Morgan Spurlock & The Temple Of Geek

Documentary film maker Morgan Spurlock steps behind the camera for his latest project, Comic Con Episode IV: A New Hope which takes us behind the scenes on the biggest annual, pop culture event on the planet. This is an affectionate documentary exploring the history, inner workings and appeal of the San Diego Comic Convention from the view points of aspiring comic artists, toy collectors, young geek lovers, cosplay enthusiasts and comic traders who have been there since the cons humble, mid-70’s beginnings.

It’s a fascinating peek into the Mecca of geek culture with insights from hardcore geek legends like Joss Whedon, Eli Roth, Kevin Smith and Stan Lee. This is warm and welcoming movie that’s perhaps aimed at the converted fan boy first and foremost but it’s infectious nature means it’s an open invitation for anybody who’s curious about crossing the nerd threshold.

Piranha: A Movie About Tits, Made By Tits

Being the director of the low-budget, trashy Feast franchise, director John Gulager seemed like the ideal choice to take of the rebooted Piranha series following the departure of the ace Alexandre Aja. Alas that was not the case as Piranha 3DD (as the title suggests there are lots more boobs) misses the point of exploitation films by having the sequel lack the necessary fun and silliness to qualify. The sequel feels smaller and less imaginative from the get go and is lumbered with a dire, tired script which never really gets going. Although a few exploitation moments are littered throughout the first hour (sex/severed penis/loads of titties) it lacks the self aware ridiculousness that makes real exploitation films irresistible.

It’s only in the last 15-20 minutes in a manic piranha strewn climax does the film finally kick into gear with a hilarious display of self parody, ultra-violence, outrageousness, bad taste and, most importantly, imagination. David Hasselhoff is brilliant sending himself up in a brief cameo while Ving Rhames kicks ass by stealing from Rose McGowen in Planet Terror.

Mostly boring that worth a view on DVD only so you can skip through to the final act.

The Delta Force - Terrorist Boogaloo

Cannon Films produced an awful lot of crap in the mid to late 80’s including Stallone’s Over The Top, Superman IV The Quest For Peace and Breakdance 2 Electric Boogaloo, but they did at least manage to deliver a few bullshit gems in their time as a production powerhouse. One of the best of these is The Delta Force, directed by Cannon’s very own Menachem Golan and served as a star vehicle for martial arts action star Chuck Norris.

The Delta Force is an extremely schizophrenic film, but at least both its halves are very good at what they’re doing (even if they don’t fuse together into a cohesive whole.)

The first half of the film is dominated by a solid airplane hostage drama that riffs on airplane disaster movies of the past (as signalled with the inclusion of Shelley Winters and George Kennedy in the group that are captured.) This section is often quite intense, serious in tone, has stong wrought performances and explores religious intolerance and fundamentalist politics along side the terrorism.

The other half of the film which takes over in the second hour is a bullshit action, military men-on-a-mission plot as Chuck and friends attempt to rescue the hostages. This is filled with Bond-like gadgets, deadpan one liners, unprompted heroic back-slapping and chuck portrayed as an indestructible and universally adored leader. And it’s great too; exciting, big scale gunfights, hand to hand combat and impressive, daring, done-for-real stunt work.

Add to that the great Lee Marvin, some gritty international locations and one of the best action scores on the planet courtesy of Alan Silvestri and you’ve got a mighty fine action movie. If only those two different halves were merged more effectively.

Deputy Dawg-O-Cop

By the time the third, ill-advised RoboCop feature was released in 1993, virtually everything that made Paul Verhoevan’s classic original so unique had evaporated. The tongue-in-cheek satire was pretty much gone, the ultra-violence had been distilled down to a kid-friendly PG-13 rating and the main cast had either jumped ship or were killed off.

Fred (Monster Squad) Dekker directs RoboCop 3 with a solid, but grubby, mid-80’s sensibility but can’t overcome a terrible, poorly constructed script. Characters disappear for long chunks of the narrative (Jill Hennessy’s robo-technician), some are cut off mid-story when no longer required (Nancy Allen’s embattled cop Lewis), some characters are great but pointless (Bradley Whitford’s asshole OCP rep) and RoboCop himself feels like a side character in his own movie. If there’s any narrative through line it’s the focus on Remy Ryan’s pre-teen hacker which truly drags the franchise irredeemably down to kiddie-flick level. The story lacks focus as it lops from a Magnificent Seven style uprising plot to a sub plot involving corporate takeover, all the wit, cleverness, hardcore action has gone and the special effects, particularly RoboCop on jetback, are staggeringly incompetent At least Basil Poledouris returns to compose the score.

The very worst thing about RoboCop 3 is RoboCop himself with Robert John Burke taking over from the absent Peter Weller. It takes over 15 minutes for the title character to appear in his own movie and when he does he speaks with the voice of 60’s animated character Deputy Dawg. It’s unintentionally hilarious and the main reason this film has remain unwatchable for nearly two decades.

When The Vampire (Genre) Rose From The Grave

Blade is an important movie for me as it was the moment in pop culture that I started liking vampires. Prior to that, the blood sucking undead were romantic figures, firmly locked in an , outdated gothic past or portrayed as a primitive unsophisticated underclass of society. Finally Blade came along and vampires felt like they finally could exist in the modern world; they went to raves, they owned real estate, they had a governing body and could now be killed with technologies like ultra-violent lamps, garlic-filled bullet firing automatic weapons and blood coagulant projectiles.

The look of the vampire film was thankfully updated too thanks to director Stephen Norrington who films the stark, contemporary steel and concrete production with a glossy, deep focus sheen. The score is moody, the techno score ear-opening amazing (the opening club scene is game-chantingly great), the editing restrained, the image compositions embrace negative space and it admirably has the atmosphere of a John Carpenter film. On top of this Wesley Snipes is cool and magnetic as the title character with Kris Kristopherson giving gruff, laid back support as his partner Whistler and Stephen Dorff bringing on the menace as the young upstart villain.

Blade is wonderful. Apart from a familiar plot and some appalling CGI at the climax, Blade rarely puts a step wrong.

Highschool Reunion Of The Dead

There are now hundreds of of cheap ass Zombie films doing the rounds thanks to the enthusiasm of amateur make-up effects enthusiasts and virgin film directors trying their hand at the horror genre. It’s a wonder there’s an original story left to tell. Fortunately DeadHeads has enough wit and heart to rise above the mediocre crowd to deliver a new take on zombie mythology. In it, a young love struck man attempts to journey cross-country to see his old school sweetheart where he plans to propose, all during a spreading zombie apocalypse. The big difference is that he, and his travelling companion, are zombies themselves although they still have their reasoning and humanity intact.

DeadHeads, while not as tight or constantly amusing as you might hope, is a funny, sweet love story with healthy amounts of low-budget gore, sparky characters, clever situations and likable performances. Worth a watch, it’s best moments belong to Benjamin Webster’s trigger happy red neck like his classic line “Fe Fi Fo Fuck, get in the back of my fucking truck!” Class.

Pumping Iron Giants

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a very impressive man have got to the highest level in three different walks of life. Recently in politics he was the two term Governor of California (the biggest state in the USA and the highest American office the non-USA born Arnie can hold.) In the early 1990’s he was the biggest movie star in the world with hits like Twins, Kindergarten Cop and Terminator 2. And before both those achievements he was a world class bodybuilder having won the elite Mr Olympia title seven times. The 1977 documentary Pumping Iron records the build up to both the amateur Mr Universe contest and the professional Mr Olympia contest giving an insight into the most narcissistic sport in the world.

It’s a fascinating exploration into the sport of bodybuilding and the focus, ambition, commitment and endurance needed to succeed at such a high level. We’re also introduced to the key players at each event and it’s interesting the range of characters the sport attracts. Most entertaining is the footage of Schwarzenegger at the top of his game; confident, relaxed, hard-working and most interestingly, intent on playing mind games with his fellow competitors…particularly the quiet Lou Ferrigno. Excellent stuff.

Schwarzenegger Gives Everybody A Raw Deal

It’s been at least a couple of decades since I’ve last seen Arnold Schwarznegger’s 1986 star vehicle Raw Deal…mainly because it was one of those rare Arnie flicks where I was bored crapless. In hindsight it’s not as bad as I remembered, with a winning, wise-cracking performance by the Austrian Oak, a slickly photographed style courtesy of Cliffhanger photographer Alex Thomson and tons of R-rated violence.

But it still doesn’t work as a whole and it was lucky Schwarzenegger got this little experiment out of the way very early in his action career. After this the big man stuck to high concept plots rather than the tired Mob/revenge drama here and he wisely shunned stories involving mundane family drama (until he got to flops The Sixth Day and Jingle All The Way). John Irvin’s direction is static and unremarkable, The wanky guitar score corny and distracting and the editing comatose and the overall tone comes off like a late-70’s TV movie rather than a cutting edge bullshit action movie. Not bad but best left forgotten.

Snake Eyes vs. Bug Eyes

Snake Eyes is a love it or hate it experience mainly thanks to the distinct talents of its star Nicholas Cage and its director Brian De Palma. For Cage, this is one of his definitive performances; wild eyed, crazy, exuberant, flamboyant and brave. The same could almost be said of De Palma who mixes his trademark POV shots, imaginative production design, precision camerawork, fades, split screen techniques and simple yet twisty Hitchcockian mystery plot to powerful effect.

For me this is near perfect with a huge ‘but’. The script is concise, logical, tension-building, character driven (with Cage’s corrupt and morally tortured cop at the centre) and compelling in true David Koepp style, there’s magnificent set pieces including a dizzying 13 minute uncut tracking shot which sets up most of the film’s characters, themes, locations and plot points and a tense hunt through the casino as Cage and baddie Gary Sinise track down Carla Guigino’s vulnerable witness.

The downside to all this are several plot contrivances that undermine the integrity and plausibility of a great yarn. The final twist involving the timely intervention of the hurricane raging outside the sports stadium is, frankly, to large to swallow and undermines the whole affair. Fortunately what has preceded it is pretty damn impressive.

June Pick N Mix

Scary Girl with Chloe Moretz from Chloe Moretz

'Game of Thrones': The Board Game -- powered by Cracked.com

A Nazi Smell In The Iron Sky

If you’re making an exploitation film you really ought to be taking full advantage of the genre and pushing the boundaries of comedy, satire, violence, gore, horror, sex, nudity, violence and taste. Being lazy or playing it safe kind of defeat the point. Now Iron Sky has a magnificent daffy premise and there are some amusing swipes at right wing politics from Hitler’s Nazi agenda of yesteryear to the greedy American Neo-Conservatism of today, but otherwise it’s just a rather uninspired and silly sci-fi movie.

The cast are fine, if a bit bland, the direction static and flat, the script lacks bite, balls and imagination and the whole thing feels toothless and a lost opportunity. Fortunately, for something with a minute budget, the production values and visual effects really impress ensuring Iron Sky isn’t a complete waste of time.

Safe As Houses

Not only does Safe House have strong performances from it’s super star leads, Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds, but it’s got a great supporting cast in Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, Robert Patrick, Sam Sheppard and Liam Cunningham. It comes as a surprise then that having attracted a large number of quality actors that the script for safe house is derivative and predictable.

In fact, Ryan Reynolds made the same story a few years back with an inexperienced Government Agent having to protect a ‘criminal’ from trained assassins only to have a crisis of conscious about his superiors. That film strove to be original with an ending that was pounchy and memorable. Safe House plays it safe for the most part despite some edgy action film-making in the grainy photography and Bourne shakey-cam on show. Solid.

Reign Of The Evil (Bitch) Queen

After the childish bluster of Julia Roberts in Mirror Mirror recently it comes as quite a relief that Rupert Sanders new take on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale is light years better in quality. Following the recent trend in trying to ‘Nolan up’ a property by making it more dark and reality based (as Christopher Nolan did with Batman Begins) Snow White & The Huntsman grounds the fairy tale as a medieval story of oppression and revolution in a land where magic, trolls and fairies feel as real as war, taxes and mud.

The result is a dark, mature and highly atmospheric epic that’s far more enjoyable than I’d hoped. While there’s no great depth to the story (this is the archetypal heroes journey transposed to the Snow White lore) it is pleasingly slow and deliberate in it’s pacing, has many artistic flourishes to admire (some experimental editing and camera techniques) and Sanders has a remarkable eye for conjuring fresh and interesting visuals. His simple compositions are balanced out by rich texture in the production design and photography, the effects are stunning and practically flawless (courtesy of Rhythm & Hues) and James Newton Howard’s score lush score ranges from moody to uplifting.

The impressive cast deliver great work with Kristen Stewart fine as Snow White although you can’t help but think that a ‘Jennifer Lawrence’ type couldn’t have been more effective. Chris Hemsworth, complete with convincing Scots accent proves that Thor was no accident and demonstrates he’s a fully fledged leading man as the tragic and roguish Huntsman while Charlize Theron amps up the movie tenfold whenever she’s on screen. Sporting a flawless British accent, she’s the very essence of beauty personified…fitting for a character who values perception of her outer beauty above all else. With a performance from quietly menacing to eye bulging theatrics, Theron should be awarded for villain of the year if such a category were to exist in any revered film academy around the globe.

The film makers have to be admired from vering away from a Twilight-esque love triangle subplot meaning Snow White retains it’s integrity by staying restrained, subtle and quietly affecting. A wonderfully cinematic and arty reinterpretation of a familiar story, Narnia fluff this is not.

Alienating Prometheus

As a film geek, Prometheus is exactly the type of film you dread; a highly anticipated epic that fails to meet level of quality one reasonably expected of it. Disappointing in other words. After two decades of evil film studio Twentieth Century Fox fannying around with weak Alien sequels (Alien Resurrection) and pathetic crossover prequels (AvP Requiem) it was impossible not to get excited when it was announced that Sir Ridley Scott would be returning to the Alien universe that he created back in 1979 with a loose prequel story. Not to mention Mr Scott, a science fiction visionary, would be returning to the genre 30 years after Blade Runner cemented him as one of the great cinema artists of all time.

Prometheus is a mess. A beautiful, mesmerizing, gripping, thoroughly enjoyable, frustrating mess of a movie. It’s been mentioned before in other reviews, but Prometheus most feels like the Alien 3 of the three decade old Xenomorph franchise. That 1992 sequel has great ideas, fantastic set pieces and was undoubtedly a gorgeous (in a grim looking way) piece of stylistic film making by debut director David Fincher. But, much like Prometheus, it had a large cast of characterless characters that you couldn’t tell from one another and couldn’t care less about who were there simply as monster fodder. It also had a lazy, under-developed script where stupid characters did crazy, stupid stuff because no one could be arsed to apply logic to the story as it developed.

To be fair most of the problems with Prometheus lie with Damon (Lost) Lindelof’s half assed excuse of a screenplay. It starts off promisingly enough with the mission, the themes, the characters and the locations all being introduced very well indeed. Things begin to fall apart as the intrepid Prometheus crew enter the alien structures where they hope to encounter mankind’s makers, an alien race thought to have seeded Earth thousands of years ago. For a hardcore scientific expedition with a corporate company board member in charge, the team pay little attention to procedure (or even common sense) in a likely hostile environment. Therefore the head of the expedition does little to lead her team (after assertively making the point that she’s in charge), scientist wonder off and get lost, disregard orders about removing protective helmets, not touching potentially dangerous artefacts or re-entering their own spacecraft regardless of contamination risks. Even Michael Fassbender’s robot is allowed to go unsupervised to collect biological samples, given time to study it and then go unchecked to experiment with the samples on his fellow crewmates (all with his boss tucked away on the very same spaceship…he no mad, he crazy!)

But that’s just the beginning of the script problems. The best of the characters manage to be two dimensional at best, and that includes Noomi Rapace’s lead scientist, with the rest being a sea of nobodies waiting to die. To its credit Prometheus does toy with lots of concepts such as where did mankind come from, science and faith, what it means to be human, and the nature of life from birth, evolution, procreation, offspring, old age and death. It’s all good stuff to be sure and it’s even more impressive that this is being dealt with in a mainstream science fiction blockbuster from Twentieth Century Fox of all people, but with such little thought having been given to script structure few if any of these ideas are explored to any degree of satisfaction. You only have to look at Christopher Nolan’s Inception or Joss Whedon’s Cabin In The Woods or even Scott’s own Blade Runner to see how a film with multiple thematic layers can work effortlessly. Even the overall story which, after raising the most alarming and surprising question in the entire movie, is effectively ignored at the very end in favour of blatantly setting up a direct sequel during its cop out conclusion. Therefore Prometheus, entertaining though it is, feels like a film without an ending. It even has the cheap-ass audacity to throw in a sell-out Alien reference in a cheesy mid-credits scene at the movie’s end.

Editing is another huge problem in Prometheus. The first issue is in the overall pacing of the film. Individual scenes work just fine and it’s in the individual parts that the film works the best. But, when viewed as a whole, characters disappear from the narative for long stretches when we ought to be aware of their actions with regards to everything else that’s going on. There’s one sequence where an imperilled Noomi requires urgent medical assistance and you’d swear from the way it was edited she was the only person on the spaceship. Earlier the film is so busy following the adventures of robot Fassbender, Captain Elba and CEO Theron that Noomi practically disappears from her own story. There seem to be major lost opportunities when editing the action as well. A Thing-like creature turns up to terrorise the crew but it’s extremely unclear which character is the threat, a storm sequence starts out well but ends in a confusing muddle of jostling space helmets and the climactic end game scenario is so devoid of alternative outcomes that all suspense has been stripped from the most epic moment of the entire film.

In terms of how Prometheus relates to the rest of the Alien franchise it is pleasingly distant in tone enough to form it’s own identity. There’s a grander, more awe inspiring feel to the film that’s echoed in the production design, effects and the lush score by Marc Streitenfeld which sets the story up as less of a horror film and more of a grander, serious science fiction spectacle along the lines of 2001. That means, despite the aggressive creatures hunting the crew, that Prometheus is less scary than Alien and less action packed than Aliens and that’s cool as it’s doing is own thing. The film does go out of its way to include as many of Alien’s story beats as possible such as the expedition to an unknown world, the shady company agenda, the seemingly untrustworthy android, ‘egg’ chambers, impregnation, body horror, lifeboats with hidden nooks and crannies and the obligatory attempt to prevent the danger from getting back to Earth. This gives Prometheus a strong connection to Alien and it feels familiar, yet different, in so many ways including how the film was designed visually…but in terms of story structure, James Cameron’s Aliens did this so much more intelligently.

My final problem is with casting. Noomi Rapace is fine in the lead role; she’s strong, passionate and oddly attractive but the idea of her being an English woman is as preposterous as Connery being a Russian or Statham being a Yank. Idris Elba, Charlize Theron and Guy Pearce are all great although their roles are tragically underwritten while it’s down to Michael Fassbender to steal the show as coolly detached Data-like android David. Meanwhile Brit badass Sean Harris makes an early impression before disappearing while Logan Marshall-Green comes across as the zero-dimensional, younger brother of Tom Hardy. The rest of the crew highlight the same problem Ridley Scott had when casting his 2010 epic Robin Hood…apart from the leads the supporting cast are bland and unmemorable, no matter what quality work might have preceded Prometheus.

Now, despite all that negativity and complaining, I really, really enjoyed Prometheus. It looks utterly stunning from the production design (which comes across as a cross between the original Alien and a cleaner Star Trek vibe), the 60’s retro-cool of the spacesuits, the stunning special effects (the planetary flybys are jaw dropping) , the sense of adventure, the atmosphere of dread, and of course the fascination with how it all links in with Alien. It’s a spaceship bound, far future science fiction epic which is catnip to me, Scott directs with a non-Hollywood Euro-feel which despite his advancing years, makes the film seem fresh and cutting edge, and the story is gripping regardless of structural issues.

Prometheus is a beautiful, unfocused, undisciplined mess but one that is still head and shoulders above most science fiction releases and it should be applauded for at least having some ambition. If the planned sequel goes ahead, it may go some way to addressing the feeling of incompleteness in Prometheus’s story, it’s just a shame Scott and Lindelof couldn’t make it work as a self contained piece of storytelling.

Men In Black To The Future

There seems to have been a lot of discussing that Men In Black 3 is way past its sell by date but I don’t particularly agree with that. If you want an unwanted sequel you only have to look at Sister Act 2, The Whole Ten Yards and Analyze That. The original MIB came out in 1997 and is a mini comedy sci-fi classic in the mould of Ghostbusters. The 2002 was a case of sheer sequelitis with a tired retread of a plot with a comedy tone that was almost devoid of humour.

Ten years later and Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones and director Barry Sonnenfeld have returned with a sequel that’s light years better than Part 2 but still not a patch on Part 1. The story, this time involving time travel to the late sixties, is much stronger and more interesting, there much more laughs (mainly due to Mr Smith) and it’s got a much stronger villain in Boris The Animal than the last film did.

There’s a middle years Red Dwarf thing going on with Men In Black 3 in that it’s much more interested in its clever science fiction plot than it is in generating jokes…and that’s OK as the film is light, breezy fun but still a little disappointing. The script seems underwritten and could have benefited with much more fish-out-of-water references given the time travel opportunities at hand plus actors like Alice Eve, Bill Hader and Emma Thompson aren‘t exploited to their full potential. Everything else is just adequate; the effects, songs, score, creatures, action and direction are all just run-of-the-mill and solid in execution.

If there’s a stand-out piece of the MIB3 puzzle it’s Josh Brolin playing a young Tommy Lee Jones. He gets the character, the comic timing and the world weariness perfectly and the film only truly comes alive when he an Smith are together onscreen.

Raiding The House Of Pain

There are some movies where the evidence of it being exceptional are the uninhibited giggles emanating from your mouth courtesy of your highly impressed nerd brain. This uncontrollable joyous geekout might be due to a certain awe inspiring cinematic image (The Balrog in Fellowship of the Ring), a line of dialogue (“DRAKE! WE ARE LEAVING!!!” from Aliens) or, most commonly, a gratuitous display of ultra-violence (the last half an hour of Peter Jackson’s Braindead).

Indonesian action film The Raid falls perfectly into that latter category too with the most gigglesom display of hyper-violent action film I’ve seen since John Woo’s masterpiece Hard Boiled. It’s a simple siege movie reminiscent of the best of John Carpenter/Neil Marshall/Walter Hill with an elite group of tactical cops going into a gang controlled apartment block to take out the all-powerful drug lord once and for all. It’s a simple tale which allows for plenty of skull splintering fighting, shooting, stabbing, punching and brutal, brutal death. The key here isn’t so much that the action is brilliantly shot (in long McTiernan-like takes so we can appreciate the fight choreography or to revel in the multiple crimson fountain bullet hits) or edited (like Woo, Welsh director Gareth Hughes treats this like a ballet of mayhem) it’s that it takes martial arts to the next level. I’ve seen martial arts movies before but not when the combatants are using knives along with the chop-socky . The result is brain jarringly awesome…a shock and awe tactic that never wears out its welcome.

Surprisingly there’s deep enough character relationships and an intriguing enough story going on to compliment the action so this isn’t just another exercise in surface level action. Absolutely amazing to behold, The Raid is an experience that will leave you breathless. Hands down the best straight-forward action film since The Matrix.

Casino Royale (With No Cheese)

The 2005 James Bond reboot carries on the tradition of introducing a new actor to the world of 007 in a quality film, after all On Her Majesties Secret Service, Live & Let Die, The Living Daylights and Goldeneye were all top quality Bond movies. Casino Royale goes one step further by resetting the franchise back to Bond’s first mission as a ‘00’ operative. It’s a smart move; not only do we get to see the mature, experienced ex-navy officer we expect of Bond but we get an origin story giving us insight into how he evolved into the suave and ruthless secret agent we all know and love.

Daniel Craig owns Casino Royale in a way I simply wasn’t expecting. His Bond is a lot less flamboyant in the personality department but compensates with his sheer physical masculinity. Here we’re presented with a Bond who, for once, feel like an ex-marine…an unstoppable force of nature who will keep going until the mission is accomplished. Surprisingly he also delivers Bond’s dry, wisecracking humour with aplomb and, thanks to a cracking script, gives Bond considerable depth, unpredictability and vulnerability.

Goldeneye helmer Martin Campbell gives the proceedings a lot of class and glamour, the action sequences are brilliantly staged and hard hitting (the best being the post credits African Rundown), the card game that dominates the middle act is evey bit as gripping as the punch ups, the script polished by Paul Haggis is the most emotionally deep since OHMSS back in 1969 and the eclectic cast is superb, especially a radiant and sensual Eva Green.

If there’s a downside it’s that the Miami chapter is the most mundane part of the film, going through the motions as it attempts to link Bond with Mad Mikkelsen’s creepy big bad and Eva’s ice queen, but there’s enough great moments for it to breeze by. Easily one of the best Bond films ever forever ingrained on the memories of blokes for the ball-aching horror of 0007’s nutsack being bludgeoned by the villain. Goldfinger this is not.

Scary Movie, And That’s A Pact

I’ve come to expect that when watching most genre films whether it’s rom coms, action films or horror that originality isn’t going to be the main thig going for it…as long as it does what it does well. That’s an apt way to describe The Pact which in many ways in one part J-Horror and one part Poltergeist. This time it’s not a little girl that’s gone missing but a young mother who may have supernaturally disappeared into the closet of her recently deceased mother’s house. It’s up to her rebellious, loner sister to find out what’s going on in the house).

This is an extremely well made ghost story that is slow burn and patient in its execution (All the better for building nail biting suspense), well acted (especially by lead Caity Lotz in a complex multi-layer performance) and with a down to earth twist I didn’t see coming.

The Pact may be the same old shit but it’s damn good shit.