In short: The Price We Pay (2022)

A trio of criminals – Stephen Dorff as the sensible one, Emile Hirsch in a risible performance as the kill-hungry psycho and some guy whose name I’m too lazy to look up as the soon to be dead one – and a hostage (Gigi Zumbado), fleeing the results of their bloody assault on a mafia-run pawnshop, end up on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Sensible One and Psycho would be bound to murder one another sooner or later, but the dark and unintentionally funny secret below the farm is going to make that rather unnecessary.

Even working with little money, Ryuhei Kitamura only seldom can resist being a show-off, still loving tacky editing tricks and crap practical effects to bits. I would like him, and probably more of his movies, for this, but most of them end up lacking the sort of charm or aesthetic individuality that would make them work for me as the kind of cool exploitation fare they are so clearly supposed to be. To my eyes, most of his films are nearly totally lacking in this regard, as well as in decent scripts, with a couple of exceptions where I always assume somebody behind the scenes managed to channel Kitamura’s bad taste in the right directions to present his actual talents as a filmmaker.

This is not one of those movies, but rather an increasingly stupid mix of would-be post-Tarantino crime movie, torture porn, and a lot of annoyingly edited gore, mostly taking place in ugly, fake looking sets and of course a patch of desert. Dorff and Zumbado do their best with what they are given, but since the script by Kitamura and Christopher Jolley shows little idea of how to work clichés productively, and Hirsch is actively working against them, they are pretty much left alone.

Which leaves a couple of decent gore gags I’d probably have more patience for in a film made by someone working out of their family garage. So, hardly a movie at all.

In short: Downrange (2017)

A car full of ridesharing young ‘uns (let’s just mention characters played by Kelly Connaire, Stephanie Pearson, Rod Hernandez and Anthony Kirlew) find themselves on a lonely desert country road after a surprise flat tire. Turns out the tire was blown by a rifle round, and soon enough, a hidden sniper begins murdering the kids one by one. Desperate plans as well as the usual bickering between the survivors who managed to get a car between themselves and the movement-averse sniper ensue.

Ryuhei Kitamura isn’t exactly the director I’d have in mind for what amounts to a one-location movie like Downrange, for sitting still for a longer amount of time and focussing on character interplay are pretty much the opposite of Kitamura’s talents, and never aspects of filmmaking the director showed much talent for or any interest in. For a time, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of restraint Kitamura showed, and his genuine attempts to not add further elements to the situation he has set up but instead let it play out naturally. Sure, there are a handful of completely unnecessary swirling tracking shots form on high, but for about half the film, this is indeed the tight, psychological film you’d expect from the set-up.

Alas, Kitamura loses patience then, and the whole thing turns into a completely ridiculous one-location thriller full of all the tackiness the director goes for at his worst. So expect amounts of blood and unpleasantness so high-pitched, things don’t become dark and unpleasant but simply ridiculous, Kitamura giving up on using any of the humanity he provided his characters with in any sensible way once the bodily fluids really start spurting.


This really is a film crying out for a careful and focussed 70s-inspired director. Kitamura even seems to agree, given how the film’s final plot development so clearly wants to be a 70s downer ending. In truth, it only ends up being ridiculous, cartoonish and plain silly nonsense, Downrange and its director simply lacking the interest in their characters as human beings you need to pull this sort of thing off.

Nightmare Cinema (2018)

Warning: if you’re very sensitive about these things, there are spoilers ahead!

One after the other, people find themselves drawn into a cinema where a mysterious projectionist (Mickey Rourke) shows films starring themselves. Cue episodic horror shorts by different directors, until things end on a decidedly unimpressive wrap-up. But then, Rourke is as boring a horror host as you can get for this sort of thing, so any part of the film involving more of him was bound to not be terribly interesting.

We start off with “The Thing in the Woods” by Juan of the Dead director Alejandro Brugués, in which we meet a woman named Samantha (Sarah Elizabeth Walters) who is apparently in the final stages of a slasher movie, having to fight off a slasher named The Welder in semi-comical manner. But is there more going on, and are we indeed witnessing a film from a different horror movie sub-genre than our heroine thinks she’s in? This one’s a fun little beginning to the film, using an audience’s genre-savvy to clever effect, including a fun plot twist as well as oodles of pretty cool gore. Brugués directs with verve and a clear knowledge of the particular sandbox he is playing in, coming up with a segment that feels fun and over the top in all the best ways. Plus, even in the age of the post-post-(post-?)slasher movie, he does come upon about some rather great slasher jokes.

Next up is Joe Dante’s “Mirare”, based on a Richard Christian Matheson short. It concerns the misadventures of Anna (Zarah Mahler) whose doting rich fiancée pays for a bit of plastic surgery to get rid of a somewhat unsightly bit of scar tissue on one of her cheeks. The grandfatherly plastic surgeon on call convinces her that a couple other “improvements” would be nice too. Of course, there are very different ideas of beauty floating around. Just look at Mickey Rourke! Sorry?

This one’s a pretty slight story whose style and twist (if you even want to call it that) could have landed it a room in a 90s horror cable TV anthology. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a fun little thing, though, and Dante, while certainly not at his best, still has a hand for pacing, the grotesque, and sarcastic if superficial commentary on contemporary social mores.

This is followed by Ryuhei Kitamura’s “Mashit”, and if you’re now asking yourself if it will contain some of the director’s trademark slow motion sword fighting, I can answer this with a resounding yes. How does that fit into a tale about possession at a Catholic orphanage? Well, how else would you stage a sword and knife fight between a priest, a nun and a bunch of possessed children? So yeah, this segment is about as tasteful as [insert grotesque contemporary politician of your choice here], but Kitamura plays the whole thing as such a loving homage to Italian gore horror (even the music is right), I as a lover of that sub-genre myself can’t help but be charmed. Plus, before that anti-money-maker of a scene, the director also includes some moody and creepy moments like the scene where the girl children rise from their beds synchronously, so you can’t really say Kitamura is only going for shock value here. Just once he does, he really does, which I found pretty damn admirable.

The following This Way to Egress by David Slade takes a turn from the awesomely tasteless and weird into the true Weird (and into black and white footage), telling the tale of Helen (Elizabeth Reaser), who – together with her two children – has come to the office of one Dr. Salvadore (Adam Godley) with a rather peculiar problem. She, as well as the audience, sees the people in her surroundings, as well as these surroundings themselves, transforming in disturbing ways that suggest decay and wrongness. Slade does wonders in creating the atmosphere of strangeness needed here, the disturbing feeling of things around you (and Helen) changing just when you aren’t looking, of having drifted into a place where you don’t belong anymore. He is ably supported by Reaser here, who puts a naturalistic face on the reaction to the unnatural, which makes it all the more unnatural.

Alas, Nightmare Cinema does end on “Dead”, the long, tedious and unfocussed tale of Riley (Faly Rakotohavana), who is clinically dead for some minutes after being shot by the same random crazy guy who just killed his parents. Afterwards, Riley does of course see dead people, among them his mum who wants him to die for under explained reasons. But in what I can only assume must have seemed like a good idea for a plot to director/writer Mick Garris, said random crazy guy is still alive and kicking and trying to kill Riley, so there’s also a bit of badly staged suspense added to the whole “I see dead people” shtick. Frankly, like most of what Garris directs, it’s a mess - badly paced, full of details that never come together, showing little visual style and feeling like one of the really bad episodes of one of those 90s cable TV horror shows Dante’s episode reminded me of in a more positive way. Which is no wonder since that really is where Garris comes from. I don’t want to be too down on the man, though, for while I still think he’s a mediocre director at his best, I do absolutely admire his ability to get projects like this (or “Masters of Horror”) off the ground, as well as his quality as an interviewer of genre heroes.


Apart from its final segment and the wrap-around (also directed by Garris, by the way), I had quite a bit of fun with Nightmare Cinema. I’d just recommend to stop the film before the Garris segment, which should leave the prospective viewer fully satisfied with the anthology film.

Three Films Make A Post: Heavy metal goes medieval

Iron Man 3 (2013): If someone had told me ten years ago that a few years later, some of the best non-stupid blockbuster movies around would be a series of interlocked Marvel superhero movies produced by Disney, I'd laughed him off, but there you have it. Shane Black's Iron Man 3 is a very fine example of its species, hitting all the mandatory Hollywood blockbuster beats with relish and talent, but adding some intelligent twists to certain parts of the formula without trying to completely deconstruct it. It's a film absolutely impossible for me to dislike, seeing as it - as most of the other Marvel movies - is the kind of pop high budget cinema the blockbuster concept should be ideal for; of course, far too often, we get Michael Bay movies or whatever that Green Lantern thing was even supposed to be instead. Happily, there's a difference between "far too often", and "always".

The Midnight Meat Train (2008): With hindsight, you can see this Clive Barker adaptation as director Ryuhei Kitamura's first step away from his old show-off direction ways towards tighter and moodier approaches to filmmaking. About half of Midnight Meat Train is a pretty swell tale of big city paranoia told in ways that often remind me more of 70s horror cinema than of video clips. The film's second half is a bit of a mess, though. Particularly the murders see Kitamura fall into his old direction pattern featuring too much CGI and braggart editing and camerawork distracting from what should be gritty and unpleasant. The film also suffers from a script that doesn't quite seem to know how to sell the film's supernatural aspect, nor how to make Bradley Cooper's increasing obsession with the true heart of the City believable. Neither Kitamura, never much one for actual humans on screen, nor Cooper himself seem to know either.

In fact, in true Kitamura style, most of the performances (except Leslie Bibb's lamely doomed girlfriend Maya) are rather drab, leaving as Midnight Meat Train a film lacking an emotional core.

Sleeping Dogs (1977): Believe it or not, before Roger Donaldson went to Hollywood, he made some fine movies in his native New Zealand. Case in point is this pretty bitter, very 70s sort-of thriller about Sam Neill trying his best not to get involved in or against a new and improved fascist New Zealand but ending crushed by the wheels of history anyway. The film does avoid heroic, mostly even defiant gestures like the plague and instead shows flawed incompetents like you or me as they stumble through a world that suddenly has turned nasty on them, with no way out and no control at all regarding their own fates. Not even violence does change much.

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No One Lives (2012)

(Warning: Spoilers abound!)

Because their dumbest member Flynn (Derek Magyar) wants to prove himself after he needlessly (and dangerously) shot someone he really didn't need to kill, a backwoods clan of low-level criminals and toughs comes into possession of the car of two passing travellers in some kind of strained relationship - and, in another idiocy nobody approves of, of the travellers themselves. The situation doesn't improve at all when the female half of the couple (Laura Ramsey) uses a knife held at her throat as an opportunity for suicide. The man (Luke Evans) turns out to be a rather effective and brutal serial killer (though he sees himself as something more than just a mere serial killer, who are like kittens to his panther), and now a very angry one at that.

He is certainly not less angry once he realizes that the clan has found Emma (Adelaide Clemens), the young millionaire's daughter who was famously abducted some time ago while fourteen of her friends were slaughtered, hidden in his car. Things could still turn out okay for the crooks if they'd just do what Emma tells them to, namely to run at once and give her to the police. As it goes with people who have been tougher than anyone they ever met, the clan think they can cope with anything a single guy could throw at them, and decide to keep Emma and blackmail some money directly out of her father. They only realize too late that there's always somebody more dangerous somewhere, and they have just met him. In fact, Emma is the only person around on his level, which might be exactly what the killer wants her to be.

I think I have repeatedly aired my dislike for No One Lives director Ryuhei Kitamura's films. I may even have compared the experience of watching one of his movies to watching a monkey masturbate in slow motion, with added whooshing noises. Yes, I didn't even like Versus. So cover me surprised to realize I would describe No One Lives as great, bordering on brilliant.

Absolutely gone is Kitamura's tendency to overemphasise needlessly flashy directing tics and blunder his audience into submission by empty gestures of what's supposed to be coolness. In No One Lives, every edit, every camera movement is in service of the movie, not of stroking the director's ego via technical achievements. In fact, Kitamura leaves many of his most favourite directing tricks nearly completely in the bag, instead trusting in his ability to keep his audience interested with excellent pacing, a decidedly non-stupid script by David Cohen, and even - this has always been a particular weak spot in Kitamura's films - decent acting. Particularly the way Luke Evans turns his bland pretty boy looks into something frightening, and the way Adelaide Clemens projects complicated feelings via body language are remarkable, but even someone like America Olivo (whom I'd never have suspected of it) shows actual acting chops. Of course, we are talking about acting in the context of a horror thriller here, not a naturalistic piece about the troubles of academics, but I'm not going to complain when performances are exactly as they should be.

It's also a first in a Kitamura movie to find the director actually trusting in the performances, giving the actors just enough room to work, without getting distracted by a need to make a thousand edits a second or swirling his camera around while bullets fly in slow-motion. In this film, the director seems absolutely concentrated, using his (always unquestionably high) technical proficiency to tell a simple yet clever story excitingly. He does this much more efficiently than I ever would have expected.

It does help that Cohen's script does some rather clever things with the way it plays with the slasher and the larger "serial killer on the rampage" genres he's working in, without ever forgetting to add enough blood and gore to satisfy the baser needs of his audience. I'm not quite convinced of the film's ending, though. I see where it is going with it thematically, yet I don't think the ending as it actually happens is as satisfying as the rest of the narrative. But then I always want to see the final girl in these films win completely under her own powers and (unrealistically) not end up psychologically damaged beyond repair.

That minor quibble aside, No One Lives is quite an achievement. Suddenly, I'm even looking forward to Ryuhei Kitamura's next movie.

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Yoroi: The Samurai Zombie (2008)

(This write-up concerns the regular version of the movie. The IMDB claims the existence of a longer director's cut of the film. Perhaps it does exist and does not suck as hard as the regular cut. I somehow doubt it.)

A Japanese family goes on vacation. While they are driving through a foggy, damp forest, the family's car is attacked by a gangster in white, who is at once shot by a young thug and his girlfriend. Those two mumble something about the living dead and take the family hostage and force them drive who knows where. Then, the young thug decides to send the family's father out on foot to do who knows what. Father runs a bit, cuts his throat in an old graveyard and awakens the local samurai zombie.

Said samurai zombie then attacks the rest of the cast, who flee into an abandoned village. The dead gangster comes back to live and makes a bit of trouble, two cops enter the abandoned village for no good reason whatsoever and finally the samurai zombie attacks again.

As any even mildly experienced viewer of cult cinema will tell you, there's not much of a probability that a film with an awesome sounding title like The Samurai Zombie can be anything but boring. By the natural laws of bad moviedom, all of the creative energy available has already gone into the title, and nothing at all will be left for the movie. Unfortunately, this isn't the miracle film that will break this universal law.

In fact, Samurai Zombie is even worse than I had expected. If you think that the plot synopsis above is rather abstract and feels somewhat lacking by virtue of the absence of explanations, character motivations or character names in it, you're absolutely right. I'm not usually someone who cries out for exposition or plot or any of the other luxuries proper movies are supposed to provide, but there's a point where a film has to give its audience something, some narrative basics, give them at least a slight reason to care about it. Otherwise, why should anyone watch this thing?

Responsible for the film's non-script is the horrible Ryuhei Kitamura (aka the last person who should be allowed to write scripts), still recycling his only watchable film, Versus, still failing utterly at it. As in all Kitamura films, non-action scenes are only there to demonstrate Kitamura's knowledge of the same three or four pop-cultural references he already went through in each of his other films, the dialogue is boring, the pacing is slow and the jokes are stale and mostly repeats of the same jokes that already weren't funny in Kitamura's other films. The action itself is just not very interesting to look at. Director Tak Sakaguchi (also working as actor and stuntman) isn't exactly doing sloppy and shoddy work (that would probably be more interesting to watch than what is delivered here), but he also does nothing that's actually interesting. Words like "kinetic" or "intense" to describe the action are right out.

My biggest problem with the film is its complete lack of imagination, though. Sure, hacked off heads make a champagne bottle noise, but that's the most exciting or creative thing going on here. Where other action and gore films - especially those from Japan - try to outdo each other in the grotesqueness of their monsters and bizarreness of their violence, Samurai Zombie coasts on a decapitation here, a bit-off penis there, never committing to the gross-out or the nastily whacky. That wouldn't be much of a problem in a film with anything else to offer, but this is a movie without a narrative, without characters (I know, I know, Kitamura probably goes for "archetypes", but there's a difference between an archetype and a void), and - I suspect - without anyone behind the camera actually giving a shit beyond getting their pay checks.

And if the people making the movie don't care, I see no reason why I should.

 

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