Review: Ticket to Paradise

George Clooney and Julia Roberts are back on the big screen as a divorced couple who can’t stand each other but are forced to work together to thwart their high-flying daughter’s sudden marriage to a Balinese seaweed farmer.  Screwball comedy at it's finest? Not quite.

When their high-flying daughter Lily (Kaitlyn Dever) announces she's leaving it all behind to live in Bali, her divorced parents David (Clooney) and Georgia (Roberts) decide to put aside their mutual loathing of each other and join forces to ruin the wedding... by pretending to go along with it while sabotaging things behind the scenes.

This is the kind of star focused set-up that should work – it’s not like Roberts and Clooney are without their charms. Yet the end result is little more than a forgettable wander through some scenic countryside (it was filmed in Queensland, doubling for Bali) waiting for the sun to go down and the drinks to come out.

Jokes are few and far between, comedy set-pieces never arrive (the mystery of how Robert’s character slices bananas without opening them is never solved), the central plot is so mean-spirited the film gives up on it halfway through and the characters are so thin they vanish when they turn sideways.

Worse, Lily's marriage is clearly the right move for her, leaving her parents looking like nasty killjoys no matter how well meaning their motivation. They're not cartoony enough to be fun bad guys, Lily is too bland and nice to hold much interest, and by the time the film gets around to just having Roberts and Clooney enjoy each other's company the damage has been done.

Still, they clearly have serious star power and the chemistry between them sparkles. The scenery is never less than nice to look at too: if you're happy to watch what is basically an animated holiday postcard - and don't mind a vague but consistent feeling that this whole thing is a missed opportunity - this is a decent enough way to forget your cares for a hundred minutes

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Barbarian

Tess Marshall (Georgina Campbell) has a problem. It's a dark night in a scary neighbourhood, and she's trying to get into her Air BnB rental but the key seems to be missing. Turns out it's missing because there's already someone (Bill Skarsgard) inside. 

The place has been double-booked, he's either an overly reassuring nice guy or a creep with something to hide, and while she's being super cautious every step she takes is taking her further inside a house with a guy she doesn't know.

And then things get worse.

Barbarian is the kind of film where pretty much everything beyond the initial set-up is a serious spoiler. This is packed with twists and misdirects, all of which are in service to one thing only: making this the wildest, scariest ride possible.

(so yes, it's best to go in knowing as little as possible)

In practice this means Barbarian goes flat out from scene one. Horror movies usually take things at least a little slow in the early scenes (see: Halloween Ends) because there's hard practical limits to how much tension a human being can take. Barbarian doesn't care about any of that. 

Instead, it ramps things up to "the audience starts giggling at almost everything because that's the only way to let out the tension" levels almost immediately and keeps on going. Then just when things are really getting hard to bear, it leaves you to simmer while jumping in a completely different direction.

There's not a lot of gore here (though you probably won't forget the little there is); much of the horror - rather than the suspense, which is intense and on-going - is character-based. Turns out not all nice guys are jerks, but a nice guy who's a jerk can be more dangerous than he seems.

The ingredients aren't all that new (after the recent run of horror movies set there, Detroit's real estate market is never going to recover) but its the recipe that counts and writer / director Zach Kregger has put together a film packed with scares that never feel cheap or unearned.

Barbarian wouldn't hold together if the moments in between the twists and jumps didn't work. From a series of note-perfect performances (Justin Long, who appears later in the story, is especially good) to a canny use of current cultural concerns to keep Tess on the back foot (police: they're a mixed blessing at best), this is a surprise that keeps on surprising.

And a nightmare that doesn't let go until the very last moment.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Fall

How’s this for a (literal) high concept: two young women drive out into the middle of nowhere to climb a two thousand feet tall disused television transmitter tower… and then can’t get back down. Safe to say those with a fear of heights might want to sit this one out.

After seeing her husband fall off a cliff, Becky (Grace Caroline) has spent the last year down the bottom of a bottle – but now her influencer bestie Shiloh (Virginia Gardner) has a great idea for her latest post (no, it's not "show more cleavage", though that does come into it) and she needs a partner who knows her way around insanely tall objects. Becky is skeptical, but also has literally nothing else to do and what better way to get her life back on track than by risking it for online status?

 

They drive out to the desert, they go up, and they don’t come down. For thrill-seeking movie-goers that’s all you really need to know (though here’s a hint at what comes next: vultures). This is relatively restrained as far as having people dangling off various edges goes; director and co-writer Scott Mann knows that when you're this far off the ground doing pretty much anything is extremely risky, and the "less is (usually) more" approach cranks the tension high while keeping things grounded (pun intended).

Much of the high-rise action is filmed from a distance that re-enforces both their isolation and just how little room they have to move; everything else just makes it very clear that it's a very long way down. Do they just sit quietly and wait, or do they have to climb up, down, and all over the tiny platform they're stuck on just to have any hope of staying alive? Let's just say they probably should have brought a bit more rope with them.

 

It’s not all about dangling off a very slender and very rickety tower though, as this also features a fair amount of on-ground backstory that makes this more than just an excuse to give everyone in the cinema a bad case of vertigo - though this is pure nightmare fodder for anyone who's ever been even the slightest bit concerned about falling victim to gravity.

 

Characters are fleshed out in ways that provide (a little) conflict while still keeping them plausible as friends, and as experienced climbers their various approaches to getting down largely make sense - or, to put it another way, they don't ignore the obvious solutions just because the movie needs them stuck, making them the kind of smart characters you want to see survive rather than dimwits you're just waiting to see die.

 

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: The Retaliators

 

Opening with a sequence so generic it seems like it must be a fake-out - and it is, though not in the way you're probably expecting - The Retailators moves from zombie levels of gore to hard-boiled crime and back again with the kind of ease that films with five times its budget can only envy. It's a surprisingly sensitive look at grief and loss; there's also a woodchipper, and we all know what that means. 

Single dad John Bishop (Michael Lombardi, from Rescue Me) is the kind of cool pastor who'd be embarrassing if he wasn't so earnest... and even then he's still pretty embarrassing, especially when he gets pushed around while buying a Christmas tree by Dante from Clerks. Time to give a sermon about forgiveness, which includes the somewhat ominous line "when man's law fails, God's law prevails".

 

Bishop gets the chance to practice what he preaches when his teen daughter Rebecca (Abbey Hafer) bumps into the Scariest Man Alive, aka Ram Kady (Joseph Gatt) at a service station. She's going to a party; he's a bikie gang member just back from a drug deal that involved him beating up and robbing a man in a wheelchair. But it's when the still alive (just) wheelchair man starts bumping in Kady's trunk - and she notices - that her grim fate is sealed.

The arrival of seemingly stalwart cop Jed (Marc Menchaca) puts a twist on Bishop's grief, when he reveals that not only does he share Bishop's pain, but that he's figured out a way to do something about it. Unfortunately, Jed's scheme - which is well-established, long running, and involves a cavern-like basement full of cannibal lunatics - only really works if the target of his vengeance won't be missed. And thanks to screwing up the drug deal, Kady has his brother and a whole lot of bikies out looking for him.

Directors Samuel Gonzalez Jr and Bridget Smith keep a tight grip on material that tonally moves around a lot: this is a film that features both a realistic look at heart-rending anguish and a lot of raving maniacs trapped in a dungeon. But it's this constant switching things up - on top of everything else, both Robert Knepper and Robert John Burke get show-stopping single scenes as seen-it-all bosses (ones a cop, the other's a crim) - that keeps this so engaging.

Much of this works as straightforward drama; this is a solid crime film before it turns into gonzo horror. People have competing agendas that put them in conflict, while their behaviour always makes sense in terms of who they are - nobody goes nuts simply because the plot requires them to (even the murderous Kady has his own logic). But it definitely doesn't hurt that this also racks up an extremely substantial body count in the third act as our youth pastor hero has to go into murder mode to stay alive.

The Retaliators eventually pays off the cheesy yet bloody opening without sacrificing the drama that led it to such a demented point. It's everything you could want in an exploitation flick: it's even set during Christmas so you've got no excuse not to watch it every single year.

 

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Orphan: First Kill

Orphan was one of the more gleefully demented horror films to make it to the big screen earlier this century, piling on a string of out-there-but-almost-logical twists that left audiences staggering out asking each other "what did we just watch?" It's the kind of experience that's almost impossible to replicate - but Orphan: First Kill has a few tricks of its own up its deceptively child-sized sleeve.

With the first film's twist well and truly out of the bag - that the seemingly pre-pubsecent and definitely deadly demon child Leena (Isabelle Fuhrman) is in fact a non-supernatural thirty year-old con artist with a side hustle in murder - this prequel begins with Leena seemingly safely locked away in an Eastern European asylum where everyone is as jumpy as hell and rightly so.

Before long she's escaped in ruthless fashion, and promptly decides it's time to flee the country. Her scheme is simple: adopt the identity of a missing US child and start a new life. Having never seen French doco The Imposter (or for that matter, last year's Titane), the parents of missing Esther, Allan Albright (Rossif Sutherland) and wife Tricia (Julia Styles) fall for her ruse and bring her back home to their mansion and a life of luxury.

It's soon clear that while Allan - who clearly fell apart after his daughter vanished - is uncritically happy to have her back and inspiring his artworks once more, Tricia is a little more skeptical and their louche douchebag son Gunnar (Matthew Finlan) seems almost annoyed to have his little sister hanging around. Esther is going to have to pull out all the stops to keep her scam going.

While at first this seems to be a solid but unsurprising retread of the original that's content to hit many of the same beats - especially Esther developing feelings for a man who sees her as a child - events rapidly spiral down a new and almost as deranged path. Sometimes a pint-sized serial killer just can't catch a break.

A solid supporting cast go a long way towards selling this, with Styles especially impressive as a mother firmly committed to keeping her family together. A pacy script doesn't hurt either, juggling suspense (just how long can Esther get away with it?) and slasher scenes for a roller coaster of thrills, kills, and the occasional rat corpse discovered in a smoothie.

But it's Fuhrman - plus a range of child body doubles and a load of other seamless camera trickery - who makes this so much fun. She's totally convincing in the role, presenting Esther as both an instant horror icon and a semi-believable human being forced into a life of crime and murder by a condition nobody around her seems in the slightest bit interested in helping her with.

Then again, most of them end up dead by her hand so it kind of evens out.

- Anthony Morris

Review: The Black Phone

The year is 1978, and teenage boys are disappearing from the quiet streets of a Denver suburb. Everyone knows they're being taken by "The Grabber"; almost nobody thinks they'll be found alive. 

High-schooler Finney (Mason Thames) has problems of his own, thanks to a frankly startling level of violent bullying at his school and a drunken, controlling father (Jeremy Davies) at home. His younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) is in the same boat, only with less bullying and more creepy dreams that sometimes come true.

The Black Phone is not a story that leans heavily on surprise. With its supernatural themes, psychic kids, insanely violent bullies, deeply flawed parents, small town vibe, and fondness for catchphrases ("your arm is mint"), this would almost count as Stephen King fanfic if it wasn't based on a short story by Joe Hill, who happens to be King's son.

Once Finney gets grabbed, what follows is basically a puzzle game where the spirits of the Grabber's previous victims provide advice on what escape options turn out to be dead ends. They do this via a disconnected phone on the wall of the basement where Finney is trapped, which is exactly the kind of creepy device we need more of in horror even if it does make you wonder if ghosts are behind all those mystery spam calls everyone gets today.

This is a lean storytelling machine, constantly moving forward in a way that isn't always as scary as it could be but is never less than firmly watchable. If characterisation can't be done in thirty seconds or less then it's not done at all; the ghosts can't remember their names because they don't matter any more.

The fast pace - we haven't even covered Gwen's street level search for Finney - helps skim past some serious questions, like "if everyone knows the teens are being grabbed off the streets because the kidnapper is literally called 'The Grabber' why aren't the police watching that sketchy dude who drives around in a black van?"

Another question is, what if the Grabber (Ethan Hawke) was right? All the teens here are brutally and casually violent, even by King family standards. Heads are bashed with rocks, knives are pulled at the convenience store, and pummeling a bully until your knuckles bleed for hours is a heroic deed. The main character arc of the story is "grow up and kill someone"... so yeah, maybe it's a good thing these kids are being killed before they get old enough to do some serious damage.

Slightly more seriously, Hill is a hardcore horror guy so even though the story itself is basically video game problem solving, he - and director Scott Derrickson - create a strong, dingy vibe to life above ground and below, while fitting in a decent amount of creepy stuff around the edges. At heart The Black Phone is a well-oiled suspense thriller where angry ghosts provide plot shortcuts, but the horror moments can be genuinely disturbing.

The idea of the dead kid's spirits crumbling away in the afterlife is unsettling, while Hawke's masked killer has a personal narrative we only get glimpses of. Hawke doesn't get a lot of screentime, but his off-kilter performance speaks volumes (or at least enough to make him chillingly memorable). He's unknowable while being all-too-human; his biggest mistake might have been keeping decent steaks in the fridge.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Men

 

Alex Garland's latest feature heads out into rural England (the Cotswolds to be exact), and we all know what that means: it's folk horror time. But Garland is a director with more on his mind than just spooky shots of the forest - though this feels at time like he might not have fully worked out how everything on his mind fits into this particular film.

Firstly, Harper (Jessie Buckley) is haunted by the death of her husband James (Paapa Essiedu), the exact circumstances of which are spelt out in a series of flashbacks across the course of the film. All we know starting out is that he died by falling, he fell past their apartment window, and she was looking out as he dropped past. 

Second, she's now taking a break at a slightly too fancy - or at least, very large - rural rental, where the owner (Rory Kinnear) seems decent enough but, as she tells a friend, "very country". There's plenty of nice countryside to wander around in too... or at least, it seems nice until a creepy naked man (Kinnear again) starts turning up in the distance. And why does he - and every other man in the area, and there only seems to be men in the area - have the same face?

Third, there's a very sinister font in the local church (or maybe just a font with a sinister soundtrack) with a depiction of the "green man" on it, suggesting some kind of pagan past the area hasn't quite left behind. 

This seems like it should be the thread that ties everything together, but Garland isn't all that interested in explaining much of anything that's going on here, at least not on any kind of logical level. It's a horror movie titled Men: that's pretty much all you need to know to get the gist.

"Elevated horror" has a bit of a bad rep at the moment: whatever happened to just being scary? (like there aren't plenty of those movies still being made too) Men doesn't care about that - though it is scary, especially early on. It has a point to make and it's going to make it, and if it turns out that a lot of the other questions his film seems to raise are beside the point, that's your problem.

While over-explaining things is the death of creepy horror, under-explaining doesn't always work either. Taken on their own, most of the scenes here work well; the first third or so features some very tense film-making indeed. And the sense of annoyance that slowly builds is most definitely part of the point - it just means this goes from a traditional (and often very unsettling) horror movie to something a little blunter.

Men comes to a head with an extremely weird and extremely graphic - yet so surreal it hardly counts as gore - sequence that recaps the emotional thrust of the film in a handful of minutes. It's a brilliant and unforgettable ending that ends up undermining the film as a whole even as it underlines the point of it; everything leads up to this apocalyptic moment, and yet it's barely related to anything in the story beyond making the same point as everything else.

Being repetitive is at the heart of Men, and the point being made is an astute one; it just might not be one that required a 90-odd minute horror film to express.

- Anthony Morris