We Are Zombies (RKSS, 2023) Review

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“The magnificent head spinning zombie dude!” The dead are back, rising from the grave; even the living aren't dying any more – but despite expectations, they're not into all that flesh gobbling malarkey … they're just here, getting under everyone's feet, but for how long?...

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Hell Comes To Frogtown (R.J. Kizer and Donald G. Jackson, 1988) Review

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“Well maybe you oughta try making love to a complete stranger in the middle of a hostile mutant territory and see how you like it!” The 1980s saw (for a time at least) the last terrifying hurrah of the threat posed by global nuclear decimation as slamming a fist upon the red button gave way to deals, draw-downs, and perestroika. At the time, however, the possibility of a radioactive apocalypse was still very real – perhaps as real as it had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis (as detailed in Joe Dante's Matinee) – and as such, the topic was ripe for plundering to form the basis of many genre pictures that did gang busters business on the video rental circuit. With the likes of Creepozoids (David DeCoteau, 1987), the atomic paranoia of the real world painted a bleak future to be expressed on the silver screen – and sometimes that included gun-toting man-sized frog men on the hunt for fertile women, as was the case with Hell Comes To Frogtown...

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The Divide (2011) - movie review...

What's it about?
A brutal post-apocalyptic thriller in which a group of survivors hide in the shelter beneath their building, and begin to succumb to the pressures and psychosis of the situation.
Who would I recognise in it?
Michael Biehn, Lauren German, Milo Ventimiglia, Ashton Holmes, Rosanna Arquette.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
From the director of Frontiers (which I haven't seen), and Hitman (which I saw, and thought was thoroughly "meh" at best), didn't instill a huge amount of confidence in me, but after watching the gritty trailer - and, much to my excitement, discovering that Michael Biehn was in this flick - I figured I'd give it a punt on the basis of those two elements in its favour.

Launching with the bombs already being unleashed upon the city of New York, it's clear from the get-go that the film is in an awful hurry to get somewhere - something that doesn't particularly work in the film's favour when, a quarter of an hour in, a bunch of hazmat-suited, gun-toting goons bust in, kidnap the only child in the group, and take her ... an action that is explained with barely a shred of reason, even during a brief excursion outside of the shelter's door minutes later. It makes for a curious screenwriting decision which ultimately proves more of a distraction, than the haunting mystery writers Karl Mueller and Eron Sheean were probably intending it to be.

With that distraction aside however, the film is able to get stuck into the meat - the story of how these everyday people descend into violent madness within the confines of this bomb shelter. This is both the strongest and weakest part of the movie - the scant characterisation and back stories afforded to the cast of characters is at worst nearly non-existent, but at best it provides Michael Biehn as Mickey the building manager, to really sink his teeth into a gently drawn character. Mickey was once a fireman, but the horrors of 9/11 changed him forever into a man who is slowly killing himself after losing not only his men, but his family - these discoveries are made with a pleasing sense of subtlety that gels perfectly with Biehn's powerful performance that is absolutely the most distinct highlight of the entire flick; the man deserves many more meaty roles such as this.

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Double Bill Mini Musings: The League and The Lovely...

The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse:
I'm years behind-the-times with this modern British comedy classic of a series, but this month it's all been about Dyson, Gattis, Pemberton, and Shearsmith's darkly delicious vision of the warped Northern town of Royston Vasey. The film is a satisfying outing, bringing fresh territory to the series, and a sense of scale that exceeds the consistently impressive TV show. When the town of Royston Vasey begins to crumble - the titular apocalypse - it's up to Hilary Briss (the butcher), Geoff Tipps (the clumsy dolt who can't tell jokes - and who practically steals the entire film), and Herr Lipp (the innuendo-driven German tour guide) to save their town, by entering the real world to get their creators to keep writing about them. Bloody good fun.


The Lovely Bones:
Peter Jackson's adaptation of the book that concerns the aftermath of a teenage girl's murder, from both sides of the divide between life and 'the place in-between', is a visually inventive, dramatically tense, and chilling affair that will linger hauntingly in your mind afterwards. The emotional drive of the film - the torture of losing a child to murder - is keenly and tensely depicted throughout. Then throughout the flick, the visions of 'the place in-between' provide moments of wondrous melancholy, but also threat from unresolved trauma.

However, despite the impressive presentation and emotionally deep and grounded direction, there's a curious sense of lacking at the final hurdle come the film's end. Many characters feel cast aside throughout, and the closing moments of the film comes in a way that lacks a sense of closure for many of them, rather than in a way that would have more satisfactorily tied together the various plot strands. Indeed, the inevitable comeuppance is somewhat lacking in itself - you don't get the totally relieving sense of vindication that you feel you deserve as a viewer, and the execution of it doesn't pack the punch you'd expect given its foreshadowing earlier in the film. Perhaps these problems aren't so present in the original book (where they will have, naturally, spawned in the first place) - problems that have become more evident through the adaptation process.

Despite these stumbles though, The Lovely Bones is a beautifully realised vision with confident, considered direction, strong performances, a perfect sense of tension building, and a chilling balance of grim and glorious subject matter that allows the film to walk the line between drama for general audiences, and the horrific implications of the actions of truly dark individuals. Flawed, but satisfyingly haunting.

Cannibal Apocalypse...

You've got to love a bit of action/horror exploitation from Italy, haven't you? It may not have the absolute onslaught of grue that Cannibal Holocaust displays (also from 1980), and it may not have the pervading sense of sleaze that the likes of The New York Ripper revels in, but it's actually a pretty decent flick.

More "Cannibal Skirmish" than Apocalypse mind you, as the build up is measured (bar a sudden jump into a violent stand-off at a flea market spurred on by a flesh-ripping attack in a cinema) and the scale the title promises never really shows up. However, it's still a good ride with an intelligent performance from John Saxon and an enjoyable wide-eyed turn from John Morghen (seen a year later in Umberto Lenzi's grotty Cannibal Ferox getting his knob hacked off, fact fans). Is it the best of Italian exploitation movies? No. Is it the worst? Certainly not - so over-the-piece fans of such fare should be plenty happy with a viewing, especially when the third act kicks in with guns, grue and gas-masked coppers pursuing the protagonists through the streets and sewers of Atlanta, Georgia.

What's more the DVD features a 50-odd minute featurette boasting a range of interviews with key players - such as Saxon, Morghen, and the director Antonio Margheriti (name-checked in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds ... the Italian guise of Eli Roth's basterd in the third act) - which stretch beyond the remit of the film itself, allowing the interviewees to chat freely about their careers on the whole and Cannibal Apocalypse itself, making for fascinating viewing for the genre fans.

The Road...

Coming to our local Cineworld three weeks after release, I finally got to see the film version of Cormac McCarthy's moving and brutal post-apocalyptic father & son journey story The Road.

In 2008 I took part in a YouTube user collaborative project for Channel 4's "3 Minute Wonder" slot - everyone submitting footage that would then be re-edited into four short films that were inspired by McCarthy's Pulitzer Price winning book. At this stage I hadn't read the book - but got the jist of it before submitting my footage (which was one of the chosen pieces to be edited into the final films which showed during the last week of October 2008 on Channel 4).

Shortly afterwards I bought the book and was thoroughly impressed by the sparse verse that managed to convey such a strong sense of how an unexplained, but sweeping disaster, had turned the world into a cruel and vile place where the few good struggled endlessly against roaming gangs of cannibals (still few in number, but certainly out-numbering those refusing to succumb to cannibalism).

However, that is merely the world presented, the crux of The Road is "Man" and "Boy", a father and son who lumber on, following the road south to find a warmer climate, and how they cope along the way. It's a powerful and moving read, with some of the most heart-felt final pages ever written.

Similarly the film adaptation is uncompromisingly bleak in its presentation. The terrifying glimpses of cannibalistic behaviour in the book are now written large in brief moments of abject and visceral horror, but these are thankfully punctuated by quiet and caring moments between Viggo Mortenssen (perfect casting) and Kodi Smith-McPhee's (nailing the tone of his character from the book) "Man" and "Boy".

The discovery of a can of Coke (calm down "advertising!!!1!!!1!" freaks - it was in the book, and Coca Cola had to be personally convinced by Viggo himself to allow their product to be used), or sharing the spoils of a lucky find, or the father bathing his starving son - even the moment that they address the Man comes from a world entirely alien to that of the Boy, are all moving and fascinating moments.

While the book might go into more detail and speak of things that film can rarely show in such detail, the film is a more intense experience. You can put the book down every few pages if your reading time is brief, but the film grasps your attention for two whole hours and lays out the visuals in gritty, cold examination. So in terms of impact, it's a draw, but for different reasons on each side.

The book is a meandering journey with moments of sharp action or horror, so the film has a slow-burn pace that transcends your usual 'movie apocalypse' style. This isn't Mad Max, this is what the end of the world would really be like. It's harsh, cruel, bleak and at times intensely tragic - but in amongst it all are clutches of something brighter, of a glimmer of hope for the future no matter how uncertain it may be. Ultimately The Road (both book and film) is a rewarding experience. It most definitely isn't a barrel of laughs (duh), or a Hollywood action extravaganza (as one trailer so inexplicably painted it as) ... what it is, is a thoughtful and moving piece of filmmaking ... and it's a strong contender for my own personal Film of 2010.

As a side note to finish on, the score (by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis) is just superb. The pair had previously scored The Assassination of Jesse James (one of my all-time favourites), and proved they have unending skill and craft - with The Road, they have out-done themselves. Just like the film, the soundtrack is emotional and thought provoking. Incredible.

The Book of Eli...

I was hoping to have an "apocalypse weekend" at the cinema, but annoyingly our local Cineworld wasn't showing The Road - hopefully it will be sometime soon - so it was just one dose of apocalypse for us at the cinema this past weekend. I wasn't expecting an awful lot, and went into it with mild interest - indeed the trailer makes it look like a dumb actioner.

Fortunately I was pleasantly surprised. It's not a dumb actioner. Sure it has some action in it, some quite good action too, and one set piece that's sparse but immensely stylish, but it's much more thoughtful.

No surprises though that the titular book is The Holy Bible, but mercifully there isn't any bible bashing (of either kind). The film performs a straight forward balancing act between the good and bad sides of religion through, you guessed it, a good guy and a bad guy.

The thoughtful nature of the film however is in its construction. The ruminations on the Bible are there, but it's more a case of the feel of the film as a whole. At times we don't see the visual payoff we might expect - we know something is going to happen, and that's good enough - indeed, it makes it better. The post-apocalyptic world feels functional (replete with a simple, but informative look at the bartering process) and fleshed out, even though it's treated merely as the setting and not the subject.

Many of the elements in the film could have been expanded upon (and some sequences could have been trimmed for pacing), but you rarely feel short changed. You're left wanting more in a good way.

This flick is also stylish. Really stylish. Not in the MTV way of 'style', but in a more thoughtful way (hooking back to the thoughtfulness again). It feels considered and dramatic, with the right amount of sensation thrown into the mix.

It's a hard flick to sum up, but needless to say it's not the actioner that the trailer leads you to believe. Indeed I would wager that in most screenings there will have been people who either walk out disappointed, or are frequently in-and-out to go for a piss after they've spent the first half guzzling eighteen litres of Coke. This was the case at our screening, which was a mid-afternoon showing. It was far from sparsely populated, but there were people in and out like a fucking Yo-Yo. It did amuse me to see a teenager - decked out in expensive trainers, football shirt, low slung trousers, and a baseball cap - wearing a gaudy crucifix around his neck. Considering the content of the film, it seemed like an odd juxtaposition, but strangely related.

So far it's been a surprising start to the year for me at the cinema - first with the rather enjoyable Sherlock Holmes that I wasn't sold on until the final trailer - and now with The Book of Eli, which is far better than its paint-by-numbers stock trailer suggests.

Now come on Cineworld, show The Road.

Frieze Film 2008 - "Memories of Falling Ash"...

So I'm perusing around the internet, as you do, last night and came across this thing about Frize Film doing a thing about short, experimental films related to The Road, a book by Cormac McCarthy.

http://www.friezefoundation.org/film

I find this out on September 13th, and the deadline to get your films uploaded to YouTube is September 15th. I ponder over night what I could do for it, and revisit the site today - the 14th - and decide to have a go. So I went away, looked through a bunch of my previously shot, but as-yet unused footage, and put together a short experimental piece, in high contrast black & white.

I used music previously provided to me by Brian Wright (I've used his music previously on a few of my shorts) and just dived right in and put it together quite quickly as I was quite enjoying the immediacy of it all - especially getting to use footage I'd shot ages ago for projects that either went nowhere, or shots that were simply never used on other projects, or simply footage that was shot to just have - just in case they were needed, such as now.

So, with the project being about a post-apocalyptic road journey, I decided to follow the 'ashen landscape' route (which is one element of the visuals mentioned in the book - so I've read about anyway, I haven't read the book - but now certainly plan to do so, as it sounds right up my street).

I took footage of driving along a road, which was fortunately mostly empty (so I cut out any passing vehicles) on a rainy, dull day and combined it with footage I'd shot a good couple of years ago now of when we last had snow - which, in high contrast black and white, looks like falling ash upon an ashen landscape.

The notion of the film, is that we're seeing the perspective of a passenger who is journeying through a barren landscape, but keeps having flashes of memories (that appear almost like photographs) of the ashen landscape - these memories denoted by quick fades between the road and the memories, to signify the person blinking in and out of reality.

So indeed - that's what it's about, and I'm currently uploading it to YouTube - so check it out there within the new few hours (it's September 14th at 6pm as I'm writing this).

I've certainly rarely put something together so quickly, and rarely had as much fun and sense of freedom as I have done with this little experimental short.

*Additional*

Just thought I'd mention the tractor with trailer at one point, in case anybody thinks "er, post-apocalypse with a tractor, you wot?" - well, for one, it's not an apocalypse where everyone has died, and for two it's a reference to an idea in the videogame STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, in which they have "death trucks" that bring dead men out from the centre of the zone - so the tractor and trailer in my little experimental short, that's supposed to be a sort of death truck if you will - that's the idea behind that shot, so just in case you were wondering, there you go.