty good. It builds two parallel narratives while it examines the young Ben Day, who was convicted of the murders, and his demanding pre-crime life of poverty and family instability. The second narrative deals with the present-day Libby and her quest for answers, until the two plot lines collide into a coherent story. Here, the director Gilles Paquet-Brenner uses a cinematographic approach that is reminiscent of the French horror thrillers from the early 21st century, where bleakness and an overall depressive setup add to the overall horror feel. In this movie as well, the Day family struggles as a collective, but also as individuals � Kansas is a desperate place to be poor, and Ben desperately wants to feel something apart from the sadness and irrelevance, no matter what the cost might be.

But, here the film also makes a turn for a more philosophical domain, where it tries to explore the choices that are made and their consequences as the past time frame moves closer and closer to the family murder, but does this in a very meandering way. At the same time, it gradually loses the tempo of the original setup and the organization that hired Libby doesn�t really matter anymore, even though she falls into active danger from unseen forces who wish for the case to stay closed.

The resolution of the film is, strangely, satisfying in an odd way, mainly because it ties up all the loose ends. Here, the film provides a solid conclusion and sets all the characters to their rightful place, but overall, it lacks any of those heart-racing moments (action one�s or other types) that a grizzly thriller mystery needs to have. This makes Dark Places movie a very good cerebral piece but keeps it emotionally at an arm�s length when it comes to connecting with the audience.

Crowdfunding Push - Abattoir: Waiting Room

Imagining you're an animal in the slaughterhouse sounds like a really bad idea, but this short film being made in Serbia explores the exact same idea. Here's what Abattoir: Waiting Room Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign page states: 

What if we are not the most powerful creatures in the universe? What if "the others" have the power and reason to serve us what we deserve? What if "the others" are here just for that - to show us how wrong we are doing?  Two humans, one �waiting room�, many questions, and two stories. First one: the host (played by famous Serbian actor Radoje Cupic) is a vegan who didn�t do much to save the animals, besides the fact he stopped eating them; his karmic punishment is an existence with never-ending brief residents who are about to end up as a meat products. Second one: newcomer (played by highly regarded Nenad Pecinar) is just one of many with the same questions, behavior, and fears. As a meat-eater, he will end up as a� you can guess.

Abattoir: Waiting Room campaign is entering its final 12 hours and has currently collected over 20% of the funds it is looking for. Check it out here and see if you can help this film out.

Film Review: Knock Knock (2015)

Copyright: Lionsgate Premiere

It�s not good to be bad, and being bad might end with you being killed, is what Knock Knock movie is trying to tell us. Temptation can be interesting and fun, and it can even dance around in your living room in a shower robe, but at the very end of temptation, something horrible and sharp might lurk in the dark.

Essentially, this is all well and nice, but the cog in the mechanism of this revenge horror film is its main actor � Keanu Reeves. This man has plenty of, shall we say, unorthodox talent and a strong screen presence, but here, the actor transforms into a devastating miscast right during the opening scenes.

Let�s take the first few moments of the film. Here, we see Reeves� character, a man by the name of Evan Webber, being woken up by his loving wife and family. Webber is an architect in his 40�s and he has a gorgeous spouse and kids straight from a cereal commercial. At this point in time, all is splendid in the Webber household, but still Reeves acts as an alien who suddenly appeared in a human body. This alien studied human culture for a long time and prepared for this situation in simulators, but through an error, he arrived there way ahead of schedule.

Now, the same alien is trying to improvise human emotion and mostly ends up looking weird or as overacting close to the Nick Cage potential. As the family leaves, the strangeness of Evan Webber kind of dies down a bit, but not completely. When Evan�s beautiful future tormentors arrive, the film makes it hard to root for anyone and it also seems pointless to wait for any particular moment, apart from seeing if the ending would be an outright win for either side or with some kind of a poetic tie match. Each of these scenarios was completely fine by me and no option bothered me in any way.

I get that Eli Roth is a smart movie guy in every sense of the word. He produced several very effective horrors by being innovative, on budget and a bit edgy, but not too much. Now, as a director, he does show off his cinematic talent and Knock Knock movie has frames that are pleasant to look at, especially when it comes to the way Roth uses the exquisitely decorated Webber home. On the other hand, he obviously couldn�t find a solution to the Reeves rampant emotional emptiness he infuses into his character. Even worse, maybe this wasn�t even a problem in Roth�s eyes. Ironically, in the last moments of the film, there is something like a mini-catharsis when spit starts to fly from the mouth of a desperate Evan, but it comes too late to make any difference.

I understand that Knock Knock movie was designed as something similar to an inverted revenge fantasy, but the thing that it brought to the table are a bit of nudity and a distant, weird Reeves. There were plenty of places where the film could have introduced some lame twist, for example, like the one that Haunter pulled off (minus the supernatural element) but Roth didn�t even make an effort to do that. Sloppiness, lack of direction and miscasting all made Knock Knock movie a below-average revenge thriller.

Coming Soon: Fingerface

When it comes to low-budget films, it's possible that Andrew Dawson managed to break the mold. This filmmaker created a feature-length romantic comedy using only his own fingers and a whole lot of hours of creating scenery, filming and doing everything else a film needs. According to the Fingerface official site, the plot of the film goes like this:

After losing his job, Giles does the only logical thing. He gets very, very drunk. And in the haze of the bar he sees a girl. Not just any girl. Giles is sure that she�s the girl of his dream from the night before. Her name is Stephanie and it turns out that she�s a lot harder to impress in real life than in dreamland. To win Stephanie�s heart, Giles has to travel the world, turn his back on his friends and give up his other dreams of becoming a musician. But is she worth it? And is Giles really in love, or is it just good, old-fashioned lust?

Fingerface will be released as VOD on December 1st, 2015. You can watch  pre-order the film here or watch the trailer below.

Film Review: The Visit (2015)

Copyright: Universal Pictures

M. Night Shyamalan is a polarizing figure, which some adore and many others shun. 15 years ago, he burst onto the scene with a one-two punch that included The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, one of the most impressive mystery films of the late 1990�s. But then, as the age of the 21st century came about, Shyamalan kind of lost his touch, or was unable to evolve it into the new age, constantly reverting back into his comfort zone of early X-Files episodes, both in terms of narrative and visual delivery.

His subsequent films all lacked that synergy that could combine a twist-based idea with an interesting and attention-worthy movie plot. Instead of that synergy, most of them just ended up being a Twilight Zone episode turned into uninteresting films. Other, none-mystery films like After Earth were just horrendous and should be forgotten as quickly if possible. But now, out of nowhere, 15 years after losing artifact of cinematic super-power, Shyamalan found it in the most unlikely place � a horror comedy from the found footage genre.

As a true 90�s man, Shyamalan did not venture into the found footage domain, even though I believe he was attracted to the business side of it (he is nothing if not a savvy business person). Now, with the Visit 2015, he created easily his best work in almost two decades.

The film is refreshingly down-to-Earth from the get-go. In it, two teenagers, a sister and brother by the name of Becca and Tyler, leave their mom and go to visit their grandparents they never met. They arrive at their countryside home and first off, it�s all good: the grandparents are thrilled to see both of them while Becca films the entire experience as a documentary film. But soon, strange and bizarre things begin to happen and neither of them really knows how to approach newly formed and constantly changing circumstances.

As a unique combination of dark humor and strong horror elements, The Visit is a film that cannot be easily compared with some other movie, especially in the terms of atmosphere. It could be said that Housebound (2014) has a bit of a similar goofy-scary vibe, but both ends of that spectrum are much more intense in The Visit. In a very smooth fashion, Shyamalan shifts the film from moments when the audience is grossed out and/or terrified into really odd comical moments that are equally unnerving as they are funny. All the while found footage cinematography never goes overboard with shaking and motion blurring, making the film easily watchable and even more easily enjoyable. As the plot becomes more and more ludicrous, so does the film's raw entertainment appeal intensifies.

No one should doubt Shyamalan�s ability to make a solid film. With The Visit movie, he definitely showed that he can attain that precious synergy once again and move it right into the new age.