HANGMAN (2017)

From the opening moments, you can just feel that Hangman is going to suck. Before you catch a single lousy performance, or a sampling of overwrought directing, the sense of mediocrity to come is innately palpable. You could call this snap reaction either snobbish elitism, preconceived notion, or uncanny intuition. I don’t care — whatever. Regardless, it’s not going to turn Hangman into anything other than the tired, silly, and twenty-years-late ripoff of Se7en that it’s obviously vying to be.

Not a single name in the cast gives you that hope of, “Hey, this could be good!” Karl Urban’s name is not synonymous with quality. Nor is that of Brittany Snow, who Prom-Night-remaked herself into the mainstream before ending up in almost exclusively quiet VOD releases (unless it’s a Pitch Perfect sequel) because she’s simply not a strong performer. And then, of course, there’s Al Pacino. Ironically, he and his counterpart, Robert De Niro, have been considered kindred spirits throughout their entire time in Hollywood: the actors (both of whom appeared in The Godfather II) became linked not just because of their cultural lineage and tough mafia guy personas, but because of their brooding intensities and dedications to their craft. (That Heat came along later and brought them together yet again, resulting in simply one of the all time greats, solidified this bond between them.) But, like De Niro, Pacino has been rubber stamping everything that’s come his way.

Hangman is no exception, and it’s really odd to see Pacino slumming it in this particular flick, being that it offers zero intrigue or uniqueness; there’s no obvious draw for him, and offers him absolutely nothing new. Was it the chance to play a cop, even though he’s already played a cop seven times before? The chance to play a homicide detective who regrets his past choices while hunting a serial killer? He did that in Insomnia. Another homicide detective chasing down a gimmicky serial killer? He did that too, in 88 Minutes. So why return to this well? The chance to, what, work with the venerable Karl Urban — the guy from Red? Or maybe he just wanted to vacation in beautiful Atlanta. No, wait — I’ve got it: it was the chance for Pacino to try on a southern accent that doesn’t sound at all convincing. And speaking of unconvincing, Pacino is flat-out bad here. Obviously, he’s made bad films in the past — name me one actor who hasn’t — but even in any of those bad films you can conjure, at least Pacino was good in them. In Hangman, he’s bad. It’s like he knew right off the bat that Hangman was doomed — in the hands of a workman director eager to show off every film school trick, and being released by a studio who needed to fill their February slot in the Redbox at the local ACME — so why bother putting in a good performance?

Hangman is every bit cop movie that you’ve come to expect. And if you’re hoping that it has that scene where a homicide detective shows up to a crime scene and asks the coroner examining the body, “Whaddya got?,” well, you’re in luck. Everything about Hangman is dull, and generic, and simply uninteresting. The only thing it tries to do that’s the least bit different is add a journalist into the mix who basically rides along with our detectives from crime scene to crime scene to obtain research and insights for an article she wants to write. And that I’ll totally buy. What I won’t buy is that this journalist follows the detectives directly into danger — into houses where suspects are hiding, where blood was spilled and where her ignorance could very well contaminate evidence, and where she actually puts herself in harm’s way to help catch a suspect. There’s nothing believable about this — and if this does actually go on in the real world of law enforcement, we have major problems.

The film only momentarily comes to life when the killer is prominently introduced in the last act (and to give Hangman credit, it at least takes another page out of Se7en and introduces a new character instead of hamfistedly and impossibly revealing the killer had been a main member of the cast). The killer, as played by the underrated Joe Anderson (The Grey), has awful motivations and his link to one of the main characters is hazy and unconvincing, but Anderson still manages to shine through all that and bring to the table something resembling an actual performance — which is more than can be said for anyone else in this garbage.

Potential viewers, you’ve seen Hangman a hundred times already — all of them, even the worst of them, much better than this. 

In fact:

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I  T    B L O W S

MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN (1992)

Memoirs of an Invisible Man is probably the least discussed film of John Carpenter’s career outside of his first feature credit, Dark Star. There are a handful of reasons for this, which may be due to its so-so reputation, but it’s likely because it just doesn’t feel like a Carpenter film. Stepping in after original director Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) left the production over disagreements with Chevy Chase about its tone, Memoirs of an Invisible Man remains the only film Carpenter made for Warner Bros. That may sound like random boring trivia, but considering his terrible experience with the production, which he’s talked about freely over the years, it serves as a reminder as to why he avoided working with major studios whenever feasible — and they don’t get more major than Warner Bros.

A byproduct of Carpenter becoming a senior citizen has been his adorable irascibility and his total loss of a social filter. He publicly called Rob Zombie a “piece of shit” for the shock-rocker’s fudging of reality regarding how Carpenter allegedly responded to Zombie’s intent to remake Halloween. (The two later mended fences.) In addition, his candid misery on the set of The Fog remake (on which he served as producer) became legendary around the horror community for how salty one human being could be for being paid handsomely to sit in a corner. In keeping with all this, he’s made it pretty clear over the years that there’s one actor, above all others, he absolutely hated working with, and though you’ll never find any written confirmation of this, it was most assuredly Chevy Chase. 

If you’ve read up on the comedian and actor, followed his behavior on the set of Community, or tangled with the gigantic tome Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests, then you know he’s an extremely difficult personality to wrangle. Carpenter, not naming names, once said during an interview on the set of Escape from L.A. that an actor he’d just finished working with could “burn in hell for all eternity.” (I once pointedly asked Carpenter which actor this was, and if that same actor happened to share the name of a city in Maryland, and I received “no comment” as a response. However, he later disclosed during an interview that Chase “still sends [him] a Christmas card every year.”)

All that tabloid fodder aside, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, as a film, is very very…okay. Perhaps the most jarring thing about it is its somewhat confused tone. Though marketed as a comedy/romance, and in spite of its moments of levity (all, naturally, deriving from Chase’s invisible antics), the tone is fairly straight and even a bit dark. Memoirs of an Invisible Man just might be the only comedy/drama/thriller/romance/film noir in existence. (Chase’s character recording a pseudo-memoir of the events of his life over the last few days is a clear callback to Double Indemnity.) Chase and love interest Daryl Hannah show close to zero chemistry, but Michael McKean is typically great, if underused, and Sam Neill (yay!) as a shadowy government official in steady pursuit of Chase’s invisi-dude offers the best character – he’s certainly one of the main reasons to watch.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man has unfairly garnered a shitty reputation over the years – as a title that’s easy to dismiss and a very minor footnote in an otherwise celebrated artist’s career. I can somewhat understand why: as someone who considers Carpenter his all-time favorite filmmaker, Memoirs of an Invisible Man doesn’t feel like a Carpenter flick at all, and as any cinephile will tell you, one of the joys of watching films is to zero in on a filmmaker or writer’s style that speaks to you and to revel in that style for every one of his or her creations. (That the director’s name doesn’t precede the title, as it has otherwise ever since 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13, seems to suggest that Carpenter feels the same.) It very much embodies the kind of too-many-cooks, compromised, and flavorless productions that studios pump out dozens of times per year. Carpenter doesn’t script, ghost-script, or score, and his usual cadre of cast and crew aren’t on board. There’s a new director of photography, a new composer, a new editor…and no Peter Jason.

Memoirs of an Invisible is the definition of disposable entertainment. It’s not offensive enough to be terrible, but if you’re someone like me who’d sooner watch a lesser Carpenter film that at least feels like a Carpenter film, then you may wonder when you’d ever get the urge to watch it at all. Funnily enough, while the title Memoirs of an Invisible is obviously about Chase’s character, it’s more appropriate for Carpenter’s ultimate influence on the film: as you’re watching, you know he’s there in the room with you, but you can’t see him at all.

MANHUNTER (1986)

I have kind of an odd history with Manhunter.

It was 2001, and the first post-Silence of the Lambs Hannibal Lecter film was being released to huge anticipation and fanfare. (Ridley Scott's Hannibal was released a mere nine years after The Silence of the Lambs, yet it felt like an eternity had passed in between; meanwhile, eighteen years have passed since Hannibal was released in theaters, but it feels like it just came out, doesn't it? Tell me, how old do you feel?)

In "honor" of Hannibal's impending release, Anchor Bay Entertainment released Manhunter on an anniversary VHS. "Hannibal Lecter's legacy of evil begins here" the cover art boasted. I was curious about the film, never having heard of it, let alone seen it. And I was warned against it. "It's so bad," I was told. The film was boring. Poorly made. "Some weird, no-name guy" was playing Hannibal Lecter.

Refusing to fold to such pressure, I brought it home anyway to give it a whirl. And my first viewing of Manhunter could best be described as conflicting. Chronologically, I don't recall if I had yet to read through the Hannibal Lecter novel series, though I since have, so it wasn't a matter of compulsively comparing the events of the film to the events of the book. It was more than I had no choice but to take the film at face value, doing my best to reconcile that The Silence of the Lambs had seemed to prove the final word on the subject of Hannibal Lecter. Fair or not, The Silence of the Lambs had already cemented the idea of who Hannibal Lecter was: how he sounded, looked, spoke, and in what way he figured into the conflict. Manhunter, based on the first novel of the Hannibal Lecter trilogy, Red Dragon, had no choice but to pale in comparison. After all, the same aesthetic--an FBI agent relying on the intellect of a captive serial killer for help in catching another killer at large--had already been established. Not only that, but Lambs hewed closer to the horror genre, with its gory and graphic depictions of exhumation, crime scene photography, along with its wild, awe-inspiring, and taboo-shattering performance from Ted Levine as Buffalo Bill. It was difficult to appreciate Manhunter from the outset because, following the discouragement in seeing the film, I only managed to see its flaws. But, like most things, perception can change over time. And as I became more and more attuned with who Michael Mann was, and how a Michael Mann film felt, it led me into a reintroduction to his take on the Hannibal Lecter legacy, and this time around, I found a lot more to appreciate.

Manhunter is the Hannibal Lecter story reimagined as a police procedural. Efforts were made to maintain Lecter's (sorry, Lecktor's) cunning and intimidation, but to also dial down the grislier aspects from the character of the novel. (He's never once referred to as "Hannibal the Cannibal.") More interested in crafting a psychological thriller than the overtly horrific 2005 version of Red Dragon and the television series Hannibal, Michael Mann honed in on the effects of "the gift" that Will Graham possesses--and on how easily a person with that kind of gift can begin to lose a sense of who he is. But in doing this, his character came off as hardened, rather than the fragile and quite vulnerable version recently essayed by Hugh Dancy on the short-lived NBC series. (The less said about Edward Norton's "Nah, I'm good" take on the role, the better.) Because of this, Peterson's iteration of Will Graham was difficult to embrace at first, and at times, it still is. He seems less like a person trying to enjoy retirement in a Floridian pastel paradise with his wife and son, and more like someone insisting on this paradise and this family in an effort to enforce his own sense of normality. Right off the bat he seems unable to fully connect, emotionally, with his wife or his son, and whether this was purposeful on Mann's part or a disconnect between Peterson and the role is unclear. What is clear, however, that as appreciation grows over time for a film at first misunderstood, Peterson's Will Graham--hardened or not from his years of criminal profiling--is a fascinating portrayal of a man on the edge, obsessed with doing what he knows is right, to the point where he risks his life, as well as those of his family.

Of all the novels in the Hannibal Lecter trilogy, Red Dragon is most suited toward Michael Mann's sensibilities. Seemingly not that interested in the horror genre (The Keep notwithstanding), Red Dragon makes the easiest case for Mann to sidestep the horrific in favor of the psychological. It's in keeping with the kind of stories he likes to tell: the cop against the thief; the righteous against the corrupt; whatever Miami Vice was. And that's the most satisfying thing about Manhunter--it's vintage Michael Mann. Disparate conflicts aside, Manhunter wouldn't feel out of place in a double bill with his James Caan heist film Thief. From his leaning on cool blue hues to his use of ethereal (and, yeah, kind of dated) musical soundscapes, it's Michael Mann who makes Manhunter such a great film (with respect to novelist Thomas Harris, of course).

Hack extraordinaire Brett Ratner did his best to replicate Manhunter's class and appeal with his "official" adaptation of Red Dragon by doing what he does best--stealing good ideas from better filmmakers. Hiring Manhunter's director of photography (Dante Spinotti), and The Silence of the Lambs' screenwriter and production designer (Ted Tally and Kristi Zea, respectively), all Ratner managed to do was make a very okay film with an amazing ensemble cast, all of whom are utterly wasted. Naturally it made money and was considered quite the success--neither thing Manhunter had been able to boast upon its 1986 release.

There's been a slow Manhunter resurgence over the years, likely due in part to the boom in home video collecting beginning in the early '90s, which allowed new audiences to discover the redheaded stepchild of a rather prominent horror franchise. Many ardent supporters go as far to say that it's superior to The Silence of the Lambs in every way. While that last part isn't true (man-love for Mads Mikkelsen aside, Anthony Hopkins' first take on Hannibal Lecter will always be definitive), that doesn't make Manhunter less worthy of a re-reintroduction to high-def collectors. Fans of psychological thrillers will find a lot to analyze and pupils of Michael Mann will enjoy seeing an early effort containing signs of things to come.

Manhunter isn't the definitive film from the Hannibal Lecter universe, but it's nearly there. As long as The Silence of the Lambs exists, Manhunter will always be second in command, but that's just fine considering the enormous legacy Lambs has gone on to establish and rightfully earn. 

With the cancellation a few years ago of the cult television series Hannibal, which proved that established characters could shake free of their constraints and be re-imagined for new audiences, perhaps a few more folks have opened their minds to the possibility that the Hannibal Lecter legacy doesn't stop and start with The Silence of the Lambs, however oddly Hannibal Lecktor may want to spell his name.

DER SAMURAI (2015)

On the audio commentary included on its Blu-ray release by Artsploitation Films, producer Linus de Paoli paraphrases a former film teacher when he says that every film has to leave at least some questions unanswered, for if every possible curiosity the audience held for a certain film were satisfied, it would make that film forgettable. Nothing about that film would linger in the audience's mind. Such a philosophy has fully informed the construct of Der Samurai, which presents a lot of questions and provides very little answers. And boy, audiences do not like this -- especially the mainstream -- and Der Samurai is as far away as one can get from mainstream before traditional narrative is left behind entirely.

Der Samurai has been described as a black comedy, or a Lynchian mind-twister replete with bouts of dark humor. The first is fully incorrect, and the second is pushing it, but closer to the truth. For once you get over the fact that, yeah, you're watching what's clearly a man (or a man-shaped being) walk around in a formal dress and kill random people with a samurai sword, all while not-so-subtly trying to convince poor Jakob (Michel Diercks) to desire him, there's not that much humor to be found. A moment or two allows some levity - the scene in which Jakob violently assaults a lawn ornament flamingo is beyond surreal and kind of comes out of nowhere - but Der Samurai appears to be playing its outlandish concept very straight. And a certain understated beauty comes out of that. Or it could very well be what was intended as humor gets lost in the utter madness unfolding before you, leaving you ready to accept that this slice of oddness over here isn't meant to be more or less funny than all the other oddness surrounding it.

Jakob, awkward in his own skin, is an outcast. He doesn't maintain any groups of friends and lives with his grandmother (his parents are deceased). And the fact that he's a police officer doesn't earn him even a modicum of respect from his community or superiors. He's lonely, and likely wrestling with the fact that he is homosexual (though this is never flat-out admitted). His comfort in the presence of girls, in any way other than his role as server/protector of the people, is lacking. He sadly dreams of making a cavalier move on a pretty girl nice enough to give him a ride...but it's all in his head - a quick and stolen daydream; in actuality, he's staring out her car window, unaware of what to say or how to act.

In the same way that Tom Hanks made audiences cry over a volley ball, or Bruce Campbell wrangled tears by playing an elderly dying Elvis mortally wounded by a mummy, Der Samurai is adept at triggering a surprising melancholy reaction despite all its surrounding insanity. The Samurai, who is never named anything beyond that (and who is never actually called that during the film), makes his appearance in an ominous fashion, immediately gaining the distrust of the audience. But throughout the one long dark night over which Der Samurai's events unfold, the dynamic between our two lead characters begins to slowly change. The Samurai begins to embody many different things to the tortured Jakob: first, an antagonist; then, a leery friend; finally, a subject of sexual desire -- all before turning back around to becoming his antagonist again, only it's of a different sort: not of the sword-wielding psychopath, but of Jakob's refusal to admit who he is.

What may come off sounding like pretension is actually quite the opposite. Heavy themes aside, Der Samurai is wicked fun, strikingly directed, boasts an extremely brave performance from Pit Bukowski as The Samurai (see the film and you'll know why), and yeah, it does manage some mileage from some pretty dark gags. Seeing a man in a woman's dress taking off heads with a samurai sword is something that would likely never get old -- but lucky us, we get that along with an engaging story, likable characters, and even a tug at the 'ol heartstrings. It just may be the most unorthodox romance in the history of cinema.

Please see Der Samurai. There's no promise that you'll love it, or like it, or even understand it, but films that possess such an individuality and which circumvent typical cinematic machinations need to be supported to encourage other filmmakers to make more of them. Der Samurai offers something that films very rarely offer: the chance to experience something as graphic, thrilling, and mystifying as it is touching -- all while chopping off heads.

Der Samurai us available on Blu-ray from Artsploitation Films.

BLU-RAY REVIEW: BLUE VELVET (1986) [CRITERION COLLECTION]

Filmmakers come and go, and while some of them manage to make some fantastic films, very few are lucky to have a style—something that makes their names and their films synonymous with each other—something that, if you’ve seen previous films from that same director in the past, you’ll immediately recognize as being part of his or her oeuvre. One of these filmmakers, absolutely, is David Lynch.

1986’s Blue Velvet almost serves as a precursor or a spiritual prequel/pilot to his most well-known work, Twin Peaks. After all, both are about the discovery of a dead body (in Blue Velvet’s case, an ear) leading its lead investigator (in both cases, a gentle Kyle MacLachlan) down a rabbit hole of depravity, surreality, and total quirkiness. Both take place in small towns whose economies are driven by the lumber industry, both boast a small charming diner where young lovers meet and conspire, and both even feature its hero investigator oddly and enthusiastically commenting on his drink of choice.  (“Man I like Heineken. Do you like Heineken?”) 

If you’re familiar with Lynch’s filmography, you’ll know that he is capable of offering a very broad approach to filmmaking. He’s done straightforward, accessible, and even mainstream films like 1980’s The Elephant Man or the Disney-financed true-life tale The Straight Story, all the way across the spectrum to the downright experimental and nearly inaccessible Inland Empire. Blue Velvet falls somewhere in the middle of the accessibility scale. The plot, while existing in a strange landscape filled with stranger characters and even stranger motivations, is straightforward. If you’re paying attention, you remain keenly aware of the plot and its various machinations. Blue Velvet isn’t one of Lynch’s vehicles where you turn to look at your movie-watching partner and admit, as the credits are rolling, that you have no idea what’s transpired those previous two hours. 

Having said that, Blue Velvet is still absolutely an acquired taste. The plot is easy to follow, but that doesn’t make the film easy to watch, which mostly (but not fully) has to do with Dennis Hopper’s astonishingly unhinged performance as crime boss/sexual deviant/rapist/murderer Frank Booth. Lynch and Hopper, in cahoots, created one of cinema’s most unseemly, discomforting, psychotic characters. Booth, sucking back on an ammonia nitrate tank, can either slither across the screen, or come barreling across like a wrecking ball gone rogue. (Hopper shares an amusing anecdote in an interview featured in this release that details how he’d suggested to Lynch that Booth be sucking on ammonia nitrate, rather than the originally intended helium, as the former has chemicals that can alter the mind. Helium does nothing for a body’s biology rather than giving its user a high-pitched cartoon voice, and Hopper recollects thinking, “David Lynch is out of his mind,” realizing after the fact that using helium would have made Frank Booth even crazier.) There aren’t enough synonyms in the world to convey Booth’s sociopathy and Hopper’s dedication to bringing him to life, making him as terrifying as possible. 

Normally, Lynch likes to dangle clues in front of the viewer, allowing them to piece together the story—if not Lynch’s own intention for his story, then at least enough for the viewer to forge his or her own interpretation. Blue Velvet’s opening moments take care of this handily, leaving no room for debate: opening shots of a quaint and charming town, a smiling and waving fireman with his faithful station house Dalmatian at his side, and just behind him, rows of picket fences and perfect blooming roses. But the camera doesn’t stop there, at surface level—instead, it dives deep beneath the grass where those roses grow until coming up on a horde of subterranean insects clawing and climbing over each other, filmed in icky close-up, giving them beastly proportions. Beneath perfect suburban sprawl, Lynch posits, lies its seamy underbelly. 

In fact, compared to head scratchers Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr, neither of which offer an easy path to at least one interpretation, Blue Velvet is seemingly about so many things: it’s a sobering and exaggerated look at fear of commitment, a skewering look at suburbanism, and even a comment on sexual domination. In ways that go beyond the physical, its three primary leads are all guilty of rape in their own way: Jeffrey’s insertion of himself into Dorothy’s life and the extended sequence during which he spies on her from her closet as she suffers a sexual attrack; Dorothy’s subsequent discovery of him and their near-sex scene that she administers at knife point; and most obviously, Frank Booth’s perceived ownership of Dorothy’s body to satisfy his most depraved needs. Everyone is looking to everyone else to fulfill their own unhealthy desires, some of whom simply want it, while others seem to think they need it. Jeffrey looks to Dorothy to satisfy his fantasies that go beyond boring suburban sweetness (Laura Dern’s character, in effect), Dorothy looks to Jeffrey for comfort, and Booth, well…Booth is out of his mind, and wants simple, animalistic satisfaction. 

MGM, back when its home video division gave a damn, previously released Blue Velvet to Blu-ray for its 25th anniversary with commendable results. However, eight years later, the Criterion Collection have given this Lynch favorite a stunning upgrade in every sense. The PQ on this release is staggering—near perfect and crisp, but without sacrificing any of Lynch’s typically hazy, soft, and dreamlike environments. Criterion wisely ported over MGM’s 70-minute retrospective, “Blue Velvet Revisited,”which offers a staggering amount of information on the production. Nearly every major cast and crew member are on hand, including archival VHS-era interviews with Lynch. The newly produced featurette, “It’s a Strange World,” catches up with a few crew members, including props master Shaw Burney (who claims credit for Dean Stockwell’s utility light karaoke microphone), and Steadicam operator Dan Kneece, who recalls with discernible wonder how Blue Velvet was not just an opportunity to collaborate with the director, but that it was the first of many over the years; Kneece has shot nearly every single one of Lynch’s features since then. Rounding out the special features are an interview with frequent Lynch composer and unexpectedly Bronx-accented Angelo Baddalamenti; “Test Chart” - vintage test footage; “The Lost Footage” - a collection of deleted scenes and alternate takes; and “Room to Dream” – an audio recording of Lynch reading from his recently released memoir.  

If this reviewer’s words carry any weight at all, then Blue Velvet is Lynch’s masterpiece along with Lost Highway, and this new release from the Criterion Collection is the easiest recommended upgrade in the world. Besting its previous incarnation in every way, Blue Velvet continues to live on in the way that it deserves, and joins its colleagues Eraserhead and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in the famed Criterion Collection closet.

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

THE INCIDENT (1967)

There is a very real psychological phenomenon known as the bystander effect, which deduces that the more people present during an event which would normally require intervention to diffuse a violent or traumatic conflict, the less likely that anyone will do so. Basically, if two people witness something where intervention would be necessary, those two are more likely to intervene than if ten or fifteen people were at the same scene. The idea is that the feeling of responsibility for coming to someone’s aid becomes dispersed amongst all those who are present, and with everyone waiting for another individual to make the attempt, no one ultimately will. (Yay mankind!)

The Incident, which plays out as a bleak and uncomfortable combination of 12 Angry Men and The Taking of Pelham 123, is a cinematic embodiment of this phenomenon and a fascinating character study about fear, anger, racism, and loneliness. Like a Frank Weegee photograph come to life, the black and white photography not only captures the seediness and despair of a late ‘60s-era New York, it also provides every single character with an implied backstory about his or her experiences. Before they end up on that fateful subway train for an excruciating real-time 45-minute ride, we meet every single character. None of them are at particular high points in their lives: many are angry; some are victimized by their husband or wife or lover; some are excruciatingly lonely and looking for intimacy; and some are in a bad way and need help from someone waiting for them on the other side of that subway train ride. These characters bring their backstories and personalities to that subway ride and colors how they will react to the conflict unfolding within. 

Director Larry Peerce and writer Nicholas Baehr made a very New York film that is not complimentary of New York. Every single character is in a bad way; no one is happy. People aren’t just being victimized by two hoods on a train (with two audacious and excruciating performances by Martin Sheen and Tony Musante); they’re being victimized within their relationships, or by society at large, or by their own lives or desires. And on that subway train, some riders speak out against their harassers, begging them or even ordering them to stop. But some don’t. Some ride in silence, shying away from their harassers or even falling for their mock empathy. How some of these riders react to their torturers mirror how they reacted to their own partners before stepping onto that train. Likewise, those riders who exerted dominance over their own partners were soon dominated by one of the two hoods. It’s bloodcurdling yet fascinating to watch unfold — like a car wreck on the side of the road, only the audience sees it unfold in real time.

As the tension on the train car increases, the audience wants it to stop — would, also, like some of its characters, beg for it to stop. And an idea begins to creep in that there are a handful of young and able-bodied men on that train who could easily, if working together, disarm the two punks. But no one ever has that idea. Sure, as one after another they are victimized and terrorized, they trade awkward glances to other riders with pleading eyes, hoping for someone to intervene. But no one does. Everyone cowers, even behind those making empty threats to call the police — somehow, on a subway train, traveling 60 miles an hour.

For those who have never before experienced The Incident, it sneaks up on you like a sucker punch to the gut, sending you to your knees. It’s ugly, and bleak, and very cynical, and when it’s over, you walk away feeling as if you, yourself, were on that same subway train. There is very little physical violence used, beyond the very opening and the very closing of the film; throughout, however, it’s very psychologically violent, and doesn’t make for an easy watch. 

Those with strong stomachs and an affinity for challenging cinema need to ride this train. Those who don’t need the reminder that in this world it’s every man for himself need to get off at the next stop.

The Incident is now available on Blu-ray from Twilight Time.

‘THE STANDOFF AT SPARROW CREEK’ AND THE PARANOID THRILLER

Distrust peaked during the 1970s across a variety of arenas: domestically, societally, and politically. Multiple facets of life had been disrupted by the scathing publication of the Pentagon Papers regarding the Vietnam War, the Watergate Scandal, the ongoing Cold War, fallout from the Tate-LaBianca murders by the Manson Family, and the list goes on. Trust in the individual and the institution was at an all-time low, and art on the screen began imitating life on the street and in the home. 

The Standoff at Sparrow Creek is a modern production, but it’s cut, utterly, from the 1970s paranoid thriller. And there’s been no better era in which to resurrect the sub-genre than right now: current trust in the government is at the lowest it’s ever been. And it’s not just the White House we can’t trust, but the very news media that reports on it -- peppered with the president’s constant slogans of “Fake News!” and “Witch Hunt!” -- as well as the people who subscribe to their reality of choice and sell it as truth to someone who might not know any better. We live in an age where the news media you consume determines the philosophies and ideologies you align with, but it also determines that the people who watch those other kinds of news media already have a preconceived notion of you: if you’re a hard-right conservative, you watch Fox News and read the Wall Street Journal; if you’re a hard-left liberal “snowflake,” you watch MSNBC and read the New York Times – these are the new “rules.”

The Standoff at Sparrow Creek was likely inspired by the 2016 Bundy standoff, which saw a family-led militia taking control of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for 40 days over a dispute regarding a million-dollar payment to the government. Militia culture had been prevalent in U.S. culture at least since the Clinton Administration, although there seemed to be a spike during the Obama era due in part to the disinformation campaign accented with the constant proclamations of “they’re coming for your guns!” (Raise your hand if you still have your guns.) (You should be raising your hand.) Doomsday Preppers, though not militia-based, shares the same militia mindset, which is that the government and/or civilized order is going to collapse, and once that happens, it’s very man for himself. 

Interestingly, The Standoff at Sparrow Creek plays twice with the concept of paranoia. That the men have joined a militia at all, choosing a dilapidated warehouse as a home-base cache for their firearms, explosives, bottled water, and CB radio, is the first touch of this. The second, which embodies the main conflict, is that one of their numbers has attacked a nearby police funeral, killing several attendees, and it’s a race against time to out the shooter among them and turn him over to authorities before they all go down in a hail of gunfire. 

The Standoff at Sparrow Creek plays out like a clever combination of Quentin Tarantino’s first low-fi feature, Reservoir Dogs -- about a group of robbers whose diamond heist goes wrong and leads to belief of an undercover cop among them -- and John Carpenter’s The Thing -- about a group of men marooned by the elements and forced to locate the shape-shifting alien lifeform hiding behind one of their faces. There’s very little trust among the men of The Standoff at Sparrow Creek, not helped by their overly radical philosophies, their former professional ties to the police, and the fact that some of them are just friggin’ weird. Take a group of men already paranoid enough to join a militia, insert a reason for them to suspect each other, and you’ve got yourself a situation that’s rife with conflict and wholly removes predictability from the table. 

Director Henry Dunham presents The Standoff at Sparrow Creek as realistically as possible, bringing together a parliament of personalities to embody the different kinds of people who would be attracted to joining a militia: a former cop disillusioned with the system, a man whose daughter suffered a vicious attack and for whom the government provided no justice, and a young man so detached that he keeps a manifesto of anger scrawled between the printed lines of Catcher in the Rye.  (A weird mystique has always hung over this particular novel, likely due to it being found in the homes of John Hinkley, Mark David Chapman, and Robert John Bardo.) Certain members of the militia are more eccentric than others, while some are more bloodthirsty. One of them, which the film subtly suggests is the leader, comes off as more of a crime boss than a redneck good ol’ boy with a burly beard. What unites them is the belief that not only do they have the right to assemble arms and prepare for conflict, but that it’s their duty to do so. “We always knew this was going to happen,” says one of the more unhinged members of the militia regarding the massacre at the police funeral, which visibly sets some of the other members at unease. Their similar philosophies has brought them together, but their unique dedications to their philosophies is going to be what tears them apart.

 A conceit of the paranoid thriller is the isolation of the main protagonist, who is forced to act alone to shed light on the truth of the conspiracy afoot. Francis Ford Coppola did this masterfully with 1974’s The Conversation, about a CIA surveillance expert who becomes convinced he’s the one being surveilled. 1976’s infamous Marathon Man, directed by John Schlesinger, permanently bequeathed to the world two mainstays: fear of the dentist, and “Is it safe?” Next came the game-changing, real-life All The President’s Men, about journalistic duo Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein chasing down leads and consorting with shadowy men in parking garages to irrefutably prove President Nixon’s ties to the Watergate Hotel break-in; however, the reporters are soon the ones being investigated, themselves followed and their home phones bugged. 1977 was an ideal time for Philip Kaufman to remake Invasion Of The Body Snatchers; the amassing pod people were perfect metaphors for so many things that the American people felt were threatening their society: the Soviets, gay culture, the sexual revolution, the hippie movement (the film is set in San Francisco), all worsening the ongoing alienation caused by urbanization. The list of paranoid thrillers continues, with George A. Romero’s The Crazies, Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green, Sidney Lumet’s Serpico, James Bridges’s The China Syndrome, and Franklin J. Schaffner’s bizarre Nazi tale The Boys From Brazil.

 

Following its birth in the ‘70s, the paranoid thriller has never gone away, and has since been explored in every genre. In the ‘80s, we had Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (one of the all-time best), George Lucas’s THX 1138, and Richard Badham’s Wargames. In the ‘90s came Oliver Stone’s JFK, Richard Donner’s Conspiracy Theory, and even comedy satires like Peter Weir’s The Truman Show and the All The President’s Men spoof Dick, directed by The Craft’s Andrew Fleming. The 2000s gave us Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity, a redo of The Manchurian Candidate by Jonathan Demme, Chan-wook Park’s wicked Oldboy, and the most unnerving sequence in Steven Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds involving an unhinged Tim Robbins. Echoes of this continued in the 2010’s with Martin Scorsese’s underrated Shutter Island and Dan Trachtenberg’s Ten Cloverfield Lane. And let’s not forget the juggernaut that dominated the ‘90s before returning just a couple years ago – the pop culture phenomenon heavily inspired by All The President’s Men and The Andromeda Strain known as The X-Files.  

Mistrust is part of human nature. We exist in a cloud of paranoia where there’s plenty of reason not to put trust in anything or anyone. On personal levels, we’ve been betrayed by those we love. On professional levels, especially for those of us still existing in work landscapes that haven’t quite bounced back from the 2008 recession, the threat of being unceremoniously laid off feels constant. And as for the government, forget it: we can only see so many clips of the president saying something incriminating, only for him to later on swear he never said it, before we totally give up on putting our faith in him, his administration, or in the loyal congregation who reject reality just to believe him. In the age of “fake news,” disinformation campaigns across social media, and the ensuing threat of video manipulation techniques known as “deep fakes” (Google it if you’re not familiar, and be terrified), there’s never been less trust to go around. If the 1970s were any indication, we’ll soon be inundated by films in which the principle cast exists entirely in their own self-made isolation, grasping their guns, peering out of their fortified homes between the slats of their window shades, and asking….“Is it safe?”

 

[Reprinted from The Daily Grindhouse.]

DADDY'S LITTLE GIRL (2014)

What was the last theatrically released torture movie to crash and burn? Was it Captivity? Hostel 2? I honestly can't say/remember, as that was a brief detour for the horror genre that I absolutely detested. The Saws, the Hostels, the ass-eating Human Centipedes - all the direct-to-video rip-offs that soon followed; they were all an absolute waste of time, money, resources, and in some (but few) cases, talent. Only so many horror films can be released per year by a major or mini-studio. And for every film released that involved someone being strapped to a table or wheelchair while their organs were removed, that was one film that could have eschewed that easy, go-for-the-throat mentality and instead tried to earn its audience's discomfort and fear. I'm not against the torture movement; in theory, an engaging story with well-rounded characters can surpass any gimmick or technique, and that goes for the torture movement. It's just...that hasn't really come along yet.

Though Derek (Michael Thomson) is separated from his wife, Stacy (Allira Jaques), and his business is failing, at least he still has his beautiful little daughter, Georgia. That is, until she goes missing one night and is eventually found brutally murdered on the beach. Derek does not take it well, scream-blaming his ex for not having fixed Georgia's bedroom window, and lying around having conversations with the voice of his daughter that resides entirely within his head. He hears disembodied sounds of her laughter behind closed doors and seeing hallucinations of her in the tub, as if she never left. In an attempt to reconvene with everyday-life, Derek goes back to work and even attends a party thrown by his brother, Tom (Christian Radford). It's there when he discovers the first "clue" - the first indication of what really happened to Georgia. This revelation sets Derek on a path of revenge, which includes heavy research into the act of torture. The individual responsible for Georgia's death is going to know Derek's anguish, one exacting slice at a time.

The first half of writer/director Chris Sun's Daddy's Little Girl is a drama/thriller, which depends entirely on Thomson's performance to hook the audience and get them to feel what he is feeling. And we do: we feel his sadness, guilt, and anger; it's easy to empathize with someone who endures what Derek has endured. Thematically, we've sorta been here before, with Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (of which I am not a fan, though I do laud Dennis Iliadis' redo - don't punch me!), but where that was a one-by-one revenge killing spree, the latter half of Daddy's Little Girl is nearly one long, non-stop torture sequence. Were it not for Fangoria Magazine's screaming warning across the film's marketing materials, I never would have guessed that this is where we would have ended up. 

Other reviews I've read for Daddy's Little Girl show a lack of patience with the film's first half, and almost awe for the "brutal" and boundary-pushing second. What does it say about me that I preferred the first? Why did I find the first half engaging and dramatic, but instantly bored the minute the "villain" was strapped down to the table having his digits removed one by one? Because maybe once we've reached that point in any film that includes this subject matter, there's nowhere else to go. All we can do is sit back and see our "hero" become just as vicious as the killer. Because at what point do the "good" become as bad or worse than the villain? You know, that whole thing.

Perhaps I'm not the best person to review something like this - it would be tantamount to me reviewing the new Pussy Riot album, or a scholarly volume about the collected works of Jane Austen. I'm, frankly, not particularly interested in these things, so how could I provide a fair evaluation?

If you're into this sort of thing, the low-budget independent approach is refreshing and well handled. Thomson's performance - when either mourning or manic - really is fantastic. Even the musical score, usually the least dependable when it comes to low budget genre stuff, is emotional, stirring, and involving. 

Did you enjoy the Saws, the Hostels, and all their imitators strictly for the sheer carnage? If so, that alone makes Daddy's Little Girl nearly a sure thing. After a while, there are only so many things you can cut off a human body, and while Daddy's Little Girl cuts off all those same things, it does it better than its  inspirations that came before.

REVIEW: TO JENNIFER

The line between art and "hey, let's make a movie because we can!" is becoming increasingly blurred. Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick bought a couple cameras, made The Blair Witch Project, and then made back most of their production budget by returning the cameras for a refund. The film cost them around a handful of Mercedes to produce and made back its budget 300 times. Several years later, Chris Kentis and Laura Lau bought a couple digital cameras, rented a boat, and shot Open Water without the support of a major studio. Unknown actors got in the water with real sharks for hours upon hours, and the filmmaking duo edited the film on their home computer. It was another box office smash. And it continued the new trend of do-it-yourself filmmaking began by the likes of Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater, and that damn Burkitsville witch. It proved if you had the materials and talent, you didn't need a major studio's resources or funding. 

In theory, this is great. The unachievable dream has become that much more achievable. The one-in-a-million chance for success tested and subjugated by a Michigan nerd who loved horror movies and made Evil Dead (and who currently rules Hollywood) is now the stuff of history.

Which brings us to a little film called To Jennifer, shot entirely on the iPhone 5 - a large part of the marketing platform. If it's the first time ever, I honestly don't know - but by film's end, it wouldn't have mattered if it were shot with the eye of God. 

Your main character is Joey (Chuck Pappas). His girlfriend is cheating on him, or so he thinks. So he decides to make a video about catching her in the act, so he can give it to her. I'm...not sure why. Along for the ride is his cousin (and cameraman), Steve (James Cullen Bressack, also writer/director), and their mutual friend Martin (Jody Barton). Their video diary takes them across multiple states, a failed plane ride, a couple ugly confrontations, and the inevitable and obvious twist ending.

To Jennifer is every scene from The Goonies when all the kids shout over each other, loudly, and without mercy, only now that yelling is crammed with testosterone, profanity, and behavior that would make most people severely uncomfortable, but instead makes everyone giggle. 

Because the film is shot on a phone, any attempt at direction is, at best, limited, and at worst, non-existent. There's only so much you can do to lend the film any kind of style. Due to this, the rather no-frills production will instead have to depend on the intrigue of the story and the power of its cast.

Speaking of, most of the cast does a fine job, at least at first. Pappas as Joey depends on your sympathy as he is your lead with a lot of baggage. He is the cuckolded boy of the story and should already have at least our attention, being that we've likely all been in his shoes and we know how much it blows. As the film progresses he veers into dangerous overacting territory, but being that his character is supposed to be on a somewhat downward spiral, it's not a detriment to the film. 

Continuing on, major fucking props goes to fucking Cullen Bressack as Steve, who tries his fucking best to be as fucking obnoxious as possible, rattling the audio with his fucking bawdy laughter and his over-the-top "I'm a party animal!" demeanor. Count how how many fucking times he can cram "fuck" into his dialogue - astrophysicists can't count that high - while simultaneously being completely fucking unlikable. Watch as Joey sadly confesses that his girlfriend is cheating on him as Steve laughs. Watch as Joey has a nervous breakdown on a plane as Steve laughs. Watch as Joey lays in a hospital bed as Steve laughs. Watch as Joey gets his ass handed to him at a party as Steve laughs. Watch as Joey is clearly becoming more and more mentally unbalanced over the course of his descent as Steve laughs - hard and squeakily.

To Jennifer has an interesting concept - a sort of road movie where friends could bond and help one of their own get over a sad development - but this is a double-edged sword, because all you're seeing is a bunch of college kids hanging out and doing what college kids do: drink, smoke pot, go to parties, talk about mackin' wit girls, etc. An approach like To Jennifer should be as realistic as possible, I admit that, but it shouldn't be so realistically mundane that I begin to wonder why I'm watching these random videos on that iPhone I found at the bus stop.

But hey, what do I know? To Jennifer's Facebook page is covered in positive reviews. Perhaps other folks are seeing what I'm not. Perhaps I'm prejudiced against this next stage in filmmaking where all you need to make a film and have it distributed nationally is a cell phone. Perhaps I'm embittered because no one wants to give Don Coscarelli a few measly million to make Phantasm V, or that no one wants to fund any of John Carpenter's potential projects - you know, the man whose entire filmography is being remade and dumbed down in nearly their original order of release, to the "benefit" of the audience whose target age is decreasing year by year.

To Jennifer really could have been that next step in proving that a successful end result could be shot with something as simple as that thing in our pockets we used to use strictly for making phone calls. To Jennifer has a beginning, middle, end, actors, and makes use of available light quite handily. If your film is location heavy, intimate, and okay with the raw digital look, then this DIY approach really could be your new best friend if you're a filmmaker with a great concept and little money.

Sadly, To Jennifer seems more to be the result of kids who made a movie because they had a camera, rather than an original idea strong enough to withstand and complement its gimmick.

LITTLE MONSTERS (2013)

"It's like he was a toy doll that those boys stole and didn't know what to do with, so they murdered my little baby. It's not right to let them go...just because they turned eighteen. 'Happy birthday, you're free to go.' Free to kill again, if you ask me."

From its very dark opening to its equally powerful closing, the newest film from David Schmoeller (interview with the filmmaker here) represents a drastic new side to the filmmaker for those only previously aware of his minor classics Puppet Master and Tourist Trap. Little Monsters, his first feature in thirteen years and based on a true story, is the sobering story of two murderers named James Landers and Carl Withers, charged with murdering a three-year-old boy named David McClendon. The awfulness of this act is then exacerbated by the notion that James Landers and Carl Withers are themselves only children - ten years old, to be specific. The boys are caught, charged, and sent to a juvenile detention center for eight years. Upon their eighteenth birthdays, they are released into a sort of witness protection program, with new identities in tow. One is released into the care of a parole officer and set up with a job at the law firm Slausen et al. (a nice nod to Tourist Trap), and the other is placed into foster care. Forbidden from contacting their family, friends, each other, or anyone from their past life, the two now-teenagers must find a way to continue some attempt at an existence while living with the fact that they, in a moment of foolishness, took the life of a child.

Earlier I said that Little Monsters (released on television as 2 Little Monsters) represented a new side to writer/director David Schmoeller. And that's because there is nothing quirky or cartoonish about his newest film. (If you were previously familiar with Schmoeller's filmography, then you know not to take offense.) There are no killer puppets or screaming mannequins here. There are no popcorn scares and set-pieces to make audience jumps and then smile in relief. And there is no Charles Band in sight. Instead, Little Monsters is about real-life horror. It is about tragedy, human relationships and behavior, and exploitation. It's about knowing how to recognize evil when it's staring you in the face, but then realizing to even try is futile.

During the boys' reentry into society, the film offers society's reaction their release - from parents of the victim, to parents of the murderers, to a conservative talk-show host and pair of slimy tabloid reporters. One murderer's mother yearns to hear from her son; the other tells her son she used to pray he would die in prison. Some members of society with no direct connection to the case want to see the boys punished, while others wish people would just let it lie. Smartly comprised of traditional narrative mixed with sit-down interviews featuring family members, law enforcement, and political officials, Little Monsters is presented as a docu-drama. And why shouldn't it be? The case on which the film is based is real. The kind of violence and psychosis the film depicts is real. The polarizing reactions society has about the death of one is real. We need look no further than the recent tragedy in Newtown to see that we, as people, will never be united behind any one cause, no matter how obvious it may look. Little Monsters is dark and bleak and fucking angry...but so is life.

Ryan Leboeuf as James and Charles Cantrell as Carl are tremendous in their entirely opposite roles. James (now Bob Fisher) is quiet, reserved, and struggling with the next phase of his life. He sneaks away to reference the notebooks that contain crib sheets on his new identity and shies away from the girl next door who shows him attention. Carl (now Joey Romer), however, makes it abundantly clear he is not ready to re-enter society. He is angry, but smiles his way through it, not caring if he's fooling those around him. And both young actors completely outshine their adult counterparts in every way. 

The script for Little Monsters is very smartly constructed, using the aforementioned narrative- vs. sit-down-interview juxtaposition to convey insights into our characters as well as subjective points of view from those removed from the case; you're essentially getting three stories in one: those who support the boys, those who want to see them punished...and the truth. Everybody is right and everybody is wrong all at once. Minor harm is done to the pacing of the film due to the various characters representing the media, but it isn't detrimental. Schmoeller could have easily "cheated" and kept his sit-down interviews in place without relying on talk-show hosts and tabloid reporters asking questions on the other side of the camera to justify this kind of exposition and insight (Linklater and Clooney do it), but their characters aren't entirely superfluous, either. They serve a purpose and represent different facets - a maddeningly realistic take on how the media responds in time of tragedy - but they could have been easily edited out and affected little.

A limited budget has resulted in limited flair, but the film is not without style. Schmoeller instead relies on tone, and in getting dangerously intimate with our two polar opposite characters. You become witness to their madness as well as their regret; you are forced to experience their crimes as well as their struggle to transcend their status as cold-blooded murderers and prove there's more to them than a wrong decision made by a ten-year-old's mind. But you're also forced to recognize that not everything is as it seems - that evil comes in many forms, and not all of them are obvious.

Little Monsters is currently doing the film festival thing and getting good marks wherever it travels. It is without distribution, but here's hoping that changes soon. It is a film that will challenge your idea of perception and force you to confront the power of denial.

More information can be found on David Schmoeller's website and Facebook.

REVIEW: THE HUNT

Historical and classic literature remains with us to this very day, not just in their original textual form, but in other ways—re-realized, re-envisioned, and redistributed.  One need look no further than “Sons of Anarchy” to see a very modern, bloody, and bad-ass retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. AMC’s massively popular “Breaking Bad” carries shades of both Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as well as the soul-to-the-devil legend of Faust. Even Twilight, the most absurdly terrible thing to happen to both literature and cinema, unfortunately must be associated with the bloodsucker that started it all, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (sans glitter and organized vampire baseball games).

The reason I bring this up is because there’s another dark tale from our literary past that often resurfaces in film—that of the 1924 short story “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, a morbid tale of men hunting down their favorite kind of pray in a forest or jungle landscape: other human beings. This tale has inspired some massive contributions to our genre, including Predator, Battle Royale, the absurd Van Damme actioneer Hard Target, and The Hunger Games (along with scores of others, whose titles get more and more cheesy the further we go back).

Thomas Szczepanski's survival film The Hunt is the latest re-appropriation of Connell’s story, and it surely won’t be the last. While it doesn’t bring anything new to the table, it provides enough thrills and shocks to warrant a viewing.

*

A young tabloid reporter named Alex is on his last leg at his paper. Readers no longer care about the dog-fucking women he interviews and shoots for his articles, and the editor demands he bring her something of substance, or he’ll be without a job in one week’s time. Desperate for any kind of lead, he visits his girlfriend, a local stripper/fetish sex-worker to see if she can point him towards any of her regular clients that could make for a salacious story. One thing leads to another and he finds himself drawn into the world of human hunting, run by a team of anonymous and extremely wealthy men. The game is simple: three victims, their tongues cut out to prevent being able to blow the lid off the whole thing, have small cases locked to their wrists and are sent out into the woods, where they are to be hunted down and killed. If they are, the successful hunter wins whatever awaits them within the locked cases; essentially, the “bets” that the hunters made before the start of the game. Alex, masking his true identity, takes part in the game to see just how far these men are willing to go in the name of the ultimate sport.

The Hunt landed unceremoniously on video earlier this summer, which is somewhat of a shame, given that the film is more than competently directed by Frenchman Thomas Szczepanski. With the film being 75 minutes, he has a lot of story to tell within that amount of time. And while the crux of that story is told in a way that’s at least aesthetically thrilling, what could have been an exemplary take on the story, had it been more fleshed out, instead becomes merely satisfying. The Hunt never fails to entertain on a superficial level, being that you’re watching a team of men hunt another, not going easy on their pray once they catch up. In that gleefully sadistic way of which only the French are capable (see Haute Tension, Inside, Martyrs), The Hunt, too, spares no expense when it comes to bloodshed. Though it is not consistently violent, when violence does occur, it has no problem with going over the top.

*

There are very interesting themes at play here, especially being that the men in charge of the game are presented as extremely wealthy (which isn’t a new addition to the story, but could have been much more exploited thanks to the present-day chasm between the middle and upper class.) Not to mention that as the camera pans across the walls the first time we see the mansion which houses what could be called home base of the game, snippets of antiquated paintings and portraits of stately men very subtly suggest that the hunt is anything but new—that, perhaps, it’s been going on for centuries.

Szczepanski is more interested in spinning a stylistic tale than poking at your moral fibers, though there is one specific sequence in the film that’s absolutely due for praise: in a moment where Alex finds himself in the midst of the game, splashing river water across his face in an effort to shock him back to reality, he spies one of the intended victims staring at him from the other side of the river. Alex stares at this victim for a long time, a peculiar look on his face, as the victim, unsure of what’s about to happen, looks back in fear. It’s a great moment because we, as the audience, have absolutely no idea how Alex is going to respond. We already know that Alex is already kind of losing his mind in the thick of the game’s madness. And we also know the sole reason he’s even involved in the game is to save his career, the goal behind that, of course, being money. Well, before him sits a wad of cash in the case chained to the victims’ arm. Will Alex blow the lid off the story, as is the reason he is there in the first place? Or will he push all that aside and join the game, in hopes of hitting it big?. Presenting this question in the form of this scene was an extremely purposeful choice, and it’s expertly handled by the filmmaker.

Unfortunately, the film suffers form that age-old adage: We simply aren’t provided enough background on Alex for us to care about him as a character. All we really know about him is he’s a muckraking reporter who is dating a sex worker, and whose only motivation in life seems to be keeping his job at the tabloid. Except for some sex, Alex and his girlfriend don’t share any scenes together that make us feel like they are anything beyond roommates. Really, there’s no emotional moments shared between either of them at all, so all we’re left to root for is an empty shell of a man who could escape the game as just as easily succumb to it—and we, the viewers, wouldn’t really care either way.

A brisk running time, some thrilling action scenes, and all kinds of bodily harm will ensure that viewers will certainly have a good experience, but those hoping for some more socially relevant themes might find themselves disappointed.

* Images from the film are impossible to find, so my thanks to Basement Screams for the use (stole 'em) of its screen grabs.

REVIEW: ELEVATOR

Based on a story by John Steinbeck, Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944) was one of the first to confine a cast of people to one location and base its entire forward plot on dialogue only. Beyond the obvious, there is no “conflict” other than what is born from the characters’ exchanges. The more these stranded men and women converse, the more they unearth about themselves, and the more their true natures are revealed. 12 Angry Men would come along thirteen years later, mine that concept, and become one of the most famous and well-regarded “bunch of people confined to one place” films of all time. It is a tough job to craft such a concept – something based entirely on dialogue – but it’s come back in a big way the last ten years with varying success. Buried, with Ryan Reynolds, was mostly well received in the horror community, while Saw was an irritating heavy-handed morality tale. Lastly, we have Devil, a laughable tale of people trapped in an elevator with the prince of darkness himself.

And now we have Elevator, the newest film to try its hand at this one-location concept. More Lifeboat than Devil, a bunch of Wall Street workers find themselves prisoners of their malfunctioning elevator while on their way to an after-hours reception. Among them are Don and his news reporter girlfriend, Maureen; Celine, Don’s pregnant co-worker; Henry Barton, the president and CEO of the company, along with his granddaughter; George Axlerod, another employee as well as “comedian” of the night’s event; and Jane Redding, an investor. Through unfortunate happenstance, the elevator becomes trapped in between floors. And not soon after, it’s revealed that one of them has a bomb strapped to their chest.

And the games begin.

"Mind if I irritate?"

A concept like Elevator really relies solely on the story it’s telling. With cameras trapped along with our cast, what director Stig Svendsen can accomplish stylistically is severely limited. He has nothing to propel his film except the skeleton of the story, and his actors. While the performances are competent, and the story is engaging and never boring, once the “big reveal” is made, it never becomes thrilling or pulse pounding. It never gives you that “on the edge of your seat” moment when you can feel the danger our characters are in. With a bomb quite literally ticking down, what’s supposed to make the viewer more and more nervous never really gets past “sucks for them.”

Elevator really wants to be a condemnation on American culture. The problem is it doesn't know where to start, and when it finally does, it doesn’t go far enough. Early in the film, after the elevator comes to a dead halt, comedian George eyes Mohammed, the security specialist of the building, with great suspicion. Mohammed, after all, is Iranian, and to us ‘mericans, all Iranians = bad. But the problem with this subplot is that beyond just trying to make George look like a complete prick, the movie does nothing with it. There is no lesson learned. There is no redemption for Mohammad’s lineage or George’s close-minded point of view. There's no chance for Mohammed to prove himself in George's eyes, nor does George ever have to rely on Mohammed for anything that would alter his point of view. Besides being played for tension-breaking comedic effect, nothing ever comes of it. Nor does anything come from Maureen’s decision to stream the events occurring within their elevator car (she’s a reporter, remember), which to us seems completely inappropriate and offensive, but would most likely occur in real life. Though she, too, is facing certain death, she holds her phone at arm’s length. I suppose by film’s conclusion, when it appears that our characters are beyond salvation, Maureen realizes that she’s just as expendable as the folks she’s been filming both inside that elevator and outside it during her whole career, but again, not enough is done with it. She never has her moment where she finally feels what it's like to be on the other end of the camera. And let's face it, it’s hard enough to get one person to believably realize the error of their way during a film’s climax, but trying to force half-a-dozen people to do the same, while admirable, just doesn’t have the kind of pay-off the filmmakers are going for. Too much time is spent setting them all up, but none of them are ever brought to a satisfying conclusion.

Speaking of no pay-off, the not-so-shocking revelation that (spoiler) Don happens to be the father of Celine’s baby, is completely wasted within the events of the film. What should have been shocking enough to warrant at least a ten-minute diatribe between Don, Maureen, and Celine is literally over in seconds. Celine looks embarrassed, Maureen cries and looks horrified, and Don looks kind of guilty. But it’s so soon forgotten and never mentioned again that you wonder why the filmmakers bothered to include it. Maureen never says one nasty thing to Celine, nor does Celine ever attempt to apologize. It doesn’t create any tension. You could have removed that mini-twist and the rest of the film, as presented, would have gone on seamlessly.

The only real morality-tale weight comes from the twist that (again, spoiler), Jane Redding is the one who has the bomb strapped to her chest. For you see, it was after her husband received very poor investment advice from Henry Barton’s company and lost everything that he killed himself. And Jane has come to reap revenge upon the company that destroyed her life. It’s an interesting act of domestic terrorism inspired once again by American greed and selfishness. But it also has the subtlety of a nuclear explosion.

Elevator is a decent time waster. No one will ever call it their favorite film, but nor will they call it a terrible one. It’s vanilla ice cream. It’s white bread. You won’t regret having watched it, but it’s one you’ll wish had contained a little more zest. 

Although someone does pee in a purse. So...there's that.