film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Jack Ford

  • Erica Review & The Line Between Film And Game

    Erica Review & The Line Between Film And Game

    Despite appearances, Erica is not a film – it’s actually a game for the Playstation 4, but not in the traditional sense. Instead of controlling computer-generated characters in virtual environments, players interface with live-action scenes and their decisions will influence the direction of the game.

    This is nothing new, of course. Similar techniques were used back in the eighties in Dragon’s Lair and Astron Belt. Home consoles saw a flood of FMV (Full Motion Video) games in the nineties. (The X-Files game actually featured the original cast in specially-shot scenes) At the same time I’m Your Man tried to launch the concept of audience-influenced film in cinemas (With little success).

    More recently there was Bandersnatch, the Netflix film that let viewers choose how the story develops. The level of interactivity is far greater in Erica, though.

    Actions like turning on a lamp, looking through holes and turning pages in a book all have to be done by the player. More importantly, they have to make choices for how Erica should respond to the situations that present themselves.

    Her replies can be combative, passive or proactive way, giving players greater influence over who she is as a character. The most common choice, though, is whether to accept the situation or resist, a recurring theme in the story.

    The character, played by Holly Earl, still suffers from the trauma of finding her father’s murdered and mutilated body as a child. This comes to a head when an anonymous package arrives at her door – a bloody severed hand, holding a pendant with the symbol she had seen carved into her father’s torsos all those years ago.

    She later sees the same symbol tattooed on the arm of the night manager of Delphi House, the psychiatric hospital where her parents used to work, and her temporary home as her flat is now seen as unsafe for her to live.  

    Returning to Delphi House brings back plenty of bad memories for Erica. Her sense of unease is made worse when patients claim weird goings-on and start showing similar, unusual symptoms. When she starts seeing things that may not be real, Erica has to fight to keep her sanity and discover the truth.

    It has a lot of promise but the ultimate truth about what’s going on isn’t anything new, in whichever of the game’s multiple endings she finds out.

    At times, Erica has the sensibility of a student film and has a lot of plot contrivances. Other than that it has an effective atmosphere, is compelling and at times beautiful. It’s deserving of multiple play-throughs and, most crucially, feels effectively player-defined.

    It’s use of dramatic scenes highlights a rising trend in the video game medium: the use of length cut scenes. They were once they were short, simple introductions to levels. Now, with storytelling now becoming more games are becoming more and more reliable on them. The Last of Us, for example, was a game noted more for its writing than its gameplay.

    With cut scenes becoming more elaborate and traditional film being made interactive, it seems that the lines between film and video game are becoming more increasingly blurred. Does the use of live action mean it’s not a game? Does the fact that much of the time is spent watching rather than playing make it a film?

    This is a long-standing question with no definitive answer just yet. One of Erica‘s best qualities, though, may point to what makes the difference between these two changing mediums. That the viewer/player is the one guiding the story may be the distinction. Whether they are playing a passive or assertive part may be what separates them.

    Which ever way you think or feel, Erica is still a well-made, thought-provoking blend of film and game that is worth seeking out.

  • Candy Corn: Review

    Candy Corn: Review

    Candy Corn is set in a place that only exists in films: a small, backwoods American town with seemingly no children but chock full of adults who every year go mad for Halloween.

    Like its characters, the film – written, produced and directed by Josh Hasty – has a deep love for the holiday and all things horror, to the extent of including plenty nods to classic films like Halloween, Scream and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

    If that wasn’t enough, it also includes cameos from some notable horror alumni, including Halloween’s PJ Soles (Here playing Marcy Taylor) and Candyman himself, Tony Todd (As Bishop Gate).

    However, this points to an unfortunate truth that there isn’t much in Candy Corn that’s unique to itself – the moments that are key to any horror film feel, the scares, here feel particularly devoid of originality, and as a result aren’t as scary as they should be.

    What’s more, the films which serve as its inspiration (mentioned above) remain memorable because they kept up the pace and tension, making the action exciting. Whereas Candy Corn is kept at such a slow pace, you can end up feeling impatient for the deaths to happen.

    Back to the film, and Halloween is the time for an annual tradition of three characters, one that dates back to their childhoods – the bullying of local boy Jacob Atkins (Nate Chaney). He is a young adult seemingly with developmental problems, as he never speaks and lives alone in an old shack, though has a trendy haircut.

    The night of the thirtieth he is about to join up with a travelling carnival that has arrived in the town, when he ambushed by the bullies, who accidentally kill him after kicking him a bit.

    Fortunately, the carnival barker (Pancho Moler) happens to be into occult magic, and uses an ancient spell to bring Jacob back to life. Now resurrected and wearing a grotesque latex mask, he sets about picking off his killers one by one.

    On this trail of these murders is Sheriff Sam Bramford (Courtney Gains, also the producer), the unknowing father of one of Jacob’s killers. At the same time, having witnessed Jacob’s death at the hands of her boyfriend, Carol (Madison Russ) is distraught and feels the need to tell the sheriff what she saw, though she is afraid to come forward as she fears the repercussions.

    This is an interesting and realistic character dilemma, but while it would have been intriguing to develop it a little, it’s only a small part of the film and is quickly left the by the wayside. The film can’t make up its mind about Carol in particular – first she is used as the voice of reason before being turned into a bombshell.

    It’s not the only lax bit of writing here, either, the characters all sound the same and have a single trait, at most. At the end, it tries to resolve the script’s larger plot elements, but in trying to do so ends up making a lot less sense.

    In the end, Candy Corn is not a bad film – it’s well made and everyone involved give it their all, but that’s all trapped by a stale script and an inability to provide any real scary moments. Those who have a big an obsession for Halloween as the film does may get the most satisfaction from it, but it doesn’t do enough for those less fluent in horror.

  • The Dark Red: BRWC Frightfest Review

    The Dark Red: BRWC Frightfest Review

    The Dark Red: BRWC Frightfest Review.

    Even if it is flawed or cliched, a good horror film can rise above its shortcomings if it does something interesting with its formulaic elements, gives us interesting, well-crafted characters we want to see make it through the slaughter or just if it provides plenty of good scares.

    Written and directed by Dan Bush, The Dark Red does none of these: it does nothing interesting with its story or characters and it’s not at all scary.

    It begins with an old trope, a woman in a psychiatric hospital. This latest subject in the long line of horror film in-patients is called Sybill, she is played by April Billingsley and at the start of the film she meets and starts to recount her story to her doctor (Kelsey Scott).

    Any early belief that the film might be going an interesting route with used material, though, does not last long.

    The Dark Red takes up slowly through Sybill’s life, from her troubled early life and her diagnosis with Schizophrenia as an adult. She meets a man, David (Adam Scott-alike Conal Byrne, also co-writer) who she falls in love with instantly.

    So far so hackneyed, Sybill then confides in him her deepest secret – that health professionals believe her to be schizophrenic, but in reality it’s her rare blood type giving her the ability to read minds.

    David is convinced after seeing it work once but, guess what, it doesn’t change how he feels about her and the two make plans to marry and start a family. A heavily pregnant Sybill later meets David’s staunchly religious family, who seem to take a particular interest in her abilities. It’s easy to see what’s going to happen next, but it’s hard to care.

    Rather than providing genuine scares or a feel of unease, The Dark Red instead goes the lazy route of just having a lot of James Wan-style smash cuts and sudden blares of loud music. In its ridiculous final third it forgets its supposed to be a horror film altogether and instead turns into Terminator 2, with Sybill in the Sarah Connor role.

    The Dark Red is worse than not being scary, it’s not interesting. The plot is bland and there are no interesting characters – crucially, not even Sybill, whose arc is what the whole film hangs on. Worse still, she has no chemistry with any of the other character, most importantly of all David.

    Horror fans can do a lot better than The Dark Red, a film that does not make enough of its elements and can not get a hold on its material. It can hardly even call itself a horror film.

  • Richard Williams And His Life’s Work

    Richard Williams And His Life’s Work

    Richard Williams And His Life’s Work: While a name that won’t be familiar to many, Toronto-born animator Richard Williams, who passed away on August 16th at his home in Bristol, made up for a lack of name recognition with plenty of grit, determination and talent throughout his career, leaving a lasting mark on his medium on the way.

    A resident of the UK since moving to London in the fifties, it didn’t take long for Williams to receive recognition in the animation industry. His 1958 film, The Little Island, won the BAFTA for best animated short. It was only to be the first of many industry accolades. After time spent making adverts and children’s specials, 1971 saw the release of his thirty-minute animated adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

    Executive produced by Warner animation legend Chuck Jones and featuring the voice of Alastair Sim, reprising the role of Scrooge he famously played in the fifties, it would net Williams an Academy Award. Striking and inventive both with its animation and storytelling, it’s a version of the oft-told tale that can stand among the very best.

    Williams began work on a project that would define and span his career in 1964 – inspired by middle-eastern art and highly ambitious in scope and scale, the film went through many titles but finally set on The Thief and the Cobbler.

    After conceiving the idea, Williams’ Oscar win gave him the leverage to start up production, which would be plagued constantly by financial setbacks and studio changes, but Williams would not give up. He took a number of jobs in between to help secure more funds and seek out potential partners to help him complete the film.

    Williams worked on the The Thief and the Cobbler for the next two decades, at his insistence overseeing every frame as it was drawn by hand. Unfortunately, the long story would not have a happy ending. He lost control of the project in the early nineties, and its new stewards hurried to complete it.

    Finally released in 1995 under the name “Arabian Knight”, this hastily finished and heavily cut version was poorly received, with many believing it to be an Aladdin knock-off. (What little they know) It has the distinction of being Vincent Price’s last film, as dialogue he recorded in the seventies was used in the final product.

    In 2006 a restored version of the film was released on DVD. Though a lot of the animation was not completed, this version was assembled as close to Williams’ original concept, making it the most definitive version possible of The Thief and the Cobbler.

    There was more to Williams’ career than a long job that ended in disappointment. In the eighties he designed the title sequences for two of Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther films and in the nineties he helped create what would be a milestone in the medium.

    Seeing finished pieces of The Thief and The Cobbler impressed the heads of Warner Bros. enough to hire Williams to oversee animation on an adaptation of Gary K Wolf’s 1981 novel, entitled Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

    Working with a cast of some of the greatest cartoon characters of all time, Williams led the effort of seamlessly integrating them all into the live-action scenes. Only someone with Williams’ painstaking attention to detail could have made the animation of Roger Rabbit work so well.

    Who Framed Roger Rabbit remains a timeless classic and earned Williams numerous accolades for his animation work. As a side note, he also voiced Droopy in the film.

    While he may not have the same visibility of someone like Walt Disney, Richard Williams unquestionably made a big impact on the medium. He was also a true filmmaker, striving to always be faithful to himself and see his work through as he intended, whatever the cost. It’s only fitting, then, that we salute the passing of one of animation’s unsung heroes.

  • Review: One Small Step

    Review: One Small Step

    Using beautiful animation coupled with adept and touching storytelling, Taiko studios’ One Small Step is a film that seems to look up to the short films of Pixar, but ends up overtaking them.

    That’s a lot to say – first to compare anyone’s work to that of the modern animation titan, then to say theirs is better. With One Small Step, the comparisons are apt: it uses the same animation techniques, has no spoken dialogue and the film itself is reminiscent of the unforgettable opening montage of Up.

    Like that powerful sequence in the 2009 film, this short covers the life of its main character, Luna, as she follows her dream of becoming an astronaut.

    The film follows her from when, as a child, she and her father first use a cardboard box as a rocket to the moon, through to adulthood where she begins getting her mind and body into shape in order to make her dream a reality.

    It’s not an easy journey, either. She suffers some blows along the way, but she is supporting her both financially and emotionally by her cobbler father. His love and devotion are, in the end, what keeps her going at her hardest moments. Yet, while it would be easy to be manipulative, the film does not play up this, or any moment, to the point where it feels cloying.

    Even though One Small Step is only six minutes long, it never feels rushed and, crucially, every moment feels resonant. Directors Andrew Chesworth and Bobby Pontillas are able to tell a complex story concisely, efficiently and in a universal way.

    One Small Step lost out on the Oscar for Best Animated Feature to Pixar’s baffling Bao. That film tried too hard and ended up getting muddled in its own pretensions. One Small Step, meanwhile, has no ideas above its stations and tells its story and make its points far more comfortably. While Luna’s ambition is one that few people will actually share, her story is one we can all relate to.

    One Small Step is a wonderful film that has a lot to say, about how much one person can effect your life and not giving up your dreams. If Luna can keep going despite the distance she has to go and the obstacles in her way, you can too. Lovely to look at and sweet without ever feeling forced or corny, this is one that is definitely worth seeking out.