J*A*S*M

Probably the best movie entertainment of the year so far. Six stories packed black humour (and surprisingly brutal at times) with the common theme of the exasperation and the rage of ordinary people in ordinary situations that lead to situations that are not at all ordinary. The stories are uniform in terms of quality – of course, there are some that I liked less than others (the best for me were, redneck, the bomber engineer and the ruined wedding), but I wouldn’t say any of them is a significant drop in quality. If I had to complain about anything, is that some of the twists and turns were predictable a bit earlier than they should. A point less for that, but highly recommended nonetheless.

Like rubbing sandpaper on bare skin – the female protagonist was so insufferable, unfunny and cheaply vulgar. The story follows the classic indie template, nothing surprising.

Every time I came across this film, the name “Torture Chamber”, the amateurish poster and the director’s filmography consisting of not very well known or well received movies discouraged me completely. But today, after randomly reading several positive reviews on renowned horror websites, I decided to give it a go, and I’m really happy I did! I’m very pleased and I’m almost giving it five stars. The film is illogical; rather irrational, overall. To judge it on the basis of the complexity or coherence of the story would be a very bad idea. It’s better to judge it by its intensity (there isn’t a SINGLE scene that is not either terrifying or at the very least disturbing) and at all costs avoid taking it as a stupid allegory, the meaning of which can be fully seen in the ending (and maybe also in that very intense sequence of the conversion of one image). Torture Chamber blends the best of European old-school horror (Argento and especially Fulci), complementing it with that evil aura around the main villain – the burnt boy, Jimmy, is the pure embodiment of evil, just like Michael Myers was in Carpenter’s Halloween. In short, a horror movie from another era; if it was made 30 or 40 years ago, by now it would have at least five sequels and a remake from Platinum Dunes. I wouldn’t have given a toss before watching it, but now I can’t wait to see what Dante Tomaselli will do next.

A notch less dark, a notch less interesting, a notch less scary. You have to wait long for any action scene and when it finally comes, the director turns on the slow-mo. The relocation to India seems utterly pointless – the first one was greatly helped by its untraditional setting in Africa, which the creators used with skill, but the sequel lacks any proper use of the Indian setting, and the poetics are too similar to the first one. Bugger! If there’s a zombie outbreak in a poor and overpopulated city of an overpopulated country, what I expect is chaos, filth and hordes of zombies everywhere. But instead of that, the only thing pointing to the Indian location are the terrible Indian actors (you almost expect them to start dancing at any moment). But not to be only critical, there are some visually nice scenes and well executed atmospheric sequences here and there, but overall it’s an uninteresting and weaker copy of something we’ve already seen and, therefore, a pointless sequel.

Robert Langdon in a skirt runs through the Parisian catacombs Indiana Jones-style in search of a secret chamber with the philosopher’s stone. To be honest, even though As Above, So Below blends motifs that I like (underground, ancient secrets, demons, mysticism, and history), the result is not very convincing and John Erick Dowdle is yet to reach the levels of The Poughkeepsie Tapes. That’s due mainly to the script, which is very weak, really. The characters are apathetic, they don’t react properly to all the shit going on around them. Something happens: “we have to keep on going”; something even worse happens: “we have to keep on going”; something happens: “oh! Our friend is dead. boo-hoo, whatever, we have to move on”. And that’s how it goes almost the whole time. Plus a bunch of never again mentioned, pointless and mysterious arbitrary nonsense (who was that mysteriously vanished guy that mentioned Papillon during the tour? And that mysterious girl leaving the club, did she have any purpose other than singing weirdly with other people later in the catacombs?) Sometimes it’s actually hard to watch, for instance, why did the fake magic stone worked the fist time, when they healed the injuries on that girl? Maybe some alchemist in the past had this train of thought: “I will make a beta version of the philosopher’s stone, single use, just in case someone who finds it wanted to see if it works. And then they will take it and, when they get back to the surface, they will realise that they have nothing but a worthless dud, ha, ha, ha!”. Some of the scary scenes are pretty effective, the tempo is high, so there’s no risk of getting bored, those 90 minutes are quite fun (on the other hand, the way the puzzles are solved feels almost always too hurried). Overall, the film is nothing but a chain of the worst and the best horror attractions, where the only slightly more ambitious motif of sin atonement is completely lost because there isn’t any bond with the characters.

It’s amazing they aren’t embarrassed of making another film about this.

Actually, a much better film than the premise of a vengeful killer whale deserves to be.

Queer and weird. I’m not jumping in joy, after the excellent The Ruins, the expectations were understandably higher, but this is far from a bad film, even if it doesn’t have much horror to speak of. The main relationship line is not at all ineffectual and could be the basis for a truly strong and sad film, but here it suffers because certain moments take the attention away from it and you simply stop believing in the behaviour of the characters (and I’m not speaking only about some moments between Jamie and Adam, but also between Adam and his mother, and Adam and Gracie). They should be portrayed a bit differently for the viewer to believe them. The film knows how to be atmospheric, nasty and creepy, or at least it tries (the first appearance of Jamie, the moments with Francis), and if it had spared us the most disturbing WTF moments (lying in the crime scene, the flying saucer, etc.), I would be fine with giving it a higher rating, but I’m left with the aftertaste of a squandered opportunity, but at the same time with the joy of an original film that’s not afraid to be different, even though it won’t please the average audience.

What a disappointment that was! I’ve always liked Timo Tjahjanto, Macabre is great and his contributions to the anthologies V/H/S and The ABCs of Death have always been among the best, so I was looking forward to his new movie, but well… It gave me the impression of unbridled ambitions, where, after a perfect and straightforward blood-fest (the above mentioned Macabre), the director wanted to make something more complicated, more complex and more meaningful, but it fatally fell apart. I’m really surprised that nobody during the creative process realised how much bullshit this was. The behaviour of the characters is always unreasonably senseless: the first thing I would do if by sheer luck I manage to kill two muggers, and barely got out of it alive, is, naturally, make a video of the dying bodies and upload it to the internet as soon as I get home. Or that unbelievable scene of the chase in the hotel, were a budding assassin (basically, an ordinary, untrained journalist) escapes more than fifty times, but is still there. The classical music fatefully playing during the closing scenes doesn’t take things to a higher level, quite the opposite, in fact. If you add to all this the absurdly long run, I have a candidate for the least pleasant genre experience of the year.

I’m giving up halfway through the series. It’s boring, disjointed, full of mumbo-jumbo about nothing, and it doesn’t have a single character that would attract me in any way. The average rating is mainly due to the excellent execution, the solid performances and the exciting pilot episode, but the feeling was lower.