markhale-22640 Reviews

Unfriended (2014)

I'll be url best friend

[8/10 · 25 September 2015]

Make no mistake, 'Unfriended' will become a pivotal, pioneering text that will undoubtedly act as a conglomerate for canonisation - for future tie-ins, off-spins, sequels, prequels and parodies; because it's exquisitely simplistic, economically viable (for budget and for product placement) and poignantly prevalent. Russian breakthrough director Levan Gabriadze retunes the found-footage martyrdom of Oren Peli's paranormal franchise in propelling the dilemmas of hyper-attention, an Orwell-esque defamation of privacy and the presiding psychoanalytical flaws within electronic communications and an information overloaded cyber-space. Circulating from a modern youth culture inundated under the surge of the worldwide web, 'Unfriended' connotes that its 'app-eal' should be regarded with 'app-rehension'.

Unobtrusively shot and edited into one long, static sequence, the film defies the cinematographic or compositional eloquence supposedly required in constructing a narrative. The viewer experiences the whole feature through a computer display- a macbook to be precise - to which aspects of accessibility and apps drive the development of the story. Search engines provide the viewer with donations of information, 'Youtube' provides back stories, downloaded music apps provide the (non-diegetic and diegetic) soundtrack, messenger provides character cognition and Skype provides conflict. 'Unfriended' cleverly makes use of the many capabilities of the 'SMART' computer in stitching together a story that is viewed as an emulation of live-action - a time without ellipsis - in hammering home a relevant newness, nowness and further stipulation unto the congruence of actuality.

In creating fear, the general premise partakes upon the formulaic front of the slasher. Six undeniably bothersome blockhead teens conspire upon a joint video-chat to be correspondently offed by the malevolent digital presence of a girl who committed suicide due to their ill-founded notions of self-popularity and bullying. It's essentially a next generation 'I know what you did last summer' revamped for those born in and around the noughties, with a technological tang. Whilst the plump synonymity with adolescent culture is undeniable, the creation of fear is somewhat hit or miss. Form and style, though wonderfully interconnected and intelligently made manifest through an alternative medium, require a certain receptive quality in order for the film to be at its most effective. Because the form and style are both in unison to the methodologies of the computerised, it stands to question as to whether the film requires a definite output in which to reach its full potential of intensity. In an age where technology is all but differentiated by other platforms of media and coalitions, 'Unfriended' harnesses one particular discourse of mediation yet is not (for all intensive purposes) presumed to be exhibited as such. To feel the imperative scares and effects (and after-effects) of the feature, it needs to be viewed on a computer (or even one made by Apple) - or else the entire corroboration can seem a bit of a gimmick for a 'film' that hardly sticks to the formal constituents of its proposed medium.

For all its nouveau and ingenuity, 'Unfriended' is an excellently crafted and grafted horror for the socio-contemporaneous in substantiating perversions in privacy and online morality. Reforming the moulds of possibility within verity filmmaking, the theme demands to be taken seriously and is not confined to just the adolescent portions of communities but for everyone who dabbles in the internet occult. On the other hand, it's a hypnotising viral marketing campaign disguised as a film...

Clown (2014)

In the loin of Cloine

[8/10 · 25 September 2015]

Eli Roth presents an intimate trip to coulrophobia-ville in the wackiest of fashions - fashion being the key word in that an accursed clown costume morphs its host into the parabolic Nordic demon 'Cloine', renown for chowing down on a child-per-period of a wintry season. It's ingredients: a classically Cronenbergian concept come carnivalesque, add two stock cubes of 'An American Werewolf in London", the "Insidious" voracity of King's Pennywise in 'It', combined with a foolhardy idea from the second series of 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Halloween' (a conjectural plucking from the 'Whedonverse"), whereby characters meld with the attributes of their stereotypical trick or treating attire subject to some eerie, nineties voodoo-hoodoo. Voila, pastiche ala peckish, peccable, polar-paediatric Dummo the 'Clown'. This lacing of intertextuality and emulation might sound a sleight of hypocritical, yet it actually works in the films favour in creating a spicy referential humour to a narrative that was - without a doubt - never going to work otherwise. It is, after all, about a man's absurdly ill-fated transmogrification into a demonic clown.

Embarking en-route to a subtle humour to partner such an imaginatively offbeat yet lucrative body-horror hypothesis, 'Clown' relegates gesticulative puns to a minimum by abstracting normative routines and functions in insinuating a farcical (though realistically pragmatic) depiction of 'clownification'. Simple tasks such as having a shower, going on a school run or going to work in clown attire are worked into the feature to provide an outlet to snicker at the audacity of the concept itself, and acts as a realisation made by the filmmakers that humour is a welcome prerequisite to accompany such preposterous notion. Watching our clown-contaminated protagonist tackle his stuck-fast red nose, reappearing make-up and transmuting wig (to actual perms of hair) boils up a recoiling deadpan comedy none the more summated by Dummo's botched suicide attempts in forestalling the cometh of the cacodemon. Rambunctious chuckles in cahoots to a grimace, the rainbow coloured blood spatter that proceeds a gunshot through the mouth - and a trip to the local hardware store to build a self-decapitation machine - is indicative of a harmonious equilibrium made between horror and humour.

Entrenched from the off to progress with the plot rather than loitering a slow-burning build for character development, perhaps the narrative rushes into causal linearity too quickly as most of the protagonist's brood are rendered depthlessly lean and subsidiary (or less) to the macro and could have helped in filling a few plot potholes. Nevertheless, the barmy 'Clown' posits an original concept within a parodic wrapper and entertains throughout - even if it is a tad 'The Fly' off the wall.

The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence) (2015)

The human centifruge

[8/10 · 23 September 2015]

Six's third and final instalment of the centipede debacle, branded 100% politically incorrect, dishes up an expectant cacophony of corpulence and coprophagia. Sewn into the inference of its counterparts, the rearing head of the centipede trilogy gleefully satirises the judicial system in an exploitative penal perpetration that ebbs and arcs between impish lampoon or artistic gravitas.

Final sequence, for all of its faults, is an ingeniously crafted film. Soaked in a self- referentiality that equates to numerous storeys of ontology, Six's penultimate feature is a delectable conflation of actualities and realities rendering the spectator so far down a rabbit hole, its a never-ending abyss. For its complete relegations of historicity and symptomatic entwinement, the film never truly admits as to who is being exploited - a notion complicated further by Tom Six's acting involvement in the feature - rather it is the 'what' being exploited. Nee, the receptive essence of film itself, an implication undeniably ratified by dialogue as actors blurt out actual trolling reviews of Six's work.

The film itself is a queer arrangement. Stripped bare, its a garishly postmodern 'Frankenstein' (leads Dieter Laser and William Harvey are comically synonymous to Dr Frankenstein and Igor) with explicit repugnance its garnish. Whilst Six promised to 'go Dutch' in gruesome gratification - and seldom fails - the abhorrence of the feature is not just contained to its inextricable moments of disgust, though also its racial slurs, slander of stereotype and political ethics. Six inadvertently challenges us to interpret - and choose - as to what can be qualified and quantified as controversy - the 500 man centipede, or the reason why.

As to whether the film can be conceived as a 'good' film is an other and arguably irrelevant question, because it is not intended to be evaluated in the same way as other films. Its intention is to be paradoxical, to be avant-garde, to be different - and this it does well. But, to dictate by taste, it is both caviar and cack. For some, the hysterically inclined bellowing barbarian that is Dieter Laser will annoy, for some he will ensnare in all his enunciating glory. For some the film will be ridiculous, for others influential. Some will love it. Some will hate it - and then probably hate on the people who love it into getting them to say they hate it!

The purpose of Six's work, much alike Lars Von Trier, is to remonstrate. The centipedic body of texts is an intricate welding of artistry that surpasses the purpose of film to purely entertain. It is to be examined, to be visually consumed and independently contrived. One only has to consider the anti-authoritarian texts of the past to understand that the valorisation of cultural detritus - in the literal and the formal - is an art form in and of itself. Lobotomising conventional fodder, the darkly comedic and controversial 'Final Sequence' belongs to a stand-alone genre of shock ahead of its time.

Hidden (I) (2015)

The walk-instead

[8/10 · 23 September 2015]

Hidden by delightfully embedded narrative screws, the schematic of the post-apocalyptic zombie parable is turned on its head in a film duly concentrated on containment, quarantine and the adverse social affects of victims of bio-terrorism. As much as the set-up implies, the discernible threat of radioactive outbreak and impending annihilation is not the fundamental focus of this surprisingly insightful feature. This is not another walking dead leitmotif - far from it - this is its topical divergent. That the film conceals this so brilliantly until the end of the story, even by process of analeptic flashbacks digging towards the reveal, is a merit to how well the film's mise-en-scene is devised.

Taking refuge in an underground fallout shelter outside a school atop a quaint suburbia, a family of three decide upon a methodically war-time, rationalistic survival in sustaining their existence from the catastrophic perils outside - the supposition of a viral outbreak and the consequential obliterative decay. Hence the film resorts to shooting a large chunk of the story within the minimalist locale in creating an intensified claustrophobia and an appetising mystery in stark correlation to the undisclosed remnants of the outside world. Such restraint on locality requires, accordingly, ample identification with the characters and their development. Such is established and refined by a magnificent cast-chemistry with tenable performances in due course to a sensationally written script full of dexterity in dialogue. One fine example of this is the audience's presupposed qualities of the conflictual creatures referred to as 'breathers'.

Though wonderfully juxtaposed between past and present narratives in stringing along the sense of an investigatory closure, the film is at minor fault in bottle-feeding its penultimate reveal in a rehashing montage of prior scenes and dialogic double-entendre, but this shouldn't detract from the mischievous marvel of a film that utters against the grain.

Hollow (I) (2011)

The Blairbitch Project

[2/10 · 22 September 2015]

Hyperventilation and hand-held cameras, a form as superficial as the film title suggests. Hollow, hapless and needlessly heeding, 'Hollow' is a found-footage film made from the second-hand wool of the Blairwitch and knitted into a jumper with two legs. An unexplained documentation of the folklorish 'suicide tree' in Suffolk - a Burton-esque tree ala 'Sleepy Hollow' - results in some danged twenty-something star-crossed lovers in meeting their untimely death. But lo and behold, they've recorded it all for no apparent reason other than to bore us with a half-baked story of love triangles and an ominously rooted sapling imbued with the notoriety of the golden gate bridge.

The premise, which had some room to manoeuvre but didn't, is actually the best thing about the film. The tree has some mystical quality to it: its grandeur omnipotent, its open crevice through the bark intriguing, its myth - though far-fetched - compelling. These qualities were not utilised to the film's advantage, opting for a cheap implicature (that has no resolve) and swarms of red herrings that add absolutely no value to a narrative adamantly focused on banal teeny-romances and infidelities. Griping further, the found- footage format is so ineffective that the film is a torrid watch. The camera, at least for the first half of the movie, has no motivational function at all. Even when it is used as a motorisation to the unfolding plot, it is used primarily for its light source. Innovative, yes, but for the spectator to regard, it's messy, incoherent and inadvertently abstract. It's not that there hasn't been some introspection in creating the machination of reality - the East Anglian video report at the start of the film, camera-wielding asthmatics, plumb points of perspective - it's that the filmmakers have gone ultra-rustic in their 'real' approach in attaining verisimilitude. Even the budgetary aesthetics of found-footage have some stylistic credibility, notably to make sure that the audience can buy-in to the concept and follow the story with relative ease. 'Hollow' isn't (and doesn't need to be) a compositional masterpiece - found-footage films rarely are - but it DID need some traction to tie the viewer to the film instead of the over-the-top slop on hand. As it is, the film may as well have been shot by a five year old with an iPhone. If cinematography is completely redundant, so is the shot itself and ergo the film.

'Hollow' is a film disadvantaged by the charismatic lure of guerrilla filmmaking, proof that the appeal of the found-footage technique cannot be taken for granted and is not apt unless there is a valid substantiation.

Alien: Isolation (2014 Video Game)

Ripley's believe it or not

[9/10 · 14 September 2015]

It's risky fare for Sega to pick up such a well-known franchise in an arena it has consistently failed to flourish. H.R.Giger's trademarked xenomorph has generally disappointed upon its plentiful player-immersing platforms, a cross-over plugging plunge that has always fallen short of expectation and in execution. But, the loyal fanbase continues to exist and for those inundated (and re-inundated) by 'Alien' prequel 'Prometheus', finally there's a game that lives up to the legend. For hardcore fans of the face-hugging fiends, 'Alien Isolation' co-exists in harmonious rapture to the first film of the franchise, controlling Ripley's daughter Amanda as she investigates the Nostromo to attain closure. An absolute delight whence interweaving Scott's feature within the game's plot, with a little aid from Fox, the game literally plays like the film - the production team have picked apart every element present within the film in great detail and recreated its brooding atmosphere, lo-fi retrogradation and deliciously dread-inducing soundtrack in making not only the best ever 'Alien' based game - fact - but have created much much more. SEGA have created the 'Alien' experience. For the ardent fan, the game is a must. For the gamer, however, its a necessity.

Experiential fabrication comes at a cost - and that cost was bucking the trend. With the capabilities of next generation consoles allowing for raging wars of epic proportions to engulf the screen, armies of thousands-strong battling it out have become commonplace for these supreme mega-bit simulations. Action revels in eponymous overture, guns blazing, kill everything in sight to win. Frankly, in todays market, all out warfare sells like hot cakes. 'Alien Isolation' renders this defunct. Or at least highly recommends against it. The aim of the game is to survive - any way that you possibly can, which means being strategic, being tactical, being stealthy, being quiet. It's a virtual game of chess between you and the alien. That's not to say you can't kill anything, it's just not advised - where you'd think offing the antagonist paves the way for linear progression, it's more worthwhile (and more satisfying) to plan out your undetected escape - be it in a locker, cabinet, under a desk or in a vent - it is for the virtues of patience and preparation that you will reap reward. As a minor con, the game is rather unforgiving, continual trial and error (and many a death!) will unquestionably frustrate the player, but the gratification is so much sweeter when you finally progress.

Graphically sublime, invigoratingly fresh, poignantly tense and foreboding; the wondrous intelligence of the game urges the player onto the edge of the seat and demands concentration. It's difficult, and at times rather repetitive completing an array of missions that require the player to go back and forth to fetch an item, but it's different. It's alien.

Little Deaths (2011)

Ménage à trois

[6/10 · 12 September 2015]

An abhorrently orgasmic ejaculate of short films, Little Deaths is a ghastly, decadently exploitative spunkfest of misogyny and misandry. Harnessing obtuse pontification in sexual gratification, ergo an inevitable ruckus with the BBFC, the tawdry trio unrelentingly goad us with all amounts of bodily fluids in ode to the anniversaric copulation of Horror's bride and groom: Sex and Death.

Best of three

'House and home': A cult of personalities - the homeless and the upper class compete in a tete a tete. Bland at first and hugely predictable, yet filled with sorrow. 5/10

'Mutant': Nazi experiments, grafted giant cocks, blended kidneys and a nostalgic hint of thalidomide. Yep. 6/10

'Bitch': Vengeance is a dish best served in a dog bowl. The mightily poetic MTV finale will scorn the imagination. 9/10

Submissive, alienated and emasculated: the stereotypes of the traditionally hegemonic patriarchal society are explicitly smashed to smithereens. The revised totalitarianism demarcated is a world in which women not only rule, but where men are reduced to nothing but breadwinning toys or abused pets. Owing much to the anti-authoritarian exploitation films of the 70's, notably Russ Meyer and John Waters, horrors 'final girl' becomes the 'final boy'. A perversion in postmodernity, all three segments are triumphantly difficult to visually consume. For their daring vulgarity and literal buckets of bodily stew (mostly semen), the consequential subordination of context is marginally excessive. The seeded theme of compulsion via addictions and obsessions manifested to restrain partnerships in all vile states of toxicity - physical, sexual and emotional - relays an equally visceral reply in its counteract. The literal sex=death rhetoric is quintessentially satiric, a fervent leaf from the episodic 'Creepshow' tales, ending on a righteous or incredulous note. Though there is much to celebrate in its art-house attire, the niggling question still resides: did its visionaries go too far to give too little? For the first two instalments there is an unbalanced focus on crossing boundaries, in it purest form merely because they could. The third ('Bitch') is the piece de resistance, it's pedigree refined by a role reversal in rape-revenge. Urine, vomit and man-gravy galore, be prepared for the candid unpleasantries in store.

The Babadook (2014)

Don't judge a book by its cover

[10/10 · 12 September 2015]

An alternative take on the perennial children's fable, the acclaimed indie-horror from the outback is a deliciously tensive polysemic anecdote with a soul. After 95 minutes with Mr Babadook you'll need the courage to sleep. A rarity in the pluralist postmodern pulp of contemporary arts, the Babadook is not the usual shlock, remake or valorisation of a genre so stuck in the mud it could be quicksand. Obsessional cost-cutting within Western societies have saturated the market - docu-horrors , found-footage spin-offs and awakened cult classics are regularly born (and reborn) as commodities for capital. Opposing as invigoratingly fresh, intelligent and intimate, 'The Babadook' is a daring feature with something to say rather than just something to sell. Gone are the predictable musical accompaniments urging you to crap yourself in your seat. So too the expensive special effects in making the perfect villain for abjection. In comes an ontological score destroying the seams of illusion, stop-motion animation creating the imperfect monster and truly awkward scares. All of this with a purpose, this is a film that knows its audience, a knowledge affirmed by subtle integral nods towards pioneers of the genre.

Jennifer Kent's skin crawling directorial debut converts myth into matter in creating a boogeyman figure that operates in a reversal to orthodoxy. Kent's fairytale monster, rather than asserting parental obedience, is the construct of an adults repressed emotion and negativity. Cultivated by real emotional stress - guilt, grief, denial, loss - the peripherals of the ostensible bugaboo laying in wait under the bed or in the closet craving child candy are forgotten. Mr Babadook prefers the taste of reality.

Cast with minimal quantity, maximum quality, the isolated two-bit Ozzie outfit of mother and child pour passion into their curious and compelling roles. Essie Davis's masterful and macabre representation of a psychologically deteriorating widower from austere to Linda Blair is so strong it drags the spectator into the depths of despair with her.

A metaphorical fermentation of regression, a supernatural manifestation of a loss, a subconscious delve into insanity. There is no right or wrong answer, so to speak, yet there is an encouraging voluntary acquiescence to decipher the text. Without an obligatory preferred meaning to an open-ended narrative, the film is tailored to the individual spectator and not the proletariat of its audience. Everyone has their own demons. Everyone has their own Babadook.

Annabelle (I) (2014)

Dummied down

[4/10 · 9 September 2015]

A dichotomous spurring sub-plot from its conjured sister, the devilish dolly from the "The Conjuring" manifests its feature length solidity with similarly fathomable truth. Bolstered by its historically accurate credo, the real-life accounts of psychic investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, the accursed bisque (in actuality a Raggedy Ann) becomes demonic conduit for - yet again - an occultly idolised grim hellbent on - you guessed it - sapping the souls of the innocent. If I've made the film sound rudimental and routine, thats because it is.

Though anachronistically sturdy in recreating a 1970's vibe: TV sets like chunky microwaves, the ideologically pruned nuclear family, archetypal catholicism, society's infatuation with the occult and druidism, women represented as maternal machines with a knack for sewing - and mention of Manson's racially apocalyptic helter-skelter - what Annabelle lacks is some proliferant panache in its antique format. The short-lived killer toy sub-genre has elapsed, be it or not that the doll has long been considered an evil- harbouring entity in folklore. Blame the cabbage patch kids in the 80's, a craze in adopting toys as kin and provoking emotional attachments to prepare adolescents into parenthood from the earliest of ages. Chucky winces in his good guy dolls box, for annabelle trips up drastically short - perhaps the tagline 'based on a true story' really hindered the film's intensity, perhaps its just not fashionable to lever fear from toys - unless its an enchanted Xbox or psychopathic PS4.

I've got no strings…

So the doll - it looks creepy, but all the way through the film, the viewer sees nothing. No creepy head-turning, eye-rolling - just implied movements and a semi-serious, prudish levitation scene. Static camera shots, extreme close-ups, creep-zooms and abstractions but no gimmicks. The final act of Toy Story, with Woody on the barbecue grill warning Sid to be nicer to his toys, imbues a greater dread.

I've got strings…

A concerto of violinists stab their instruments. Juxtapose the recorded sounds onto any suspenseful moment. Amplify the sound to a million hertz. Voila, a simulated scare tactic so effective it requires no visual connection. Humdrum being the optimum syntagm, aside from one particular scene (involving an elevator), the film struggles to breakaway from generic traits in an almost desperate attempt to scare. Taking the bisqe-uit, it's a surrogate spin-off too placid for outright franchising, 'Annabelle' loots upon accolades of its mongrel parent.

The real shame is that its just not scary. The narrative just too conventional, the suspense just too hammy. Highlighting its few violin-sawing jump scares, "Annabelle" is a commodified marketing campaign to whet the appetite for the second "Conjuring".