Triple Bill Mini Musings: February/March 2011...

Repo Men:
Set in a future that is, visually, heavily indebted to Blade Runner and Minority Report, you can buy new organs and bodily enhancements - but for an extortionate price, and if you can't pay your bills on time, your fancy new organ or implant gets repossessed. So it's a high concept action thriller, but similar to Daybreakers, the potential for a real exploration of a potentially fascinating future society (be it vampires have taken over the world and are running out of blood, or people are upgrading their innards for a vast price) is presented strongly at first, only to be kind of forgotten about soon thereafter.

However, Repo Men falters further and presents us with protagonists who aren't that interesting. It's a nice concept, but instead of focussing on the interesting specifics of this future society, we're treated more to a series of not-that-exciting action sequences and some scenes that are just odd (such as one towards the end behind "the pink door"). This all said, there is a sting in the tail at the end, which elevates (and somewhat rescues) the flick from being a relative meh-fest.

A nice idea to start with, but it's a missed opportunity.


Paradise Lost:
Following in the wake of Hostel, with its 'Americans in a foreign land succumbing to the evil locals' schtick, Paradise Lost - with it's glossy visuals, and sexy young cast - paints a better paced picture of similar intent. While Hostel required further instruction (through extra features and, notably, the very informative commentary tracks) to really get to grips with the background subtleties of the plot and story, Paradise Lost requires no such instruction.

A group of back packing sexy young things from America go traipsing through Brazil in search of adventure, but end up in a bus crash which leads them to a seemingly picture perfect water-side bar where they drink copiously and become quite merry. The following morning all is not well and they find themselves to have been robbed - they are most definitely in trouble now, and something untoward is afoot.

Turns out that something untoward relates to a gang of organ harvesters (whose motives are neatly outlined in a later sequence), and so I think you can figure out the basics of the rest of the movie.

It turned out to be a nice little surprise, with an enjoyable cast of vibrant 20/30-somethings, and despite some slightly dumb moments (to make sure our cast end up in serious trouble come the final act of the movie), it's a solid horror flick - with a rather nifty, and tense, underwater chase sequence in the final act ... and, for the gore hounds, the crimson grue is quite realistic and skillfully utilised.

I have come to appreciate Hostel (and its sequel), with the help of several viewings and the extra features, for something deeper and better than it initially appears to be, but Paradise Lost is immediately much more accessible and has a better overall pace, managing to easily sidestep the "torture porn" lashing that Eli Roth's euro-horror suffered.


The Prestige:
Sometimes it's the case that you've seen basically all of a director's feature films, but there ends up being one that you missed during it's original run and never got around to seeing. With David Fincher's catalogue it was The Game (which I finally saw years later and rather enjoyed), and in this case - Christopher Nolan - it was his rival magicians movie The Prestige.

Now, I had already seen the twist of the movie a couple of years prior, which I basically recalled, so the twist ending was mostly spoiled for me, however despite that I found it to be just as well crafted and just as interesting to watch as the rest of Nolan's flicks. Strong performances, beautifully realised cinematography, assured direction, and a smartly woven script all add up to a quality viewing experience.

Martyrs...

In some respects this is the anti-Hostel. Here the unrelenting violence, torture and degradation of the 'subjects' feels palpably real due to the emotional honesty that runs throughout the film. We the viewer are always situated in the shoes (or, to be more apt, the shackles) of the victims. We are dragged screaming, kicked, punched, chained-up, sliced-at with a razor blade and more.

Although I did think more than once - WHY DON'T YOU JUST GET THE FUCK OUT OF THAT GOD-AWFUL HOUSE?!

That niggle aside, this film really punishes the viewer. It's 90 minutes of visual assault and intensity. We are frequently left bewildered - by either the dizzyingly brutal violence, or by the whole point of the title of the film, which becomes increasingly apparent throughout the second half - right up to a jarring, shocking finale.

I've rarely felt this beaten up by a movie - other examples include:

The poor decision to watch August Underground, a perversely chaotic mess of indie filmmaking nastiness was one.

Another was a mid-afternoon showing of the UK film Boy Meets Girl at the Bristol Bloodbath Film Festival in 2006. Watching horror movies back-to-back in a small, dark, indie theatre in the back streets of Bristol was part of the reason I was left so physically shaken by the film, but mostly it was down to the determination of the film itself to skewer the audience - to ensnare them within the heinous torture traps on show.

Similarly, Martyrs is a gruelling experience - fortunately, despite the horrifying sights and sounds, the conviction of the filmmakers to take a horror sub-genre, which is frequently (disparagingly) called "torture porn", and pull it into reality.

Rather than wallowing in gore effect set pieces to make the audience "ooh" and "ahh" and cringe, Martyrs feels almost true ... with a recent rash of discoveries of women who were kidnapped at a young age and kept locked away for years upon years, this film is only the more shocking and illuminating. The horrors that these people have seen, and how it leaves their minds utterly scarred forever ... their bodies beaten, bruised and sometimes disfigured. The line between reality and make-believe gets uncomfortably blurred in Martyrs - but it's all the more worthwhile for it.

A brutally violent, creepy-as-all-hell, torture movie with a conscience ... if you come away without your mind infected with haunting imagery for a good while, then I'm not sure whether I should be fascinated or perturbed by your easy tolerance of such visual fare.

Honestly, I had to watch an hour of panel show comedy (in the form of Mock the Week) to balance me out afterwards, and now that I've spent a while writing this summary, I'm going to have to go and watch some more of The Godfather to rinse my head out.

Not for the squeamish, easily offended or horrified, quite simply.

Mum & Dad...

Low budget Brit-horror, the British Texas Chainsaw Massacre as those behind the flick tout it, and you can see why. A ram-shackle band of a 'family' inflicting untold horrors upon their captives, while the filmmakers completely shred the rosy image the vast majority of the viewing public have when "family" springs to mind ... or indeed "Mum & Dad" ... which is quite possibly at the heart of why this flick fucks with your head.

Just saying the title immediately sparks your brain into thinking that you're on about your own parents, when in fact you're talking about the fictional "Mum & Dad" in this "micro budget" horror (the words of Microwave, one the groups behind it, not me - £100,000 to me is a shedload of cash).

Anyway - fucked up this movie most definitely is, and it's not always from what you see - it's often what you see suggests. At the peak of this mountain of creep-inducing familial slaying is 'what' is upstairs ... when you think beyond what you're simply seeing in those moments, and a bit deeper (as the result of a few words), you can't help but screw yourself up into a ball making a variety of disturbed and/or disgusted noises.

It's low budget, it has a story, it sits amidst a group of horror movie peers which have always sat high above the rest of the genre - and indeed the many of today's offerings. Hostel as a franchise was never that good (I maintain that the two movies could have been merged into one script, and that that on film would have been worthwhile) ... and SAW, as a franchise, farted out like a released baloon when #4 came along (#1 and #3 good, #2 meh, #4 shite, #5 I haven't even seen yet).

It doesn't hang around either at a slim 85 minutes, but it's a must-see for proper horror fans seeking something much more than another trap-obsessed torture film with either little to say, or such a preposterously convoluted plot you just can't be arsed.

And for those who saw High Tension (aka Switchblade Romance) and thought it was messed up when the dude shags that severed head ... well, take that general idea ... and just make it more disturbed. Yep, that's one of the multitude of reasons why "Mum & Dad" is highly recommended to all horror-heads.