Directed By Howie Askins
Starring Ryan McCoy, Brett Rosenberg, Abigail Richie and Ashley Bracken

Despite its direct-to-video status throwing up ominous signs that it’s sure to be just another third-rate Blair Witch knock-off, Evidence is surprisingly one of the better found footage films to emerge of late. Unnervingly tense and filled with more than a few startlingly effective scares, it’s an impressive little horror film, but like many of its genre brethren, it stumbles in the third act, dissolving its tense atmosphere with a clumsy, overreaching ending which replaces genuine fright with noisy, scattershot silliness.

By now, you’ll be more than familiar with the set-up: Campers go into the woods with a camera, bad things happen and their footage is later discovered. This time around, cameraman Ryan drags his friends off on a woodland adventure to make a documentary based around bland best pal Brett (though neglecting to mention what specifically the documentary is about). Brett, Ryan, his girlfriend Abi and their friend Ashley set up camp into the woods outside the city, but it’s not long before their sojourn into the wilderness takes a turn for the nightmarish as something unnatural begins stalking the campground.





If you’re put off by the slow burn opening act of found footage movies, then Evidence might be a bit of a slog for you. Opening with everyday characters in the middle of their average, mundane lives helps sell the whole cinema verité atmosphere and let us get to know characters before things start to go awry. But like many horror movies, character isn’t the film’s strong suit. Ryan might be the most intensely insufferable cameraperson in a found footage movie yet, trying the patience of the audience and every other character from the get-go.

While the rest of the group are considerably more bearable, they suffer from mind-boggling bouts of stupidity. Never really questioning what Ryan’s unexplained documentary is actually about, they stick around and endure his crap longer than any sane person would and don’t bother leaving the woods while they can, even though their lives are clearly in danger. Naturally, if they left the woods, there’d be no movie, but that doesn’t mean a screenwriter can’t come up with believable character motivation or circumstances to keep them trapped, instead of “We’re going to be torn to shreds by a monster, we’re in a working RV and could drive away right now, but no, lets stick around a while, leaving the safety of the vehicle to collect our flimsy tents, which are clearly worth more than our lives”.

But even the sloppy character work does little to dampen the tense atmosphere that builds over the first hour. With a building sense of dread, some incredibly well executed scares and tantalizingly creepy glimpses of the film’s monster, Evidence does a surprisingly great job at tapping into the primal terrors that made The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity such potent horror movies. As the stakes get higher and things get more frightening, Evidence is on track for a pants-wettingly scary ending, but instead takes a turn into wildly uneven territory for a disappointingly messy finale.





It’s impossible to really delve into my issues with the third act without spoiling anything (though the filmmakers themselves have given away some stuff in interviews, weirdly enough). But while the ending is certainly ambitious, especially for a ‘campers in the woods’ found footage horror movie, it also bites off more than it can chew and quickly goes off the rails. What successfully delivers for an hour as a simple, contained, tightly wound and incredibly scary monster movie soon goes for the kitchen sink approach to scares, throwing so much at the viewer it becomes ridiculous.

As it rushes to conjure up an origin for the creature terrorizing the leads, Evidence starts delving into daft plot points that the budget can’t quite measure up to and that would feel more at home in a SyFy Original B-movie. It also ignores one of the cardinal rules of horror, too: Monsters are infinitely scarier when we don’t know what they are or where they came from.

When Evidence is simply about a mysterious, monstrous creature in the woods scaring the bejesus out of four campers, it’s insanely tense and incredibly spooky. It even gets away with showing the monster quite a bit and still being frightening due to how well engineered the scares are. But when it jumps into sci-fi territory in the 11th hour and starts explaining everything away, things become far too overblown and nonsensical. The action becomes too hectic to be coherent, all the tension deflates and everything gets far less frightening as a result. Which is a shame, because the film could’ve stayed on that simple track and easily delivered a terrifying finale, but instead it’s just a promisingly spooky little found footage flick that doesn’t stick the landing.

Rating:

Evidence is release on DVD in the UK on March 12th 2012.
Click here to order the DVD from Amazon.co.uk.

Directed By James Wan
Starring Rose Byrne, Patrick Wilson, Lin Shaye and Leigh Wannell

A quarter of the way through Insidious, I had to remind myself again that it was a film by Saw director/writer duo James Wan and Leigh Wannell. Surely the creative team responsible for modern horror’s most cheap, lazy, gratuitously gory and undeservedly successful franchise couldn’t be behind such a restrained, chillingly atmospheric and genuinely frightening ghost story, right? Surprisingly, for most of Insidious, that’s exactly the case as the two craft a commendably subtle frightfest filled with masterfully engineered scares and let down only by an overblown finale.

Young married couple Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai (Rose Byrne) and their three children are just settling into their new house when a fright in the attic leaves eldest son Dalton (Ty Simpkins) with a bang on the head. Though initially fine, he slips into a coma that the doctors can’t explain as his parents take care of him from home, hoping he’ll wake. Things worsen when spooky occurrences start to escalate around the house – whispers on the baby monitor, late night disturbances and ghostly apparitions. As Renai becomes increasingly terrified and distraught, Josh packs up the family and moves houses, but the ghostly phenomena only worsen as they realise it isn’t the house that’s haunted, but their comatose son Dalton.





Scariness is an subjective concept; what terrifies me might not creep you out remotely. Hell, there are enough people in the world scared of plants and balloons that both phobias have earned their own scientific definition (botanophobia and globophobia, respectively – you learn something new every day). As a general rule, though, it’s what we don’t see that scares us most, as what our imagination can conjure up is infinitely more terrifying than anything a special effects department can paint together.

For much of Insidious, Wan and Wannell understand that, and much like Paranormal Activity mastermind Oren Peli (who serves as a producer on Insidious), adopt a refreshingly old-fashioned approach to horror, setting about tapping into our primal fears with unexplained bumps in the night, fleeting glimpses of shadowy figures and faces at the window, jolting you with skilfully crafted scares and showing you just enough to set your imagination reeling as chills creep up your spine. For the first hour, Insidious is one of the most assuredly frightening horror films in the past twenty years.





Sadly, by the third act, those terrifyingly creepy, tightly-wound scares give way to spookhouse spectacle. Insidious slips into the same trap as Paranormal Activity 2 – a shockingly resilient sequel/prequel that showcased masterful scares but became instantly less effective the second it forgot its strengths and started piling on convoluted mythology and traditional slasher scares. Unexplained bumps in the night that send our imaginations into overdrive are potentially terrifying, something we’ve all experienced and been scared of at one time or another. Possessed killers snapping necks like Arnie in Commando? Not so much. Likewise, the finale of Insidious ditches scares for silliness as Wan exposes us to astral dimensions, Freddy Krueger-like villains, fist fights with ghosts and a heaping of backstory to dilute the more subtle, abstract, unnerving terror of the opening hour.

The disappointing last act is a shame, but Insidious still conjures up more bone-chilling frights than almost any horror movie in recent memory. For the most part, it’s an admirably restrained and commendable old-fashioned haunted house movie that’s all the more terrifying for its moments of subtlety, and serves to prove that the further James Wan gets from the dreadful Saw franchise, the more impressive a filmmaker he becomes.

Rating:

Insidious is showing in UK cinemas now.

Directed By Luc Besson
Starring Louise Bourgoin, Gilles Lellouche, Nicolas Giraud and Mathieu Amalric

It’s 1912 and intrepid adventurer/reporter Adele Blanc-Sec is on a grave-robbing expedition to Egypt in hopes of claiming the mummified remains of a pharoah’s personal doctor, intent on reviving him and using his expertise to cure her ailing sister. Meanwhile, the kooky professor she’s relying on to bring her borrowed mummy back to life has accidentally awoken a prehistoric pteradactlyl, which is causing havoc around Paris as dopey detective Capoldi and equally inept hunter Justin de Saint-Hubert attempt to track the beast.

Having misspent much of the last decade at the helm of the lacklustre Arthur & The Invisibles movies, Luc Besson makes a triumphant return with this delightful comic fantasy adventure, which adapts Jacques Tardi’s ’70s comic of the same name. Equal parts Amelie and Indiana Jones, with a dash of Night at the Museum (only, k’now, good), Adele Blanc-Sec wonderfully blends farcical French comedy with gripping old-fashioned, high-stakes adventure.

Whether it’s the intense thrill of seeing her thwart her sinister French nemesis in a wonderfully executed Indiana Jones-style tomb raiding scene, or the immense giggles that come when she uses a variety of less-than-successful disguises (and a pterodactyl) to stage a guillotine-dodging prison break, Miss Blanc-Suc’s escapades are incredibly infectious fun. So much fun that the film loses a little of its spark as it leaves her to dart between subplots and set-ups.

That’s not to say the rest of the film is bad. On the contrary, the Clouseau-esque farce surrounding Inspector Capoldi brings a tonne of laughs thanks to Gilles Lellouche’s wonderfully deadpan performance, and the screwball hijinks are never less than entertaining. But the meandering reach of the narrative sometimes spends a little too much time jumping between characters or setting up dominoes to be nudged in sequels, and feels like it’s losing a focus that’d be better spent on its plucky lead.

Consider it a testament to how bewitching a character Adele Blanc-Sec is and how beautifully the delectable Louise Bourgoin brings her to life. In what should be a star-making turn, former weather girl Bourgoin exhibits a magnetic presence, crackerjack comic timing and is equally adept at injecting emotional heart into the film’s dramatic dalliances. Then there’s Adele Blanc-Sec herself. Stubbornly feistly, unflappably cool and deliciously droll, she’s the most enchanting French heroine since Amélie and should be nipping at Lisbeth Salander’s heels on top ten lists of modern cinema’s most captivating female heroes.

A picturesque, high-energy romp through Paris and parts beyond, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec is a wonderfully whimsical fantasy adventure full of thrills, giggles, pterodactyls and talking mummies. Besson might spend a little too much of the film setting up possible sequels, but after tagging along on Adele Blanc-Sec’s first adventure, you’ll be instantly clambering for more.

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The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec is in select UK cinemas now.

Directed By Raymond De Felitta
Starring Andy Garcia, Juliana Margulies, Steven Strait, Dominik Garcia-Lorido and Ezra Miller

Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia) is a blue collar correctional officer living with his bickering family in the titular fishing village a short bridge away from the Bronx. His family’s a dysfunctional mess of secrets: Brando-obsessed Vince is slinking off at night to attend acting classes while his wife (Juliana Margulies) believes he’s out gambling, his daughter is working as a stripper, unbeknownst to the parents who assume she’s at college, while their son is using the family credit card online to explore his sexual fetish towards obese women. When Vince embraces his inner Sandy Cohen and brings young convict Tony (Steven Strait, the erstwhile Warren Peace) home to stay, the skeletons soon start to spill out of the closet. The whopper, of course, being that ex-con Tony is the illegitimate love child Vince abandoned at birth – a little fact Vince has neglected to mention to his wife or Tony.

Naturally the potential for convoluted dramatic reveals is high, but in showing its cards and exposing its characters’ secrets to the audience up front, City Island side-steps soap opera melodramatic unveilings in favour of low-key, character-based farce, resulting in a wonderfully well-acted indie comedy gem. Things skirt a little too close to the overly familiar at times as we’re introduced to the cast (the loud, overbearing Italian-American “Noo Yawk” housewife, the rebellious, smart-alecky teenage son, the ex-con with a heart of gold, Alan Arkin in a dysfunctional family indie comedy), but it’s amazing how much fresh material Raymond De Felitta mines from well-trodden territory. Simply finding an area of New York that hasn’t been photographed to death over decades of cinema is an impressive feat in itself, and the little-seen City Island setting provides a wealth of scenic character.

It’s Andy Garcia who’s the most refreshing revelation though; better than he’s been in decades dramatically, he also displays a previously-hidden gift for comedy and great comedic timing. A scene where Vince auditions for a Martin Scorsese movie provides the highlight, in which Garcia breaks out an hilarious (and intentionally cringeworthy) Marlon Brando impression, before Vince segues into a really engrossing, natural conversation with the casting directors as they grill him. It’s the kind of simple, rare and honest performance that makes you forget you’re watching an actor play a role as they disappear into the character. By turns sweet, touching, charismatic and incredibly funny, Garcia’s is an immensely impressive performance, and the best we’ve seen from the actor in a long time.

He’s not the only actor who shines though, and as an ensemble showcase, City Island excels. Garcia’s the unquestioned highlight, but the cast assembled around him is almost as fantastic. Margulies brings impressive nuance to a character that could so easily feel like a shrewish cliché in less skilled hands. Emily Mortimer is brimming with sprightly charm as Vince’s kooky, energetic acting class partner, and their scenes together have a lively chemistry. Steven Straight carries Tony with bags of likeable broody charisma (and female moviegoers probably won’t be too upset that he seems to suffer from the same shirt allergy as Jacob Black), while Garcia’s actual daughter Dominik Garcia-Lorido is an impressive, fiery presence. It’s Ezra Miller as the sarcastic son who proves the weak link, stuck with a relatively one-note character and without the delivery to make anything of it like Margulies can, and while he’s not bad, he just doesn’t have the raw, natural talent on display in the rest of the cast.

As a minor indie comedy release in a sea of big-scale summer blockbusters, City Island is almost destined to get lost in the shuffle. Which is a crying shame, as it’s a wonderful film that’s sharp, incredibly funny, with an abundance of heart, character and charm, brought to life by an amazingly talented ensemble. Andy Garcia’s revelatory performance is worth the price of admission alone, but City Island’s an all-around lovely indie treat in its entirety, too.

Rating:

City Island is showing in UK cinemas now.

Directed By Vincenzo Natali
Starring Sarah Polley, Adrien Brody and Delphine Chanéac

Boyfriend/girlfriend genetic engineer duo Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are the superstars of their field, having combined the genes of numerous animal species to make an entirely new slug-like life form, the chemical enzymes from which could revolutionize medicine. For their encore, they plan to throw human DNA into their genetic melting pot to create a new hybrid creature that would offer a more potent enzyme, potentially curing all human disease.

Naturally, the higher-ups at their lab are uneasy about something so controversial and cut funding, choosing instead to channel the early research into something easily marketable. Clive and Elsa secretly push forward with their work regardless, successfully creating Dren – a partially human creature who grows more rapidly than they expected, displaying increasing cognitive development and eerily child-like humanity. Clearly the two scientists neglected to consider that playing god has consequences too; after all, splicing common garden vegetables with aborted fetal tissue and pencil shavings is how Jedward were born unto the world…

Splice wears its Promethean influences proudly on its sleeve (Elsa and Clive borrow their names from Bride of Frankenstein actors Elsa Lanchester and Colin Clive) and is equally concerned with delving into similar issues as Mary Shelley. Flipping the genders of the Frankenstein/monster father-son relationship, director Natali uses Dren to explore a similar parental mother-daughter dynamic to different ends as Elsa shifts from scientific observer to adoptive mother as their creation develops and matures. It’s the dense character drama that provides the crux of Splice‘s thematic issues as two overly inexperienced and inherently incapable parents attempt to raise an increasingly unpredictable child, while their dysfunctional family dynamic becomes increasingly twisted as a result of their parental failings and upbringings.

It’s a focus hinged on the quality of its actors, and thankfully Adrien Brody and the criminally underrated Sarah Polley are incredibly great. The film’s tone straddles that awkward-to-nail tone between seriously screwed-up character-based horror and dark comedy, while the story wanders into some profoundly messed-up corners, which with the wrong actors could descend into outright hokeyness, but Brody and Polley pull it off perfectly. More impressive, both as a performance and work of creature design is Delphine Chanéac as Dren. Using a seamless blend of prosthetic and CG to augment the actress’ face and create an alien look and physique, her performance is expressive without being vocal – its own fascinating hybrid of endearingly infantile child-like inquisitiveness, imposing, primal animalism and eerily seductive beauty.

The film’s allegorical themes spread deep and wide as Natali touches on everything from parental abuse, abortion, the nature/nurture debate, the moral quandary of genetic engineering and, naturally, the science vs. god issue. It’s to Natali’s credit that the film manages to keep all these plates spinning so harmoniously and intelligently without overwhelming the film, delivering a relatively low-key but utterly weird, incredibly engrossing and entirely creepy sci-fi horror with intelligence to spare. Which makes it all the more unfortunate and jarring when the film stumbles slightly at the finish line, resorting to stock horror tricks and a routine woodland chase scene. That he threads in a delightfully dark and utterly wrong ending lessens the blow, but its a shame Natali took a detour through more generic territory along the way, even considering the film’s prototypical monster film lineage.

Even with its missteps, Splice is an excellent piece of Cronenbergian weirdness and the kind of film that occurs all too rarely: an incredibly dark, creepy science fiction horror that doesn’t ditch smarts in its attempts to conjure up scares.

Rating:

Splice is showing in UK cinemas now.

Directed By Niels Arden Oplev
Starring Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace and Sven-Bertil Taube

Staring down the barrel of an impending prison sentence after being found guilty of libel in a major, clearly crooked court case, left-wing journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Nyqvist) is approached by wealthy industrialist Henrik Vanger (Taube) with an intriguing case. Vanger’s niece vanished 40 years previously from an isolated, enclosed island, while the entire Vanger dynasty – a slimy, back-biting coven of entitled sociopaths and Nazi sympathisers – all have motive and opportunity. As Blomkvist begins his investigation, Lisbeth Salander, a young, heavily-pierced and tattooed hacker/researcher hired to look into the reporter during his libel case, stumbles across his notes on the Vanger disappearance and becomes fascinated. The two unlikely allies join forces, quickly making progress, but unleashing all manner of sinister secrets and decades-old crimes along the way as they close in on the truth behind Harriet Vanger’s disappearance.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo isn’t always a pleasant film to watch. An adaptation of the opening novel in Stieg Larsson’s literary phenomenon trilogy, Larsson’s depiction of Sweden is of a society where the prevalence of hateful misogyny is overwhelming. His intentions aren’t subtle (especially when considering the original title of the film/book – ‘Men Who Hate Women’), and while the prolonged, repulsive scenes of sexual violence and the ensuing cathartic payback certainly have their desired affect in leaving the viewer reeling from gut-churning discomfort and rooting for our pierced protagonist to enact revenge, the feminist and social commentary are dulled somewhat by the film’s heavy-handed tendencies and its inability to craft a complete character aside from Salander. From random men in public, court-appointed guardians to larger players in the plot, male characters are almost exclusively demonised as violent, abusive and misogynistic, while the characterisation of Blomqvist suffers from the breakneck pace and translation from book to screen, leaving him a passive blank slate bordering on a cypher for much of the film, rather than a whole, well-drawn character. We’re told more about him than we’re shown, and for the majority of the plot, he takes a quiet back seat to the more pro-active and three-dimensional Lisbeth.

It’s undoubtedly Noomi Rapace’s film as Lisbeth Salander though, and she embodies the character with alarming conviction. Rapace apparently took up kickboxing and adopted a strict diet for the role, and her resulting physical stature – lean and slightly masculine – only helps convey her character as a victim of long-term abuse who’s transformed herself into a fighter. Emotionally, Rapace is even more impressive, and brings to life a fascinating and memorable character – a contradictory bundle of deep-seated traumas, socially awkward insecurities, seething, fiery anger and strong-willed, resourceful intelligence. Larsson slyly subverts the expected gender dynamic by having Lisbeth be the tough, hyper-intelligent detective rescuer while Blomqvist is usually three steps behind or playing the damsel in distress. It’s a refreshing change of pace, and thanks in no small part to Rapace’s captivating portrayal, Lisbeth Salander will undoubtedly soon find a worthy place in cinema’s hall of iconic heroines.

The core mystery is never less than riveting as Blomqvist and Lisbeth’s investigation offers an infectiously exhilarating mix of intelligently-handled hi-tech Googling and old school sleuthing, with a great nod to Blowup/Blow Out as our intrepid reporter pieces together a makeshift video from a series of 40-year-old still photos. While it has its unfortunate minor missteps (the answer to a secondary mystery is so glaringly clear from the outset that it’s hard not to wonder why Blomqvist never questions the matter when introduced to the case), the plot is largely intelligent, engrossing and refreshingly free from eye-rollingly convoluted twists. And though the climax is quietly satisfying as opposed to astonishing, it opens the door to a handful of utterly chilling moments, from a group of aged, morbid polaroid photos to a cold and disturbing conversation with the unmasked killer. These subtle, restrained moments linger just as unsettlingly as the graphic violence, adding a disturbing resonance to the gripping plot.

It’s not without its flaws – the film’s heavy-handed social commentary and lack of character development are unfortunate – but The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is still a visually stylish, incredibly absorbing and often chilling thriller with more depth and smarts than the average potboiler. With an entirely compelling mystery and a captivating and enigmatic lead, it’s a film sure to leave viewers itching to see the continued adventures of Lisbeth Salander.

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Directed By Antoine Fuqua
Starring Richard Gere, Ethan Hawke, Don Cheadle and Wesley Snipes.

Brooklyn’s Finest shouldn’t be any good. Teetering on a shaky groundwork of enough cop clichés and tired plotlines to fuel a Rainier Wolfcastle franchise, Antoine Fuqua’s film isn’t a film teeming with original ideas. It’s a testament to the sheer quality of the cast, then, that a handful of marvellous performances take what should be a hideous trainwreck and elevate it to a solid, involving crime drama.

The film charts the loosely intersecting tale of three cops caught up in (or contributing to) a corrupt and flawed police system during a politically tense week in the New York borough. Aging burn-out Eddie (Gere) is just trying to shuffle through his last week on the job without incident to cash his pension, undercover cop Tango (Cheadle) is left twisting as his loyalties fast become blurred after an extended length of time in the guise of drug-running gangster, while narc detective Sal (Hawke) is driven crooked in his desperation to provide for his family.

While Antoine Fuqua’s first foray into the gritty cops-and-crooks crime genre since Training Day is an entirely enjoyable one, peppered with rather tense action and astounding performances, it’s impossible not to wander through the film without being stabbed with the pointy end of a cliché. Richard Gere’s plot thread alone is rife with overblown stereotypes. Taking a leaf out of the Martin Riggs playbook, when we first meet Eddie, he’s downing liquor for breakfast and lamenting his circumstances with a gun in his mouth. The downbeat cop with a death wish was an overused, stock cop character trait long before Schwarzenegger’s boozy, suicidal turn in End of Days, but you know you’re off to a bad start as a writer if your character shares the defining characteristics of the lead in a lesser Arnie movie. It gets worse though: Gere’s character is a burn-out alcoholic cop on the verge of divorce, with one week left till retirement and partnered up with a hotshot rookie cop against his will. A quick utterance of “The chief’s shittin’ bricks!” or “I’m getting too old for this shit…” and it’d take that tiny step into full-blown self-parody.

The problems only deepen as Cheadle’s character arc begins to feel like Donnie Brasco 2: Ghetto Shenanigans, while half the cast of The Wire are trucked in, seemingly in an attempt to trick the viewer into blinking and forgetting for a moment that they’re not watching David Simon’s television masterpiece. The adherence to cliché extends to the cringe-worthy soundtrack choices too, with a drug trip scene scored to Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’, while Hawke’s character furiously strips a drug den in search of a hidden stash of cash to the tune of ‘Where’s My Money?’ by DJ Green Lantern.

Brooklyn’s Finest, though, is a lesson in the art of hanging a film on the shoulders of incredibly talented actors, as despite playing tired, predictable characters, the cast add an overwhelming abundance of gravitas, bringing a dose of freshness to scenes that should be painfully overworn. Hawke is phenomenal as Sal, putting the finishing touches on the edgy, volatile character he essayed in Brian Goodman’s What Doesn’t Kill You. He’s a simmering powder keg of desperation, and his utterly intense performance imbues each scene with a massive amount of tension, while adding ample layers to his character that aren’t especially evident in the script. Cheadle is naturally and effortlessly great, even if he is coasting, but it’s Wesley Snipes’ understated and rejuvenated turn as paroled drug kingpin Caz that’s the highlight of Tango’s story, and proof that Snipes excels as an actor when he isn’t coasting through action crap and dodging the taxman. Gere gets the short thrift, but even so, he brings a dash of dignity to an otherwise thankless role. Supporting characters are ably cast, too, with Vincent D’Onofrio fantastic in a tiny role, Ellen Barkin chewing scenery with entertaining gusto, while erstwhile Trey Atwood Logan Marshal Green adds a dose of much-needed energy opposite Gere’s sedate turn, playing the (first) idealistic young rookie dumped on his shoulders.

It’s a film whose very marrow is riddled with familiarity and cliché, but thankfully it has some muscle and meat on its bones in the form of an exceptional cast at the height of their game and a diverting, albeit predictable story. While it’s unfortunate that they’re not given better material to work with, Brookyln’s Finest is an entertaining and wonderfully acted crime drama, if a flawed and overly familiar one.

Rating:

Brooklyn’s Finest is out in cinemas now.

Directed By Sylvain White
Starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba, Chris Evans and Zoe Saldana

An elite team of Special Forces operatives double-crossed and left for dead after refusing to carry out orders that would result in the death of two dozen innocent children, The Losers are forced to live off-grid in Bolivia as their families mourn their apparent death. Desperate for revenge against their sinister handler Max, they get their chance when the gorgeous, mysterious Aisha (Saldana) offers to bankroll their operation to bring Max down. Putting their ample talents for destruction to good use, they quickly form a plan to destroy the man who wronged them, regain their normal lives and stop a plot to instigate a global war while they’re at it.

2010 is seemingly the year of The A-Team retreads. With the TV show getting its own big screen remake in a couple of months and Sylvester Stallone’s ’80s nostalgia-fueled explode-’em-up The Expendables assembling an ensemble cast of action icons to punch things witless, there’s a crowded plate when it comes to mercs-on-a-mission movies this year. And while the plots are all but interchangeable, it’s hard to imagine the other films matching The Losers when it comes to sheer fun and infectious cast camaraderie. With a cast comprised of sweaty, manly, charismatic badasses vying to out-quip and out-fight each other, there’s enough gruff machismo and testosterone oozing off the screen that you may find fistfuls of chest hair in your popcorn.

Supernatural alum Jeffrey Dean Morgan, looking like a much younger, more suave Powers Boothe (fitting since he’s landed Boothe’s role in the upcoming Red Dawn remake) make for an incredibly likeable lead as Clay, while Idris Elba as his churlish best pal Roque easily matches him line-for-line and blow-for-blow. In fact, there’s not a weak link in the ensemble. Saldana’s engaging, too, but unfortunately given little to do character-wise but smoulder and walk around scantily-clad with the camera constantly pointed at her butt. You’d be forgiven for expecting that Chris Evans would steal the show, since the chiselled slab of charisma has made a career out of doing exactly that, and while he’s as endlessly watchable and immensely charming as always, it’s actually Jason Patric as villainous Max who walks away with the movie. Patric’s always been a criminally underrated and wonderfully talented actor, but he’s never really shown comedic chops before in a role. Clearly he should have tried it sooner, since here he displays effortless comedic timing. He’s also never had this much fun with a role before, and with diabolically cool restraint and all the best lines in the script, Patric delivers a villain who is incredibly fun and utterly hilarious without stooping to the loud, camp showiness that plagues most actors in ‘evil mastermind’ roles.

It’s unfortunate then that there’s no worthwhile plot in which to find the characters and nothing especially memorable for them to do. There’s revenge plots, armoured car heists and molecule-erasing suitcase nukes, but it’s all essentially a thin framework of stock story and twists borrowed from ‘The Big Book of ’80s Action Movie Plots™’, with the cast propelled from set piece to set piece by nothing more than the backdraft of the last explosion. The Losers is undeniably fun, but the action is near impossible to recall once leaving the cinema.

It’s disposable action entertainment, but entertaining all the same while it lasts. Bolstered by a fantastic cast armed with quips a-plenty, the substantial chemistry and joke-laced banter between the leads is infectiously hilarious enough to make The Losers a joy to sit through, even if the plot and action amounts to nothing more than big, dumb, forgettable fun.

Rating:

The Losers is out in cinemas on Friday in the UK.

Directed By Jon Harris
Starring Shauna Macdonald, Krysten Cummings and Natalie Jackson Mendoza

What’s a great film without an unnecessary sequel? “Rare” and “lucky” would be two fine adjectives. But while it’s all too easy to dismiss and avoid the unrelated direct-to-video follow-ups that plague NetFlix or LoveFilm, there’s an inescapable morbid curiosity when a sequel manages to snag the first film’s cast to return for a second outing. Sure, there’s every chance said sequel will be an utter cinematic abortion, but there’s always that slim, vain hope that somehow it’ll be the next Aliens or The Godfather: Part II, managing to capture or exceed the greatness of its predecessor despite the odds. Which category does The Descent: Part 2 fit into? Well, neither; simply content to retread the plot of the first film with added mundaneness, Jon Harris’ sequel isn’t memorably bad or surprisingly good, it’s just painfully bland.

Kicking off from the ending of the US cut, in which Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) made it out of the caves after the death of her potholing pals, Part 2 begins with our Scottish heroine rescued on the roadside, traumatised, with amnesia, and looking like she’s been spat out by a T-Rex. Already in the midst of a hunt for the missing girls with search-and-rescue teams, brash hick assclown Sheriff Vaines (Gavan O’Herlihy) deems newly-discovered Sarah as their ticket to finding the others, dragging the poor woman from her hospital bed and back into the caves (because, naturally, amnesiacs make the best guides). With his Deputy (Krysten Cummings), a veteran pro climber (Douglas Hodge) and two rookie caver interns (Anna Skellern and Joshua Dallas), they set off into the caves to search for Juno & Co., getting deaded along the way.

It wasn’t the brutal and ferocious monster attacks that unsettled in The Descent as much as the overwhelmingly claustrophobic marriage of sets and camerawork; early tunnel-crawling scenes were stomach-churningly enclosed, and it’s a testament to Marshall’s use of the frame, his writing and the actors’ work that the original film could’ve been just as tense and gut-wrenching as a regular cave-diving drama without the crawling nasties. It’s unfortunate but unsurprising then, that new director Jon Harris lacks the visual eye that Marshall is blessed with, and with the exception of a brief underwater tunnel crawl, there’s never any real sense of claustrophobia present in the film.

The absence of Marshall is felt in the set design too; the sets in the original were almost as distinct and eerily otherworldly as those in Ridley Scott’s Alien, but despite the return of cinematographer Sam McCurdy, the cave systems explored in Part 2 feel bland, pedestrian and fake, looking like they’ve been furnished with leftover Styrofoam boulders from the set of The Flintstones Movie. Adding to the problem, the caves are puzzlingly well-lit this time around, which is especially noticeable when two new characters stumble across a hanging corpse from the first movie – pitch black when we encountered the scene in Marshall’s film, but now bright as daylight. Awfully thoughtful of those crawlers to install cave wall sconce lighting for Shauna Macdonald’s return.

Confusingly, the creature design has also been re-jigged, with the creepy original Crawlers (which looked like some hideous genetic hybrid mash-up of Gollum, Iggy Pop and a human foetus) now just plain-old orcs. Along with the visual tweaks, the monsters also feel less ferocious than before, therefore much less fearsome. What’s lost in tension and claustrophobic dread is substituted with oodles of gooey gore, though – with monster heads being liquefied by boulders, punched to goo and generally impaled, stabbed and beaten at regular intervals, gorehounds will find much to distract them. But while The Descent’s creature-smooshings felt satisfying and cathartic because we cared about the characters, wanting them to survive and beat the club-fisted bejesus out of everything threatening them, this time around we really don’t care, and seemingly neither do the writers – the majority of the cast is unceremoniously dispatched by the half-way point.

The new-comers to the cast range from bland to “Why isn’t he dead already?”, with none of the care or effortless character development of the first present here. It’s gratifying that the Deputy isn’t saddled with the token wisecracking Queen Latifa-esque sassy sidekick as most lazy sequels would, and there’s a cave-in scene with rookie climber Cath that’s effective enough, but the new characters all simply peter out and go nowhere. Which just leaves Shauna MacDonald delivering work far better than the material with not much to do, while duplicitous megabitch Juno unsurprisingly emerges to snarl and grimace her way through the last act like she studied at Michelle Rodriguez’s Summer School of Scowl-Acting. While it’s fun to see them reunited, there’s just nowhere new to take the characters, and it just cements the feeling that the whole movie is needless, with the tacked-on ending as eye-rollingly moronic as any in recent memory.

For those unable to resist the urge to revisit the characters they enjoyed the first time around, The Descent: Part 2 might provide enough entertainment with lowered expectations – there’s enough mushy grue and action to stave off boredom, and it’s certainly not the worst sequel in the history of cinema. But it never treads any new or worthwhile ground, bereft of the pervasive claustrophobic terror and natural character work that made the first film so effective, instead ranging from offensively dumb in its worst moments to merely mundane in its best.

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The Descent: Part 2 is out on UK DVD & Blu-ray on 12th April 2010 and in the US on April 27th.

Directed By Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza
Starring Óscar Zafra, Jonathan Mellor and Alejandro Casaseca

(Note: This review contains minor spoilers, though nothing you won’t learn 5-10 minutes into the film.)

It’s not hard to see why the cinéma vérité “mockumentary”/”found footage” approach has proven so popular and effective in horror in the past decade. Sure, it’s a polarising sub-genre – just as many people despise The Blair Witch Project, for example, as adore it – but when done right, it’s a simple, high-concept way to breathe new life into tired genre conventions, whether it be haunted house films (Paranormal Activity), Godzilla-esque kaiju movies (Cloverfield), or the humble zombie film ([REC]). But while their 21st Century presentation certainly gives a new and shiny looking glass through which to view an old genre, that’s not why they work; the ultimate strength of cinéma vérité horror is in its distinctly old-school sensibilities.

Films like Paranormal Activity unmistakably have more in common with Val Lewton’s work than the abundance of CG-filled horror and gory “torture porn” films hitting multiplexes in the past few years, favouring slow-burn tension over jump-scares and embracing the notion that what we don’t see is infinitely more terrifying than anything cooked up on a Hollywood hard drive, scaring us with suggestive restraint and our own imagination rather than overblown gore scenes and exposition. The slow burn of these films and the introduction to characters in the midst of mundane, everyday lives grounds the film in some semblance of realism and allows us to get to know them before things go awry, giving the film a chance to nurture a cast that feel realistic, if not likeable.

[REC] 2 takes all those principles, beats them with a shovel and tosses them down the nearest manhole. Picking up at the end of the original film, the sequel follows an elite team of armed police as they escort a CDC scientist into the virus-plagued, zombie-ridden apartment building to look for survivors while documenting and containing the outbreak. When their CDC specialist reveals himself to be a crucifix-wielding priest sanctioned by the Vatican to collect a blood sample from ungodly beastmonster Niña Medeiros to stop a demonic apocalypse, things quickly take a turn for the unconscionably stupid.

It’s commendable that Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza decided to take the sequel in a new direction and try something different, but unfortunately, the detour into all-out supernatural territory takes the tense, original, fright-filled groundwork laid out by its predecessor and simply lays on hokey, laughable and tired conventions we’ve seen dozens of times in bottom-shelf ’80s horror trash. Not content to just rip off The Exorcist, [REC] 2 also borrows liberally from Alien and its genre-jumping sequel to uninteresting effect, often going to profoundly dumb lengths simply to force a stolen set piece on us (a potentially tense scene cribbed from Alien is rendered laughably retarded, as a marine scurries through an air duct system to find a conveniently-placed refrigerator. In an air duct. Since labyrinthine vents are where we all stash our chilled beverages).

What’s worse is that even with a new sub-genre spin on their own burgeoning franchise, Balaguero and Plaza still manage to rehash much of their original film; early encounters with the infected play out almost exactly as they did in [REC], and quickly become repetitive and tiresome, while we get another 3rd act visit to that creepy penthouse with a daft, forced excuse to have the whole scene lit in night vision again. While early on it seems like, despite the sheer daftness of the newfangled plot, that the director duo might stick to the credo that made the first film so effective – showcasing simple, taut, suggestive scares – as our first, quick, subtle glimpse at something scuttling across a ceiling is joltingly unsettling. But the pair quickly drown out any tension and unsettling originality with over-exposed hokeyness and muddled, forced exposition.

While the original gave us an immensely likeable lead in Manuela Velasco and a cast of diverse characters to be fodder for a zombie-chomping, in [REC] 2, we get a small platoon of SWAT cops who, as if a generic military grunt caricature was jammed into a Xerox and copied a few times, are almost entirely indistinguishable from each other in appearance and personality (or lack thereof). Dumped right into the fray with them, we’re never given the chance to get to know them, while Balaguero and Plaza neglect to include anything resembling character throughout the film. To make matters worse, much of the film is viewed through split-screen in-camera helmets (a device that’s distractingly overused throughout the film whilst never used to any worthwhile effect), so our bland protagonists are faceless for much of the runtime, leaving it hard to tell who’s being reduced to páté by zombie hordes and even tougher to care. While the macho marine clones are bland to the point of being forgettable, resident priest Father Exposition is aggressively insufferable, existing only to spout jumbled plot filler and provide a strained, lazy and incomprehensible excuse to keep the leads confined in the building. A detour to follow the footage of a group of unbearable screeching teens only adds to the problems, as it serves nothing, goes nowhere, and takes up time that would’ve been better spent fleshing out the leads.

Cinéma vérité mockumentary horror is a decade past the point of being able to successfully pass itself off as genuine footage, but the heightened reality of it still helps foster a sense of believability, and sitting down to watch an all-too-plausible series of terrifying events is always a sure-fire way to inspire fear and dread. But with the runtime of [REC] 2 devoted to daft, over-the-top antics and exposition that feel like a straight-faced remake of Leslie Nielsen’s Repossessed, plausibility takes a walk to Finland, and without it the “found footage” conceit is rendered more of a burden than a worthwhile narrative tool, especially since Balaguero and Plaza never find any new or original use for it.

An early tense scene or two aside, there’s not much to recommend [REC] 2 to those who loved the taut, unsettling, high-tension scares of the original. Shocks that were intense and terrifying in their sparse use the first time around are rehashed, overused and overexposed to the point of dilution and boredom here, while plot points that were already perfectly handled with ambiguous subtlety in 5 minutes of its predecessor are stretched to an entire movie of unbearable exposition-filled stupidity. Unfortunately [REC] 2 is yet another addition to the pile of unnecessary, awful sequels.

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[REC] 2 hits UK cinemas on 28th May 2010 and US theatres in early July.