Malevolent is one of those movies that spring up on Netflix that you say to yourself one day, “Oh yeah, I’ll give that a go,” with very little expectation. So it was a pleasant surprise to find that it was a semi-decent British horror film that pulsates with enough intrigue and mystery to pull you along to the end hoping that the characters live to see it through their ordeal.
The story follows some charlatans who claim that one of their group is a medium with the ability to warn off ghosts and send them on their way. The group consists of siblings Angela (the medium), Jackson (the ambitious kid up to his eyes in debt with the heavies breathing down his neck), Beth (Jackson’s girlfriend), and Elliot (the techie who has all the camera and sound gear, and is a little keen on Angela).
Angela and Jackson just so happen to carry a dark past, when their mother committed suicide after allegedly not being able to handle her gift. You see she actually could contact the dead, and this gift is carried down to Angela who has her awakening during the beginning of the film.
Worried that she will react the same way as her mother, Angela is hesitant to pursue this gift any further, but is compelled to go on one last charade to save her brother from the mob, little knowing that they are about to go out of their depths and into the world of paranormal.
The relationship between Angela and Jackson are integral to the Malevolent’s success and Florence Pugh, (who is about to star in BBC’s The Little Drummer Girl and looks destined for greater things to come) and Ben Lloyd-Hughes (The Divergent Series) immerse into their respect roles with relative ease.
A worthy nod should be made for Scott Chambers who plays Elliot (effectively the heart of the movie) and delivers a charming and likeable performance; plus the always-amazing Celia Imrie as the landlady of the haunted estate with her own inner demons.
The Diagnosis:
This haunted house story evolves at a predictable pace but delights in many ways with a simple story of love, hope, and loss.
Steered as a bank heist with a difference, The Vault tries to merge two genres; crime drama, and supernatural horror together, but this is no From Dusk Till Dawn saga and unfortunately lacks the killer punch that Tarantino and Rodriguez were able to deliver.
That’s not to say that it doesn’t come with some plus points as the film does provide a little bang for its buck, just not enough to tip it into a ‘blow your mind venture’, which is a shame because the trailer did show some promise.
When siblings Leah (Francesca Eastwood), Vee (Taryn Manning), and Michael (Scott Haze), along with two other forgettable gang members perform a bank heist, they go in with all the hallmarks of a professional outfit, but as events unfold, the cracks begin to show, the tension of the situation is heightened, and sanity is questioned.
As with these bank heist movies, there’s more to the characters than meets the eye, as director tries to paint a colourful palette. Some of them fall a bit short in stretching their talents on-screen, but thank God for Taryn Manning (Orange Is The New Black) who always seems to captivate on-screen and manages to immerse herself in the role of Vee to keep the audience engaged enough to see it to the end.
So, when the robbers find out that the money is a little less than expected, all hopes seems lost, until the assistant bank manager played by a subdued James Franco (and I don’t mean in the stoned sense… well, maybe… who knows?) tells the gang that there is more loot in the old vault beneath the building. The thought of money lures them to seek their fortune, but in opening Pandora’s Box they unleash an unknown force that picks them off, one-by-one. Who will survive and are there souls worth saving at all?
The Diagnosis:
This is a middle-of-the-road movie that does just enough to keep you watching. Perfect movie to stay home and Netflix and chill.
Hill House may well have been home for the Crain family, but it also holds the key to a life defining memory. Flashing back and forth between past and present, this haunted house yarn is about the psychological effects of events that lead to them abruptly fleeing a haunted house in the dead of night many years earlier.
“The Haunting of Hill House” is a genre busting ghost story with more levels than the house at its core. Using the Shirley Jackson novel (previously seen as “The Haunting” – both as the 1963 Robert Wise film and the 1999 Jan De Bont film) as its source material, master of horror Mike Flanagan has meticulously crafted a 10 part horror series for Netflix that is as much a traditional gothic horror as it is a story about how a family handles the traumatic stress of a horrific experience none of us could ever imagine. So essentially this is for anyone who wondered what was next for the Lutz family after “The Amityville Horror” or the Freelings post “Poltergeist”.
This is about the PTSD of horror and while they all have their ghosts to reconcile, these ones are literal.
Now this all may seem extremely heavy stuff, but there is still a good old fashioned ‘scare-ya-silly’ ghost story here and believe me it’s a frightening one too. The frights are drip fed when you least expect it and there’s creepiness resplendent too if you just keep your eyes open from behind that cushion.
But what makes this stand out as quite possibly the best horror of 2018 is the well developed characters, the incredible writing, and the heart (or boob) thumping performances. All of the actors throw their all into the work too and it’s evident in such stand out episodes as; “The Bent necked woman” that has one of the craziest WTF moments in horror history and “Two Storms” which is almost theatre. The almost hour long episode of “Two Storms” plays out over five cuts, as the characters all bounce off each other in long, incredibly choreographed 15-23 min takes.
Mike Flanagan has steadily crafted a brilliant career in horror films since his stellar debut film “Absentia”. Over the years he’s reinvigorated a franchise, with the prequel “Ouija: Origin of Evil”, directed a couple of Netflix exclusive films “Hush”, and the brilliant Stephen King adaptation “Gerald’s Game”, and is soon to direct another King adaptation “Doctor Sleep” (“The Shining” sequel). So it’s really no surprise his latest entry is his best…so far. There’s a familiar look to his work, a colour palette of greys and oranges, and a troop of regular actors that include the always amazing Carla Gugino, the outstanding Elizabeth Reaser, and Flanagan’s wife, Kate Siegel, who has her best role yet. Talking of actors, who knew ET’s Henry Thomas and Timothy Hutton looked so alike, here they play the role of Hugh Crain at various stages in his life and my god the similarity is uncanny.
The Diagnosis:
Look, while this is very loosely based on the Shirley Jackson novel, it’s not a direct adaptation in the slightest, but it still has the locked red door, the spiral staircase, and spooky housekeeper Mrs Dudley. This is a fantastically complex gothic horror story for the Netflix generation.
Since Gareth Evans made his impact on the cinematic landscape with his hard-hitting action-packed Indonesian martial arts movie The Raid and its sequel, fans of his directing style have been eager to see where he would turn to next.
And here it is with Apostle, an equally gritty film that cuts to the heart of religion, faith, and megalomania.
Starting Dan Stevens ego has been carving a name for himself in Hollywood circles of late with his quirky turn in TV series, Legion and Beauty and the Beast, but it seems that he has never shied away from his horror roots, dating back to Adam Wingard’s The Guest. It’s almost as if he is able to tap into that inner carnage and turmoil that humanity faces and bring it to the surface in the most powerful ways. Apostle is no exception to this as Stevens delves deep into the psyche of Thomas Richardson, a former missionary who has turned his back on his faith, only to be tested once more when he learns that his sister has been taken for ransom on a remote welsh island.
The film is set in the early 1900s, and because of its setting is able to harness the feel of old school British folk horror which is on something of a resurgence of late.
There are elements in Apostle that is strikingly familiar to The Wicker Man in that a devout religious man ascends on a pagan island to retrieve a missing girl, in this case his sister, but that’s where the similarities cease as Apostle delves into the dark and twisted underbelly of when faith is taking to the extreme and abused at every level.
In one scene, Thomas literally has to swim through the guts and bile of the depraved to seek a reprieve from his pursuers.
There’s so much imagery and metaphor going on here, you’d be forgiven for feeling over whelmed with it, but Stevens performance is enough to ground the drama in reality.
He’s also joined by some terrific performers along the way too. There’s Michael Sheen (Underworld: Rise of the Lycans) as the islands profit, Malcolm, who is simply marvellous in his role, eating up the scenery with his charisma on screen; and then there’s Lucy Boynton (The Blackcoats Daughter) as the prophets’ daughter and potential love interest Andrea, along with Mark Lewis Jones and Bill Milner also adding great strength to the cast.
Richardson’s quest is always balanced on a knife edge too as Evans proves once more to be capable of wringing out every last drop of tension and pain from his characters.
The Diagnosis:
Director Gareth Evans is a master in creating heart-wrenching angst and turmoil into his narrative and with Dan Stevens has the perfect muse, as a lost and troubled man on a quest that takes him into a dark and twisted labyrinth of angst and suffering to reach a place of peace and tranquility.
Annihilation is an all female-led science fiction film about guilt, biology, and the human tendency for self-destruction. So I guess its no wonder Paramount dumped it on Netflix after loosing sleep over its box-office appeal.
It copped some controversy after being caught up in a battle between the studio and director Alex Garland (Ex Machina) for being “too intellectual.” While financially the studio’s fears were confirmed, visually its damn lucky they didn’t water it down. This is a film with a cool plot and some downright lush visuals.
Natalie Portman is Lena, a cellular biology professor who is recruited along with four others to study a quarantine zone in a swampy corner of America called The Shimmer. Lena’s reasons for accepting the mission are more personal than scientific: her military husband is the only person to enter The Shimmer and come out alive. You just know this is going to be a twofold journey: a trek through an alien landscape, and the dark emotional landscape of the protagonist.
The first scene we’re given after entering The Shimmer is the inside of a tent which feels like an odd and underwhelming decision by the director. But when Lena emerges from the tent and announces she remembers nothing since passing through the shimmery wall, it feels like the perfect way to introduce this strange new world.
Without giving too much away, something is seriously not right within The Shimmer. As the scientists begin to join the dots, the film shifts gears into “thriller” mode. But don’t get too excited; while there are some excellent tension-filled scenes – one in particular involving a bear-creature that echoes screams of agony from its latest victim – Annihilation never crosses fully into the horror genre. It’s an enjoyable ride, but nothing to write home about.
It’s the ending that’s the kicker. Garland tackles some complex conceptual territory (at least for this High School Science flunker) that will probably require a debrief with a mate, or at the very least a quick Google. Up until this point Annihilation was lingering dangerously close to being mediocre, but the last few scenes cement it as a Sci-Fi classic.
The Diagnosis: So is it as amazing as you’ve heard? Probably not. Should you see it? Absolutely.
Veronica. Went into this film after reading articles about people who couldn’t sit through the whole thing.
Too scary. Too terrifying. Based on a true story. Too real. Mummy hold my hand… that kind of thing.
So, maybe I’m the exception. Maybe I watch too many horror films and I’ve become immune to the horrors of a Ouija bored (slightly concerning).
However, I was no where near having to switch it off. Far from it. Veronica had me glued to the screen from start to finish. It’s what horror film dreams are made of.
I’d run off into the sunset with this film if I could. Finally, a horror to arrest the recent run of iffy films on Netflix. Your horror film prayers have been answered.
The Spanish horror directed by Paco Plaza ([rec])is set in 1991 Madrid. Sandra Escacena gives an eerily intense performance as Veronica, a 15-year-old schoolgirl who cares for her siblings while her mother works round the clock at a local café.
Veronica rounds up a few pals for a Ouja board sesh during a solar eclipse in hope of contacting her late father. Then, things go haywire. DUN DUN DUNN.
It’s not an original story. It’s conjuring-ish, exorcism-esque you get the idea.
However, Veronica is a thematic patchwork. An exploration of the inner landscape of a teenager who has lost her father and has had to grow up all too quickly.
She is pulled and pushed by different forces throughout the film, not only by the spirit haunting her but also the fatigue and parental solitude forced upon her by her mother.
The demon acts as a specter for unwanted maturity. Her innocence and stunted growth are highlighted when we discover that Veronica is yet to have her first period. This symbolism is carried throughout in various scare-rific ways.
In one of the most chilling scenes in the film, Veronica imagines herself being eaten alive by her brothers and sisters.
A terrifying metaphor for how working class families had to disassemble in order to function.
Good luck getting that creepy image out your head for the next three days. Opt for vegetarian snacks.
The cinematography in Veronica is beautiful. Plaza and his team stay away from the stark, realist lighting of most modern horror films.
The lighting gives us a phantasmal mix of the surreal and reality. I find films are more chilling when they feel real. Veronica feels real.
Its in Spanish too, how real can you get? Plaza has hit the nail on the head with highlighting that Veronica is a true story.
The Diagnosis:
See? Horror films aren’t always small budgets and cheap scares. Veronica is certainly not profound or ground breaking but its nice to know that some good old fashioned metaphors lurk beneath. Veronica has meat on its bones.
A thick Swedish forest looms ahead; dark and foreboding. Four hikers on a boy’s trip decide to cut through it, veering off the path, to get help for their injured mate. Spoiler: this turns out to be a very bad idea. Like the promotional tagline warned; they should have gone to Vegas.
The Ritual is based on the novel by Adam Nevill. It’s the sort of book that plants deep roots into your head that won’t let go. The sort of book that makes you think; “someone should really make this into a film.”
And someone did.
Director David Bruckner (V/H/S) does a killer job creating a genre film of the ancient-Nordic-folk-horror variety. He excels at creating glimpses of things that may or may not be there, unseen things darting between the branches. You’ll find yourself nervously squinting at a wall of trees along with the protagonist.
At first, the bad omens occur in the form of a gutted deer dangling from a tree, then come creepy carvings and a Wicker-Man style twig effigy. But these are nothing compared to the true evil lurking deeper into the shadows.
As the intensity of their situation increases, the already rocky relationship between the men becomes more and more strained. They panic and lose their grip on reality, while we the audience clap our hands in glee from the sheer horror of it all.
You almost don’t want to know what’s stalking them; there’s a wonderful sense of building dread that gets somewhat tarnished when the cause of their distress is finally revealed. This is where the film loses its footing, and the conclusion won’t knock your socks off either.
The Diagnosis:
Not every genre film has to be ‘clever.’ The Ritual proves that when done well, there’s nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned, straight-up scary story.
Back in the 90’s there were four TV series you could argue were the flagship shows of that decade.
One was an animated cartoon that (at the time of writing) is still going (although not for much longer if rumours are to be believed). Another two were 4-walled sitcoms set in New York that shared a universe via a 3rd sitcom called Mad About You.
But the 4th was something else. It was about two FBI agents “banished” to a basement chapter of the Bureau called the X-Files. In one of the episodes the male lead talks to the female lead about a real-life case called The Mad Bomber.
Long story short – from 1940 to 1956 George Metesky blew up shit at random locations in New York using homemade bombs. Catching him was next to impossible using traditional forensic techniques, so as a hail-mary cops consulted a criminal psychiatrist.
After analysing the crime scene photos and the taunting letters Metesky had sent to the authorities, the psychiatrist painted a detailed portrait of the sort of man the “Mad Bomber” was.
It encompassed his personality traits, his age, build, even his nationality. It even went so far as to say Metesky was likely a virgin, had an Oedipus complex and should they catch him: “He’ll be wearing a double-breasted suit, buttoned”.
What this psychiatrist had done was create one of the world’s first criminal profiles. And yes, it did eventually lead to Metesky’s arrest. Legend has it he answered the door in his P.J.’s, but when the cops told him to get dressed, guess what kind of outfit he put on…?
So, what does this all have to do with Netflix’s Mindhunter?
Well in the mid 90’s I found myself wandering through a bookstore on George Street when, for some reason, this thick paperback leaped out at me. It was black with silver lettering and it was titled Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit. I still have it. It was about a relatively new investigative technique called forensic profiling – developed throughout the late 70’s and 80’s. Only now it was about to hit the zeitgeist, and reading about it seemed a great way to load up on what (at the very least) would be an awesome dinner party conversation starter. (This was pre-Wikipedia don’t forget).
So, I bought the book and devoured it cover-to-cover. It cites the story of Metesky and his capture (so it wasn’t just a flight of fancy from Mulder…) before detailing the career of former real-life FBI agent John E. Douglas, and his partner Robert Ressler.
In the 70’s they hit upon the idea to interview notorious and incarcerated serial killers back when the term serial killer had yet to be coined. Initially it was to try and get a sense of the senseless nature of their crimes, but in doing so they found they were unearthing patterns and “reasons of logic” that lay within the world of psychological motivation (as opposed to traditional motivation – eg: I need money, this person has money, I’m going to kill this person to get their money).
This new investigative tool was the stuff of Hollywood dreams. To be able to predict what sort of car a vicious killer drives? What sort of house he lives in? What type of watch he wears and on what wrist? It was Sherlock Holmes but sexier – more mysterious, because it was the “psychic TV detective” come to life!
And I knew about this miraculous thing before all my friends. That is…until about a year or so later when Hollywood (not for the last time) shat on my parade by releasing Millennium and Profiler – two TV series that centred around, you guessed it, a criminal profiler.
My book had gone mainstream. Nowadays the lexicon of profiling is so common, you can’t throw a letter at the various NCIS, CSI’s and SVU’s without it being raised with the general assumption that EVERYONE in the audience knows what you’re talking about.
But back then, it was magic. And the magic of Mindhunter the TV series is that it takes place at a time when profiling can be sexy again. Ie: The time of its birth.
For it is a very dramatized recreation of my black & silver book. Set in the 70’s it follows a young Special Agent Holden Ford (effectively Douglas in this universe) and an older pro Bill Tench (Ressler) as they go about conducting their earliest interviews. They do this very much on their own time amid scepticism & resistance from their fellow agents.
As a series it dips into real life cases & characters when it needs to – it’s portrayal of their very first interviewee Edmund Kemper is both chilling and chillingly accurate in regards to the person I had painted inside my head. To see Ed “come to life” after all these years is a sensation I can’t begin to describe.
Yet other elements – usually to do with the home lives of the two leads – are the stuff of typical TV drama. As a series its rhythm is hard to describe. It’s not a serial killer-of-the-week cop show by any stretch, yet it’s not a straight up dramatization of “real-life events” with all the oblique plotlines that can go with such a story.
What it certainly is, is compelling. Well set up for a 2nd season, you will be skipping the end credits big time to get to the next episode.
As a Douglas avatar, Ford – played by Jonathan Groff – will go through an interesting evolution in subsequent years (should the series go beyond 2) mainly because when profiling entered the world of popular media both Douglas and Ressler (by all accounts) had a huge falling out over credit.
Undoubtedly Mindhunter the book is a biography that very much downplays Ressler’s involvement, as it’s told through Douglas’s eyes. And by all accounts Douglas himself has no problem being Hollywood-ised in multiple ways – eg: he has been cited as the inspiration behind Silence of the Lamb’s Jack Crawford, as well as Criminals Minds’ Jason Gideon AND David Rossi.
Yet in the land of the internet – passionate advocates for both men often fall in the “either/or” category. Very much like how a lot of young Australian kids fell into “You’re either a Ford man or a Holden man. You can’t be both. One car is shit, the other is the real deal”.
It is this duality in fact that caused the producers to name Douglas’s character Holden Ford.
The series is also co-produced by Charlize Theron and David Fincher.
Also, I completely made up that bit about Holden’s name. I have no idea why they chose it.
Prognosis:
Series 2 will be just as good if not better than series 1. But it’ll jump the shark by series 3.
