Three Films Make A Post: The hunter becomes the hunted.

Enhanced (2019): By now, quite a few low budget filmmakers have realized that they may not be able to keep up on the spectacle of contemporary superhero cinema, but they sure as hell can use superhero tropes when focussing on comparatively low power sets and street level plots. Like at least half of these films, James Mark’s Canadian example of the type Enhanced is clearly taking its cues from the X-Men, with (mostly) innocent superpowered beings hunted by the government.

The resulting movie is a lot of fun for my tastes. It makes good use of the fantastical elements it can afford, presents some choice comic book science, and comes up with a handful of very nice, small-scale action scenes with more than decent choreography and direction. Leads Alanna Bale and George Tchortov comport themselves well in and outside of the action, too, so there’s a fun time to be had here.

Deep Cover (1992): Bill Duke’s (who is probably much better known for his character actor work than directing despite his copious direction credits on TV and in the movies) movie about a black cop played by Laurence Fishburne when we still called him Larry going undercover as a drug dealer (and partnering with Jeff Goldblum) packs a lot of style (one can certainly be sure that Duke watched Miami Vice and learned all the right lessons from the show), quite a bit of creative wildness, comments about being a black man in the 90s and a generally acerbic attitude towards 90s drug capitalism as well as the war on drugs into all the best-loved tropes you expect from a film in this genre.

With the help of Fishburne, Goldblum and a generally wonderful cast, Duke makes a film that manages to be genuinely intelligent under the cheap thrills, delivers these thrills in the best possible way, and really convinces anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that he should have been one of the great crime movie directors after this, instead of the travelling craftsman he became. (No shame in being one of those, naturally).

In the Cut (2003): Also pretty fantastic is this hazy and moody erotic psychological thriller by the great Jane Campion, who never let her feminism stop her to get deep into the less easily stomached and judged areas of sexuality, desire and lust, and indeed found much useful for feminism to explore there. This is very much a film of a hazy yet tactile mood, interested in all kinds of liminal spaces – between characters, between feelings, between glances, between waking and sleep, between lust and caution, and of course (this being Campion) between touches. The film is pretty giallo-esque in its eroticism, as well as in the deep implausibility of its thriller plot; just as it is with most other great giallos, that implausibility really isn’t the point, though.

Of course, this being a Campion movie, we also get to watch some great performances, not just by Meg Ryan going brilliantly against her America’s Sweetheart thing with ease but also by house favourites Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Nick Damici (of all people to encounter in a Campion movie).

Past Misdeeds: Dark Was the Night (2014)

This is a re-run with only the slightest of edits, so please don’t ask me what the heck I was thinking when I wrote any given entry into this section.

Some rather weird occurrences are happening in a US small town close to your proverbial deep dark woods. Things start with a missing horse and a line of curious, cloven-hoofed tracks running through the whole of the town, tracks that certainly don’t fit any animal anyone’s ever heard about. Despite, or perhaps even because of, the legends surrounding something living deep in the woods around town, sheriff Paul Shields (Kevin Durand) and his freshly imported formerly New Yorker deputy Donny Saunders (Lukas Haas) don’t believe in any cryptids roaming around town. A rather imaginative hoax seems more plausible to them.

Paul has his head full of other things, too: after the death of one of his two little sons in an accident he blames himself for, his marriage to his wife Susan (Bianca Kajlich) has hit a very rough spot, her now having moved out to live with her parents. So Paul is at first so distracted by his personal problems he doesn’t quite buy into the disquieted attitude around town. The curious incidents are piling up though, and Paul might be emotionally battered but he does take his responsibility towards the people he has sworn to protect very seriously, so he changes his mind about the “hoax” before whatever it is that has come to town can take its first human victim (apart from some introductory ones he doesn’t know about which the film gave to the audience as the mandatory blood toll).

Now, if this doesn’t sound like a dozen SyFy Original creature features: a sheriff with a marriage on the rocks, a typical US small town, a hungry cryptid known from local Native American legends, the former big city deputy running from his own piece of the past, and so on and so forth. Which only goes to show that very often, the point in genre filmmaking isn’t being original, but using the clichés and the tropes you find in the right way.

For that is what makes Jack Heller’s (also responsible for another film that made good with not exactly original ideas in Enter Nowhere) Dark Was the Night as fine a movie as it turns out to be - the thought and care that has been put into these hoary old clichés to make them breathe and come alive again. I think much of this effect is caused by how careful Heller as well as Tyler Hisel’s script approach all of the very traditional elements they’re working with, clearly putting much thought into their place and meaning in the context of their specific narrative, instead of just regurgitating them like many other films would do (sometimes even to fun effect). This is not deconstruction or an “ironic” (shudder) approach to the creature feature, though. Rather, the film takes each old element and applies it as if it were new, more by changing the emphasis on certain elements than by changing the elements themselves.

This careful (careful seems to me the watchword for the film) approach enables the film to turn plot elements that should be tiresome, like the whole dead kid/marriage trouble angle, into something emotionally touching and valid. To my eyes, the film does feel just a decisive bit more honest about the inner lives of its characters here too, aiming for a kind of psychological realism that fits its calm (or should I say careful?) approach to its monster. The way the film tells it, it’s not even feeling dishonest or clichéd that monster fighting actually can pull a guy out of his depression and bring a marriage back on track.

How well the character based parts of the plot work is in part due to the respectful and not melodramatic way these are written but is of course also something the ensemble deserve praise for too. Durand, Kajlich and Haas in particular really hit the emotional spots right, treating the emotional turmoil of their characters in a monster movie with the same respect and care they’d apply to a domestic drama. And since the film very much puts the emphasis on these characters and their inner lives, it gets all the better for it.

This doesn’t mean the film isn’t a really fun low budget monster movie too. Heller does know how to make this part of the film memorable, not surprisingly given the rest of the film’s approach, putting the emphasis here on suspense and expectation, only putting little snatches of the monster on screen for the longest time until it becomes impossible to hide the fact we have a case of a pretty mediocre looking CGI creature. At that point, however, the film has put so much effort and (again) care into building up the situation, the monster, and even the why of its attacks (without falling into a complicated mythology or over-explaining), it could have put a marionette on screen and still deserved all the praise it can get. I do love here, too, that the monster isn’t one of cryptozoology’s greatest hits but again a creature the film has put some thought into, trying to give the creature as much reality as it possibly can while still using certain urban legends.

This sense of realism goes a long way for a film in a genre that mostly goes “yeah, bigfoot/the chupacabra/etc, you know” and does of course fit with the emotional and psychological realism on display as well.


The only moment I found somewhat disappointing was the usual horror movie “gotcha!” ending that has stopped working on me so much I can only ever see it as an empty cynical gesture anymore. Though it has to be said, even here Dark Was the Night keeps to its realistic approach to the strange in so far as the ending actually makes sense in the context of at least some of what we’ve seen before. However, complaining about a movie’s final thirty seconds when the rest of it is so carefully, unassumingly fine really is a luxury problem to have, so I can’t say I minded too much.

Past Misdeeds: Late Phases (2014)

This is a re-run with only the slightest of edits, so please don’t ask me what the heck I was thinking when I wrote any given entry into this section.

His son Will (Ethan Embry) helps move blind, retired soldier Ambrose (Nick Damici again proving the fact he’s one of today’s great genre actors when it comes to playing working class people - if you watch the right movies) into a gated retirement community. Things haven’t gone well between the two men for years, Ambrose wearing his sightlessness like an armour around his emotions, and Will clearly having lost most of his patience with the old man years ago.

On his very first night, something that looks a lot like a werewolf to the audience kills Ambrose’s friendly neighbour. Afterwards, it attacks him as well, but thanks to his seeing eye dog Shadow (Raina) and the curious fact that the ocularly disabled are still allowed to own guns in the US of A (!?) the old man stays safe. Shadow, alas dies. The local authorities don’t seem to let a little thing like a dead old lady and a nearly murdered blind man disturb them much. The area of the gated community is well-known for animal attacks, so the whole thing ends up with everybody around shrugging it off as just one of these things.

Everyone, that is, except for Ambrose, who very quickly decides there’s a werewolf attacking during the night of the full moon, and that he’s the man who will get rid of it, blindness be damned. Consequently, Ambrose starts preparing for the next full moon, by very pointedly not burying his dog while still running around with a shovel, buying a huge gravestone, and annoying the most easily annoyed group of neighbours with his mixture of cantankerous humour and soldier-as-working-class member directness in an attempt to ferret out the werewolf. He somewhat comes to like the local priest (Tom Noonan, winner of this week’s price for the most impressive off-handed performance in a movie) but there’s still a werewolf to kill and – so Ambrose seems to plan – to die decently in the process, on one’s own terms.

Who’d have thought that director Adrián García Bogliano would go from often sleazy – yet certainly worthwhile - backyard horror and exploitation to making something like this (or his last two or three movies before it) - a clever, character-based piece of low budget horror that seems old-fashioned in all the good ways? Though I should probably call it classicist instead of old-fashioned, for Bogliano’s particular forte here lies in evoking the spirit of low budget genre films of the 70s and 80s. Not in a “retro” kind of manner, mind you, but via an approach to his material that seems inspired by a different era without using that era’s outward appearance as a signifier of coolness.

So his first US film – for Larry Fessenden’s (who of course also has his mandatory mini-role, this time around as a mildly sleazy gravestone seller) Glass Eye Pix – isn’t very interested in irony, or in jump scares, or in a making a movie based on other movies, but rather in exploring his main character with the help of some suspenseful werewolf shenanigans. This works out very nicely for the audience and the film, thanks to a script by Eric Stolze that uses a not exactly original character and problem (the capital-m Man who can’t express his feelings, and pushes everyone away he cares about; the old man looking for a decent way to die), and a set-up that could feel painfully gimmicky exceedingly well. And while this certainly isn’t the first (nor will it be the last) film about a man who only ever expresses himself through violence (for Ambrose’s often very funny cantankerousness is a mild form of violence too) I’ve seen this year, I don’t think there will be many others that’ll manage to make the character feel quite as real, and that are able to show the flawed humanity behind the mask without feeling the need to lay the blame for his flaws on everyone else.

As the film plays out, I found Ambrose’s (too) late attempt to reach out to his son to be quite touching, with Bogliano and Stolze resisting the temptation of laying it on too thick. The film isn’t just about Ambrose and his emotional problems, though, it also explores his and other characters’ reaction to their aging, to the realization that they are indeed in the last part of their lives and won’t ever be able to make up for their sins perceived and real, and never be able to truly change again. Unless they are a werewolf, of course, but that’s not the sort of change that does much for one’s personal development.

And while this all sounds rather nice in a character study sort of way, Late Phases also works well as a suspenseful little werewolf film. There aren’t – of course, given the film’s financial means – many large set pieces, but Bogliano has grown really good at staging suspense scenes with whatever means he has available, as well as at creating the correct mood for the tale he’s going to tell, pacing the character parts and the action effortlessly and actually building to quite a fine climax.


There are a few niggles to be had with the film, but there's really only one larger point I can come up with. It's the werewolf. While the make-up and costume certainly has individual character, it also looks a bit too much like a costume, and a very cute one at that, with Bogliano spending no effort at all hiding how awkward it looks in action. If that sort of thing distracts you terribly, I foresee distraction; I can cope with a weakness like it when the movie surrounding it is as clever and tight as Late Phases is.

On ExB: Dark Was the Night (2014)

As you know, Jim, I do like me some traditional small town monster movies. I like it even more when they are any good, which leads us to the subject of my newest column over at the sometimes disturbingly hairy Exploder Button. It concerns Dark Was the Night, a traditional small town monster movie that is pretty damn great.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,horror,jack heller,kevin durand,bianca kajlich,lukas haas,sabina gadecki,nick damici

On ExB: Late Phases (2014)

I don’t know what your doctor recommends against the troubles of old age, but mine suggests a bit of werewolf hunting now and then.

So it’s quite a happy coincidence that Adrián García Bogliano’s Late Phases has quite a bit to say about old age and werewolves. You can find my thoughts on the movie over at the sort of hairy looking Exploder Button.

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Stake Land (2010)

It's the end of the world as we know it. Vampires (of the rude, animalistic sort that has a lot in common with the fast zombies of the last decade) have overrun the world. Governments seem to have stopped existing, and most of the new plague's survivors are huddling together in locked down communities.

The vampires are not the only threat to the survivors in this rough new world, though. An apocalyptic, racist cult calling themselves the Brotherhood sees the vampires as their god's way of "cleansing the impure". Its members spend their days helping the godhood out by raping, pillaging and attacking the locked down zones, when in doubt even by throwing vampires into them out of an helicopter.

There's also some hope. Canada has supposedly - rumour having replaced fact quite some time ago - become New Eden, a giant, vampire-free evacuation zone.

Stake Land follows the teenager Martin (Connor Paolo) and the hard-ass, damaged vampire hunter Mister (Nick Damici, also co-writer), who has taken Martin in after the death of his parents, on their way north through the United States trying to reach New Eden.

Travelling, the pair meets and kills a lot of vampires (Mister doesn't just kill the creatures in self-defence, but goes out of his way to destroy them, in reaction to some trauma in his past the film will only ever hint at), runs into trouble with the Brotherhood, witnesses the best and the worst of human behaviour, and picks up other survivors like a nun (Kelly McGillis) and the pregnant Belle (Danielle Harris). Martin will have a lot of growing up to do before - and if - he and Mister are going to reach their goal, and not everyone will survive the journey.

If you're like me, you'll probably remember Jim Mickle's microbudget "rat zombies in Brooklyn" movie Mulberry Street with fondness. Stake Land (again, like Mulberry Street, co-written by Nick Damici) turns out to be even better than the earlier movie, in part because the film's budget this time around isn't quite as micro, but only low (thanks to Larry Fessenden's Glass Eye Pix whose only price seems to be a mandatory cameo by Fessenden), which enables Mickle and Damici to give their film a more ambitious scope. "Ambitious" is of course a relative word: don't expect the film to be a tour through the post-apocalyptic tourist attractions of the USA. Mister and Martin make their way through the back roads and side streets of rural and small town USA, but really, after the hundredth film showing the deserted streets of a major metropolis, taking a look at other parts of the post-apocalyptic landscape can only be a good thing.

In Stake Land's case, it's even an especially good thing, for Mickle really has a fantastic talent for finding a sense of loss as well as a very sad kind of poetry in pictures of dilapidated buildings and beautifully photographed landscape devoid of humanity. In an interesting development for contemporary filmmaking, Mickle seems to belong to the small group of directors who actually know how to put the unending fad for colour-desaturated photography to good use: turns out a thoughtful director can use the hated blue tinge in scenes where it is useful to set the mood, and not use it where more natural colours are more appropriate, using the technology for the good of his film instead to demonstrate that he hates all colours.

Stake Land's ability to find beauty as well as terror in the landscape of the world it takes place in reminded me of Monsters, which is about as big a compliment as I can make a movie. Both films also share an emphasis on showing the relationship between their characters and the worlds they have to live in, a clear love for political commentary that (for the most part) is beyond preaching, and their disinterest in the supposed narrative need for tight plotting.

The big difference between the two films is that, where Monsters doesn't go for "action" at all, Stake Land alternates its calm moments with scenes of the old ultra-violence. These scenes are - quite in contrast to the composed down-to-earthness of the film's other half - more on the pulp action movie side of the equation, instead of coming from the "dirty realism" school I would have expected. Surprisingly enough, the action never hurts or overwhelms the film's more thoughtful side and does in fact strengthen it through the power of contrast. It certainly helps that Mickle realizes his action scenes with the same expertise he has for long, sad looks at what's left of humanity.

The only time the film's action side loses me is in what I'll just call the boss fight so as to not spoil too much for anyone. It's just way too pat, the sort of thing that probably looks good on paper because it closes certain circles in the script, but feels a bit trite and artificial in a film that's otherwise as organic as Stake Land is.

For most of the time, this is a film with a script that doesn't go in the easiest directions. Much of the characterization is based on the importance of small gestures and trusts the actors to make them, and the audience to understand them. Most of your typical mainstream movies - for example - would give us a major flashback into Mister's past somewhere around the film's last thirty minutes, probably with some shouting of "noooo!" and a tearful breakdown. Stake Land trusts us to understand without the melodrama. The only other exception to this rule is Martin's occasional voiceover monologue. It's not really necessary, does tell us things we see happening on screen, and gets a bit purple now and again, but it's used sparingly enough not to be anything that could ruin the film.

And really, if what I think are the movie's two bad decisions are a five minute scene and some voiceover work, than there's nothing at all wrong with it.

 

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