Tag Archives: Eagle Entertainment Australia

Movie Review: Crocodile Swarm (2024)

28 Sunday Apr 2024

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Crocodiles are sometimes known for what is sometimes called collective hunting, swimming in numbers when circling large prey. In some cases they can rip their quarry apart while one of their basks holds the victim down.

With all this in mind, you can see why the notion of crocodiles moving en masse to hunt down and kill a group of humans. This is the premise posed by Director Tyler-James (The Loch Ness Horror; Deadly Waters; Monsternado) who is no stranger to low budget creature features. When a group of cave divers break into unknown terrain they encounter a nest of these reptiles, who are a little disgruntled about being disturbed and go on a killing spree. It is when Sam (Ella Starbuck) learns of her sister’s disappearance that she then forms a group of friends to go in search of the deadly caving system in the hopes of bringing her sister back home alive.

All of this may sound good on paper, but when you learn that the creative team behind this is feature are the team behind Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey and the whole upcoming Poohniverse franchise, with Scott Chambers (one of its stars who also appeared in Hammer Films latest Doctor Jekyll). On writing duties, you can imagine the kind of movie you’re in for. 

It would be one thing if there was any merit to the narrative on display, but the acting is ropeable, and they chew through the weak dialogue without ever blinking once. Then there’s the effects which are so fake looking that it goes beyond throwing you out of the picture, you’re propelled back into your room or chosen place of viewing slamming back into the wall behind you. There was even one point in the vision on show that was so laughable when digitised crocs rips apart a mannequin. 

The Prognosis:

To sum up, the most painful part of Crocodile Swarm was enduring the film and sitting through to the end for the sake of writing up this review. I’m pretty laid back when it comes to being forgiving when it comes to low budget features, always looking for the silver lining and wanting to praise where creativity is trying to flourish, but it’s hard to look for one here when it just comes across as lazy. 

  • Saul Muerte

Crocodile Swarm is available on Home Entertainment from May through Eagle Entertainment.

  • Saul Muerte

Movie Review: The Exorcists (2024)

27 Wednesday Mar 2024

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When The Exorcist: Believer was released by David Gordon Green courtesy of Blumhouse Productions it intended to ride the coattails of one of the greatest horror films of all-time for a modern audience, but go “bigger”. This proposal would include two possessed kids but furthermore, three exorcists of differing backgrounds to take on the demon at hand. Needless to say, it bombed.

Now comes The Exorcists which too arcs back towards William Friedkins’ iconic feature and tries to go bigger with a trio of exorcist experts, the elite of their field, brought together by a father who needs their help to purge his daughter of the demon that has consumed her. 

What the exorcists uncover though is a far darker entity lurking beneath the female frame which it currently hosts. To add some more supposed weight to the mix, there’s even a quartet of kids that have broken into the mausoleum to awaken the dead through a spiritual seance. This decision would also lead them on a dangerous path that would weave with the exorcists’ plight. With the ante dialled up to 666, the trio of exorcists must now unite along with Doctor Olivia Beckett (Kayla Fields) and Sister Caroline (Denise Duff) to oust the demon, but they may not last their ordeal.

The Prognosis:

The Exorcists struggles to gain any momentum in its search for an identity. This is all the more evident when tied to the shackles of its inspiration. The grip is loose and the details are equally left to drift without any real focus other than to keep on coasting on a lacklustre cleansing. Its saving grace is casting Doug Bradley aka Pinhead from the Hellraiser franchise as the wisened Father Patrick Ryland, who is compelled to help one last time and amend the past from a failed exorcism. As great as Bradley is, he can only be as good as his counterparts and the script to support his talent, both of which fail him. Instead we must settle on his deliverance and pray for the ending to come.

  • Saul Muerte

Movie review: Butchers (2023)

09 Saturday Sep 2023

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It’s clear from the get-go that this film is Director Adrian Langley’s love song for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Butchers follows a similar path, or should I say journey?. as we follow a small group of friends travelling across the remote Canadian landscape when their car breaks down ala Wrong Turn. Instead of inbred hillbillies, they encounter a pair of sadistic butchers who have taken the law into their own hands. If anyone dares to enter their domain, it’s fair game and there’s a strong possibility that they could be carved on the cutting block

While it tends to stick along the line of predictability, there is a little more going on beneath the engine of a cannibalistic gorefest. Langley and his writing partner Daniel Weissenberger take the literal concept of butchery to the extreme as the barbarous Watson brothers, Owen (Simon Phillips) and Oswald (Michael Swatton) take pleasure in kidnapping and impregnating women with plans of breeding them for more meat. This warped outlook makes for gruesome viewing in spite of walking the all-too-familiar lines of a well-trodden formula.

Naturally, our would-be-victims fight tooth and nail for survival, making ridiculous choices along the way to meet their demise, including battling their own internal conflicts,  but the performance holds strong enough to keep you engaged throughout, most notably Phillips’ smart and gruelling butcher and potential final girl in the mix, Julie Mainville.

The Prognosis:

Much like his more recent feature Bunker, Adrian Langley offers a mediocre-yet-fun movie that puts the characters through the paces. The tension mounts with a steady pace, and the conflicts are torturous on the right side of entertainment. 

It may not offer anything new or even stretch the realms of originality, but Butchers is a tough ride that will apply the hook and keep you gripped to the end.

  • Saul Muerte

Butchers is currently streaming on VOD and available for Home Entertainment.

Movie review: Monstrous (2022)

06 Thursday Oct 2022

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Christina Ricci will always have a close association with the horror genre, namely for her child role as Wednesday from The Addams Family. Sleepy Hollow, and Cursed. As her roles matured, it would be inevitable that she would take on more maternal roles and this is where Ricci finds herself in her latest feature. Here she takes on troubled mother Laura, who is escaping with her son, Cody (Santino Bernard) from an abusive relationship. 

Monstrous is set in 1950s America at a time that comes with all the trappings of a ‘housewife’, so when Laura tries to take up a new life in a lakeside town in California, she has to overcome all the obstacles that a male-dominated world would bring.

To make matters worse, Cody is struggling to fit into this new life and is ostracised from his school peers. Laura does her best to push Cody out of his comfort zone, but with little effect. 

What director Chris Sivertson adds to the fold however is a much darker layer, lurking beneath the facade of Laura’s troubled woes. One that she has subconsciously buried to hide the ‘monstrous’ truth. And when some unknown entity starts to make its presence felt from the lake, Laura must find a way to protect her family or lose it all.

The Prognosis:

The trouble with Monstrous is that it falls too easily into predictability with the supposed reveal, all too easy to spot. 

The narrative is a little too dry as well and feels flat, especially considering the subject matter.

On a positive note however, Ricci still proves she has the A game and adds plenty of weight to a deeply troubled character. 

  • Saul Muerte

Movie review: The Long Night (2022)

13 Saturday Aug 2022

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjnlFjoQ6kM

Fear the darkness inside you.

This is the bold tagline that director Rich Ragsdale and his creative team wish to instil fear into their audience with for his feature debut behind the lens. 

In order to evoke any sense of trepidation however, you must first look at two essential ingredients; chemistry and atmosphere. Both of which are sadly lacking here. 

It takes a full 30 minutes of wading through our two leads Grace (Scout Taylor-Compton – Halloween) and her boyfriend Jack (Nolan Gerard Funk – Truth or Dare) struggling to connect on screen. 

Grace is driven by the quest to find the parents she has never known. Following an ominous lead, the couple end up at a remote house surrounded by curious totems, shrugged off as a Southern thing and there’s no sign of their host. 

It’s not until Jeff Fahey’s cameo however as local Wayne, that things heat up and some gravitas is brought to the screen. It’s brief but enough to shake Taylor-Compton’s performance a little and give her more substance to the character. 

It is not quite enough though to ground this movie and propel the action forward despite the sinister looking satanic cult that have encompassed the property. These figures seemingly rely on their menacing presence and the odd mysticism to generate apprehension, but beneath their outer shell is a vacant entity; a symbol of the film as a whole.

Having said that, the movie does boast some nice imagery in places, a signature of Ragsdale’s eye for detail from his days as a cinematographer. It also has a worthy snippet from Deborah Kara Unger, who is always a welcome addition.

The Prognosis:

The Long Night offers a painfully slow descent into a nightmare that struggles to find its roots in terror.
There are moments of promise but all of this is squandered by lack of substance or flair.

  • Saul Muerte

The Long Night is currently available on DVD and VOD (iTunes, Google Play, YouTube Store, and Fetch TV) and released by Eagle Entertainment Australia.

Movie review: The Jack in the Box: Awakening

19 Saturday Feb 2022

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Having established the rules within this world of the supposedly oldest jack in the box, containing the demon trapped inside, only to be released to gather six souls in order to replenish him.

Much like its predecessor this film doesn’t try to hide the fact that it is a low budget feature, relying on the strength of performance and the storyline itself. Both films are told in a secluded setting but this time around the narrative feels richer and more entrenched in the mythology surrounding it.

The prison-like setting takes place in a mansion with only an aisling mother, Olga Marsdale (Nicola Wright), her son Edgar (Matt McClure), the cook Frank (Jason Farries), and the maid, Janet (Michaela Longden). Joining them is Amy Proctor (Mollie Hindle) and providing our entry point into the estate as hired help. 

We learn early on who our antagonists are when Olga acquires the mysterious jack-in-the-box to aid her in her recovery. The ever-dutiful Edgar tuning into a Norman Bates-esque style performance…”Mother!”. McClure does a fine job here, showing a range of emotions from anxious and reserved, to unhinged anger and mania. It’s his portrayal that is the hook in this movie and keeps you wanting to know which way he will fall.

The Prognosis:

While the movie does walk the line of predictability and suffers under the restraints of the budget where it could do with a serving on the gore front to make Jack more threatening.
This can be forgiven due to Director Lawrence Fowler’s vision and attention to keeping the entertainment on the lust for power and the elixir of life. 

  • Saul Muerte

The Jack in the Box: Awakening is out now on DVD and VOD (Fetch TV, Telstra TV, Google Play, YouTube Store and iTunes) from Eagle Entertainment Australia.

Movie review: Queen of Spades (2021)

29 Sunday Aug 2021

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPpWTTrucco

In a similar way to the recent Candyman feature, Queen of Spades tries to tap into a mythological and sinister presence that channels its energies through mirrors or reflected surfaces. Where the previous movie was strung together through depth and integrity, QoS unfortunately does so through superfluous means and never strikes at the heart as a result.

Both films falter on getting the villain to rise or be invoked to carry out their will, and seem only too happy to just get to the nitty gritty, but without that substance to generate real fear from the entity in question, we left without the grit and just the nit.

So, cue troubled teen Anna (Ava Preston) with her mother, Mary (Kaelen Ohm) who is struggling with the burden of being a single parent. Cue a trio of friends/victims; Katy (Jamie Bloch), Sebastian (Eric Osborne),  and Matthew (Nabil Rajo), who form the quartet of invokees, blindly following a path without fully being aware of the repercussions.

Cue the invoked spirit who welcomes the calling so that she can spread her curse and ruin the souls of those she encounters. 

Cue the knowledgeable character who bears the weight of understanding and the key to stopping the spirit in her tracks, Smirnov; a man who’s own son fell prey to the Queen of Spades.

Maybe I’m just a bi disheartened by the lack of originality on display. Newcomers to the genre may well get a kick out of it, but the performances aside, all of which are solid, there is nothing to grip onto to shake the kernels and add a little creativity outside of the tracks and into the realms of new ground. Same old stuff on display here.

The Diagnosis:

Despite some fairly decent performances, it’s not enough to shirk off the tired cliches that the film relies upon to keep you engaged.

Mediocre at best.

  • Saul Muerte

Movie review: Ravage (2019)

28 Saturday Aug 2021

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There are moments in this film that are painfully slow and arborous, which is a shame considering it’s a tale of survival against the odds.
And yet, there are moments that are peppered throughout the narrative that give rise to the piece and show signs of promise for Teddy Grennan in his directorial feature debut.

Chief among this is in his lead, Annabelle Dexter-Jones (Under The Silver Lake) delivering a powerful performance as Harper, a nature photographer who witnesses a brutal crime. Stranded in a remote woodland terrain, she is captured and tormented by the culprits. Against the odds, Harper escapes and must use her guile and knowledge of the wild to find her freedom and bring her assailants down.

Her moments of revenge are satisfying on MacGyver style proportions and Harper is truly alone in her fight for survival, as everywhere she turns, she is faced with conspiracy.

There is also a suitably strong performance from Bruce Dern (Silent Running) as a quirky hermit character, and due nods should go to Robert Longstreet (The Haunting of Hill House, and soon to be seen in Midnight Mass, and Halloween Kills) who taps into the darker psyche bringing the alpha villain Ravener the amount of depth needed to make the ordeal more intense.

So far, so middle of the road viewing which neither excites or disappoints,  but when the final reel comes around, it is so out of left field and out of keeping with the narrative thus far, that you have to question its placement other than for shock value. The trouble is that it comes across as a misbeat and sours the rest of the film. Not enough character development is put into place to give the shock factor the payoff that the director was aiming for.

The Diagnosis:

It’s a decent enough narrative around survival against the odds, packed with solid performances, but it can’t shake off the mediocrity and then suckerpunches with an incredibly disjointed ending. 

  • Saul Muerte

Movie review: Breach (2020)

15 Monday Feb 2021

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Towards the end of 2020 a low-budget sci-fi, horror flick was released in selected theatres and across VOD and digital platforms with little or nor fanfare.

Perhaps this isn’t really a surprise as we currently go through the COVID age.

Yet it does star big action hitters in Bruce Willis and Thomas Jane, so what gives? Is Breach a dud or a hidden gem, list in the midst of a torrid climate?

For starters, the premise doesn’t offer anything new.
Earth is facing extinction, so a spaceship called The Ark is about to be launched with 300, 000 survivors bound for a quest to start a new colony on a livable planet called New Earth.

To prepare for the long journey the survivors must go into stasis and among them is a pregnant young girl, Hayley (Kassandra Climenti. The father of her child, Noah (Is that really the name choice they went for?? Talk about obvious!!!) is not one of the selected so chooses to stowaway in order to stay with his family.

Whilst on board, Noah takes on the role of a junior janitor as part of the maintenance crew that are charged with keeping the ship on course while the passengers are in safety. Part of this crew is Willis as a mechanic called Clay. He reluctantly takes Noah under his wing just as all hell goes loose when two of the crew become infected with a parasite.

Once the parasite takes hold of its host, the infected soon become walking zombies, shuffling around (or in some cases leaping) as they begin to wipe out the crew one by one.

The Prognosis:

The effects are cheap and in some cases are passable, but the final creature when revealed is so shonky and unnaturalistic that it really takes you out of the picture but that might be being too harsh on a film that doesn’t exactly shy away from its obvious faults. The film isn’t about the special effects, which is a little odd considering that its a sci-fi picture and these days that element is highly relied upon.

Instead, it relies on the camaraderie of its on screen talent to try and win you over.

In that sense, Willis does his usual gung-ho attitude and chews up the scenery whenever possible, chucking out quips that are obviously lifted from greater films of the genre, but nonetheless come across as humorous in this case.

And when Willis isn’t on scene, you can rely on Thomas Jane to chew up the scenery more as the hard-headed Admiral. A man who lives and breathes the Army and just so happens to be the father of the afore-mentioned Hayley.

If your in the mindset for a sci-fi action film that may not exactly set the world alight but is entertaining regardless, then this will provide enjoyable viewing.

If it’s full to the tilt, action-packed, high quality that you’re after however… you’ll be left disappointed.

  • Saul Muerte