film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Joel Fisher

  • The Nest: Review

    The Nest: Review

    The Nest: Review – Meg (Maple Stuttles) is a little girl with separation anxiety. Her mother, Beth (Sarah Navratil) is a recovering drug addict and after she got clean, she comes back to reconnect with her daughter, the trouble is that Meg is worried that her mother will leave her again.

    So, one day while browsing a garage sale, Meg falls in love with a stuffed, wide eyed teddy bear and the owner, a creepy old man, gives her the teddy bear as a gift. Little does Beth or Meg realise, but the teddy bear holds a nest of ants which start to have a serious affect on Meg’s young mind and before her family realise it, the parasitic insects come for them as well.

    The Nest is a horror creature feature which harkens back to an earlier time in horror where it seemed like every new horror needed a creature of the month. Movies like Invaders from Mars, The Stuff and Basket Case were all the rage and have become cult classics, so if that’s your kind of thing then you know what to expect from The Nest.

    Dee Wallace, the queen mother of horror even plays Meg’s grandmother, which will give the audience that nostalgia for the kind of horror they just don’t seem to do anymore.

    There are many things to like about The Nest, it’s certainly the kind of horror where the audience knows what to expect and the typical signs are there, although the audience may have to connect some of the dots so that it makes sense.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92kRK9WLNtg

    Maple Stuttles does a good job of both being cute and menacing when she needs to be and the scenes between her and her on screen mother are very good and help with their emotional connection. Also, there’s enough here to delight fans of high concept horror with particular detail in a scene which reveals one of the little bugs in all its glory.

    However, there perhaps should have been an ultimate goal for the invading arthropods and it feels like transporting their nest in a teddy bear in hopes of infecting an innocent family may have not been all that efficient. Just don’t think about the finer details too much though and you’re bound to enjoy The Nest.

  • Fear Street Part 3: 1666 – Review

    Fear Street Part 3: 1666 – Review

    Fear Street has turned into Fear Village for the final instalment of R. L. Stine’s Netflix horror trilogy for teens. At the end of Part 2, Deena (Kiana Madeira) found the missing piece of the witch’s skeleton which she believed would end the curse and bring her town back to normal. However, what she wasn’t anticipating was that it would transport her back in time into the body of Sarah Fier (Fear, get it?), the original witch who was the cause of the curse in the first place. Although, what she finds is that Sarah Fier may not have been the evil witch that Deena thought she was and as her story unfolds, Deena starts to realise that Sarah’s story has connections to her own.

    Fear Street Part 3: 1666 is the end of the trilogy which Netflix perhaps hoped would have put us all in a spooky mood. However, with the TV budget stretched across roughly six hours, being released weekly and in July, Fear Street as a whole may not have had the impact that it intended.

    Part 3 does indeed live up to the promises of the end of Part 2 though and the tone is very different for the first half of the film. It also places the actors from the first two parts within Sarah’s story, which shows their range and may also cut down on the budget.

    However, having Part 3 set in such a different place and time does have its issues and its evident due to the budget and the cast. Firstly, the accents are not great and for what is supposed to be an Irish town whose settlers made their home in America, it does take the audience out of the period piece somewhat. Although if you’ve already seen part 1 and 2 then you may have already expected the quality to not be the best.

    Basically, if you ever wondered what The Witch would look like with a worse budget, script and cast then that’s what you’re going to get. Also, Sarah’s story overall is a little cliché and though it does connect its themes to Deena, it’s not all that original.

    Then we get to the twist and although at first this may throw people a little and comes across as unexpected, it only serves as a way to set up the second half of the film as it brings it back to where it all began. Although the nostalgia for the heady days of early July 2021 may not be as strong when they released Part 1.

    There are some nice little nods to the trilogy as a whole and some loose ends are tied up nicely, but it’s probably not best to binge watch or watch so close together as Netflix released them, because besides its ambitions, the final result is rather disposable.

  • Blood Born: Review

    Blood Born: Review

    Makayla (Rosie Moss) and Eric (Antoine Perry) have been trying hard for a baby. They’ve suffered great loss while going through the process of pregnancy, but now they feel that they’ve come to an impasse. Then one day Rosie’s friend, Cherise (Laurine Price) tells her about a foundation that helped her sister get pregnant and that they should consider getting in touch.

    So, after an initial meeting, Makayla and Eric welcome Ola (Melanie Haynes) into their home as they prepare for their new bundle of joy. However, there’s something not quite right about Ola and her methods, and after a while Eric becomes suspicious that there’s something sinister going on.

    Blood Born is a tongue in cheek horror about the troubles with getting pregnant and the worries that come with expecting a new child. The film is the kind of horror where the audience knows all too well that if it were them, as soon as Ola turned up then she’d be out the door. However, the film knowingly plays into the tropes of films like Rosemary’s Baby and has fun with them.

    In fact, the more that Ola tells them to do and the longer it goes on for without Eric being concerned makes it all the funnier, seeing as the audience knows that when he does, it’s far too late. Also, the fact that the audience doesn’t know the baby’s true form, keeps the audience guessing as to where it could be going and what exactly is growing inside Makayla.

    The cast all do a great job and are perfectly cast, with the film setting all the players in place so the audience may know what to expect. So, if you’re not looking for anything too deep or surprising then Blood Born may be the genre horror for you. Also, the special effects and the depth into which the script deals with mixing the medical and the supernatural may raise a few smiles among parents.

    The final act does get a little too serious though and when the film seems to throw away its parody, then it does seem to lose something.

    However, for the most part Blood Born is a fun and sly wink at the demonic possession subgenre of horror. 

  • Last Call: The Shutdown Of NYC Bars – Review

    Last Call: The Shutdown Of NYC Bars – Review

    Last Call: The Shutdown Of NYC Bars – Review. It’s been quite a year and a bit as of writing this review and there have been many people who have been affected in many ways over the long months that led us to this point. There have been many people who have had to give up their entire lives and had to learn to survive in many different ways.

    Some of those people have been successful and some have not. There are entire industries that relied solely on human interaction and the bars, pubs and clubs of the world are where we all gathered to share our moments and will hopefully be able to do so once again.

    Last Call: The Shutdown of NYC Bars is a documentary about a group of people whose lives and livelihoods relied on being around other people and giving them a place where they could have fun, relax and unwind. However, if the past year has taught us anything, it’s that we take things for granted and things can be suddenly snatched away at a moment’s notice.

    Last Call follows the people in Queens, New York who have all been affected in some way or another by the pandemic and using interviews with each of them, it dissects and explores their thoughts and feelings while going through our worst time in living memory.

    The documentary starts out talking about the friends, family and community that is all experienced by those who work in the bars. They call it the third place, somewhere that sits between work and home where you can relax and be around the people you love. Because their work is so much more than that and the experiences that they have working in bars give them a perspective on life that nobody else could get.

    However, Last Call is so much more than just about people who have lost their salaries as many of them talk about their thoughts and feelings to which many of us could relate. Although, there are some that see this time as a way to find new opportunities. After all, those times where we said we wish we could do something if we had the time – now we really do have that time.

    So, Last Call may not be the end of the bar industry and it shows that there may be hope. We just have to all sit tight, think of each other and look forward to better things.

  • The Hunter Anthology: Review

    The Hunter Anthology: Review

    Mac (Taylor August) is a demon hunter and his latest hunt takes him into the subway. There’s already a small group of people waiting to go about their day when the train suddenly stops and Mac reveals his true intentions.

    He believes that one of them is a demon and he’s going to have to look into their souls to reveal who the demon is and stop them before they continue their evil rampage. However, the group are all holding dark secrets and so as each story plays out, Mac discovers that these seemingly innocent people have pasts that are bubbling beneath the surface.

    The Hunter Anthology is a short anthology series written and directed by Robert Smithline that seemingly pays homage to anthology series from the 90’s that were very short lived, low budget and were only really made to fill the schedule until something better came along.

    With its obviously low budget, Smithline’s scripts have to make up for it and besides some shoddy special effects, the stories may be the thing that draws in the audience. Unfortunately, although The Hunter Anthology may be taking inspiration from less than top quality work, it’s unclear as to whether it’s a parody or whether it’s truly sincere.

    There are stories such as a woman who takes revenge on a tarot reader for ruining her sister’s life, a couple taunted by a demon who they spy on a security camera and even a man who may or may not be trapped inside a hospital for the mentally ill.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRpTo4adj0g

    The trick is to work out whether the makers of the series really think that the series is a masterpiece or whether the stories are so exaggerated that they’re meant to be funny. A particular highlight is a story about conjoined twins that’s so over the top that it becomes funny and is probably the most memorable one.

    To casual viewers, The Hunter’s Anthology may just be a badly made, badly acted series that they probably should waste their time with. However, some people might get a kick out of it because it’s slightly reminiscent of a late-night TV show that they may have accidentally started watching so long ago.