Review: We Need To Talk About Kevin****
Tilda Swinton generally never fails to impress audiences in anything she turns her hand to. Indeed, what can honestly be said about Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s riveting and utterly chilling book, We Need To Talk About Kevin, is that the role was written unquestionably for Swinton – or even the book’s character for that matter. Shriver even quotes in the back of her book that the film adaptation is “well cast, beautifully shot and thematically loyal” to her novel. Any anomalies that arise from watching the film are purely subjective as a result of what you’ve already visualise…
Review: Red State ***
“Establishment is flawed. Down with the establishment!” appears to be Kevin Smith‘s defining and sinister mantra in his Tarantino-esque Red State, done with brutal and twisted irony in a hail of righteous bullets. Its cynicism both cultivates and dissipates the bouts of humour in one of Smith’s most radical yet frank pieces of film-making yet that throws out a collection of controversial ideas. Set in Middle America, three teenage boys receive an online invitation for sex with an older woman. But they soon encounter religious fundamentalists headed by disciplinarian Abin Cooper (Michael Parks) with a far more sinister agenda, as…
Review: The Woman****
Lucky McKee’s new horror The Woman is 2011’s very own I Spit on Your Gravefor fuelling post-viewing debate and controversy. It is a love-hate piece of film-making designed to revolt, but also to allow us to reflect. To describe it as a “look into the darkness of human nature” gives it a purpose and an excuse for exercising some of the most raw and depraved acts seen in a long time. What it does deliver though is the much desired shock tactic, just when the genre feels like it has little else to stoop to and horrify us with. Controlling…
Review: Tucker & Dale Vs Evil****
Debut feature director Eli Craig’s take on the comedy-horror genre is a glorious homage to all the townie-meets-country shlock horrors over the years, like an hilarious study of all the gory clichés turned on their heads. It still racks up the body count for genre fans and demonises the local White trash population, but cleverly manipulates the inevitable misunderstandings and miscommunications with expert comic timing and chilling pose. Tucker (Alan Tudyk) and Dale (Tyler Labine) are two country boys planning on spending a break doing up Tucker’s ‘holiday shack’ in the woods. However, their plans are scuppered by the arrival…
Review: Troll Hunter****
There’s nothing more appealing than a horror steeped with folklore that manages to question our sanity. This is precisely what foreign-based fantasies like Norwegian writer-director André Øvredal’s Troll Hunter achieve for the non-Nordic audience out there, desperate for mysteries such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster to have a touch of authenticity about them. Students discover that government officials have been less than honest about recent human disappearances and supposed bear killings, and track down the whereabouts of a mysterious troll hunter who has been tasked with keeping the various troll populations in the scenic Norwegian fjords under control…
Review: A Lonely Place To Die****
The Gilbeys are no stranger to a bit of in-your-face grit after their 2007 gangster flick, Rise Of The Footsoldier, based on a true story. All they’ve done with their last offering, A Lonely Place To Die, starring horror Aussie darling Melissa George, is injected the horror into what is effectively a cat-and-mouse crime thriller that rather resembles this year’s most peculiar Blooded, but has more guts and is far more watchable. A Lonely Place To Dieserves no real purpose other than being an uncompromising pursuit for justice and survival that chills, thrills and spills claret all over the Scottish…
Review: Fright Night (3D)****
Craig Gillespie’s last and probably only memorable film to date was the touchingly quirky Lars and the Real Girl in 2007, starring Ryan Gosling as a delusional guy who has a relationship with a life-like doll. This showed the makings of a great director of twisted unconventionality in the heart of suburbia – kind of like his latest project, the remake of 1985 cult classic, Fright Night, only in 3D. Anton Yelchin reprises William Ragsdale’s troubled soul of a character, Charley Brewster, who learns that his new next-door neighbour, Jerry, is a vampire (played by Colin Farrell). But no one,…
Review: Final Destination 5 (3D)****
The thought of another dance with Death – and in 3D – fills anyone tiring of the accident-obsessed franchise with dread. But Steven Quale’s addition to the grizzly iconic series, Final Destination 5 (3D), should not be dismissed so easily, and begins with a glass-smashing, gore-dripping, pole-flying 3D title extravaganza that makes you sit up and dodge the obstacles in a thrilling opening ride and grand taster of things to come. In this instalment, attractive twentysomethings and work colleagues survive a suspension-bridge collapse on their way to a team-building retreat, thanks to Sam’s (Nicholas D’Agosto) premonition. Naturally, federal agents are…
Review: Mother’s Day***
As everyone knows from nature programmes alone, ‘Hell hath no fury like a Mummy scorned’. After creeping out audiences back in 1992 in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, then-maternal Rebecca De Mornay proves she’s still got the superior chill factor to scare the living daylights out of you in Saw director Darren Lynn Bousman’s 2010 reimaging of Mother’s Day. The warped male members of the villainous and dysfunctional Koffin family, headed by menacing matriarch Natalie ‘Mother’ Koffin (De Mornay), return to their family home after a robbery goes wrong, only to discover it was repossessed and ‘Mother’ has since…
Review: Julia’s Eyes****
Writer/director director Guillem Morales has a great talent for horror that fantasy-horror maestro and co-producer of this film, Guillermo del Toro has recognised. Morales is certainly welcomed into the del Toro fold, here, as he comes on board to direct del Toro’s The Orphanage leading lady, the mesmerising Belén Rueda, in this richly layered, beautifully-shot, and terrifyingly effective psychological thriller. One of the many films that premiered at 2010’s Toronto International Film Festival, Julia’s Eyes tells the story of a woman, Julia (Rueda), with a degenerative optical illness who believes her dead twin sister – who suffered from the same…
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