film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Joel Fisher

  • Stealing School: Review

    Stealing School: Review

    April Chen (Celine Tsai) is a college student with a promising career in computer science ahead of her. She has the brains and the talent and is days away from graduating, until she gets accused of cheating in her history class by Keith Ward (Jonathon Keltz), a teaching assistant.

    Brought up in front of a tribunal, April and her representative, Micah Shaw (Mpho Koaho) have to prove her innocence, but as the tribunal goes forward there are more inappropriate discrepancies and corruption revealed across the board.

    Stealing School is a dark comedy drama written and directed by Li Dong. Using the setting of a college, Stealing School sets up its characters and it starts off as any other typical college set drama. However, Dong’s script is full of well observed, nuanced characters and a script that mostly tries to play it straight, but is littered with wry humour and occasional laugh out loud moments.

    There’s also the issue of race which Dong picks up on, however it never feels like a film that is meant to teach its audience something or preach to a choir. Instead, Stealing School shows the unconscious bias that happens in such a system without making it the main issue of the story. It even takes time to make fun of the casual racism that Asians face every day.

    The clever thing about Stealing School is how every single character is slowly revealed for who they really are throughout the course of the film. This not only fleshes them out and makes them more three dimensional, but offers up surprises for the audience which will keep them compelled as more secrets are spilled.

    Even April’s innocence is questionable, keeping the audience guessing until the very last moment.

    There are confrontations, confessions and even a little sabotage thrown in the mix in order to make the audience wonder where the story will go next and whose word they can really take as written. Stealing School may raise certain issues that may resonate with some audiences, but those who are looking for a black and white answers may be surprised.

  • Dementer: Review

    Dementer: Review

    Katie (Katie Groshong) has escaped a demonic cult and is more than ready to put her past behind her. Then one day she finds a position work at a care home for disabled people and settles in. She gets to know the staff and the residents and strikes up a friendship with a woman with Down Syndrome called Stephanie (Stephanie Kinkle).

    However, Katie is still troubled by her past and starts hearing voices and seeing the bloody symbol of the cult everywhere. Stephanie also starts feeling ill, she’s taken to the doctor’s but her condition keeps getting worse so Katie decides to use the little knowledge of black magic rituals that she learnt from the cult to make her better.

    Unfortunately, Stephanie just keeps getting worse and Katie’s hallucinations are getting stronger.

    Dementer is a horror movie written and directed by Chad Crawford Kinkle and involves his sister, Stephanie in a pivotal role. However, the problem with Dementer is that there’s so much going on, but little is said about what it all means.

    Katie very quickly escapes the cult at the start of the film and very soon finds a job, but the obvious trauma that she’s experiencing could have been dealt with differently. The mere fact that Katie escaped at all should tell the audience that Katie knows that what was happening was wrong.

    Also, her use of black magic not only tells the audience that she may still be indoctrinated, but that she has learned nothing. There’s a lot left open to interpretation in Dementer and unfortunately a lot of the problems seem to be the lack of logical thought by the main character.

    Chad Crawford Kinkle also says that he built the movie around his sister, wanting to involve her in his work. However, Stephanie is just a plot device with no agency and it seems as if she could have been given a character of her own. There are some great visuals towards the end as Katie’s hallucinations become more prominent, but Dementer is a confusing movie with little solutions to a half baked plot.

  • Lucky: Review

    Lucky: Review

    Lucky: Review – May (Brea Grant) is a successful author. However, one day her publisher tells her that her sales are not going so well and that her next book may be her last. She’s worried about the future, but her husband, Ted (Dhruv Uday Singh) tells her that there’s nothing to worry about and they go to bed. Later that night, May hears a disturbance from downstairs and wakes Ted but he tells her not to worry and that it’s only the man that comes to try and kill them every night.

    Clearly disturbed by this, May investigates the noise and sure enough The Man (Hunter C. Smith) is there waiting for her. After he’s dealt with, May calls the police and tells them what happened and then her and Ted go back to sleep. However, in the morning May is concerned that Ted has no issues with this happening every night. Especially as the man is after her more than him.

    May is left alone in the house and sure enough the man returns and she kills him, after which he disappears. After telling the police yet again about the intruder, she gets the feeling that nobody believes her so she decides to take matters into her own hands.

    Lucky is a horror movie written Brea Grant and directed by Natasha Kermani. Cleverly using metaphors not only about how women are treated in society, but also how women are portrayed in horror, Lucky tells its story in a time that feels more relevant every day. However, it seems that men may only just be realising it.

    May is faced with gaslighting and victim blaming and despite the unusual situation, it doesn’t feel all that outlandish as it clearly gets its message across.

    Grant makes May a likeable character and not the hard-nosed, emotionless woman determined to get to the top as other writers and directors may portray women. Everything she has to fight for is something every woman could relate to even when the thought of her fighting off a serial killer every night could become a little comical.

    Lucky is a film that everyone should watch, especially those who don’t really understand why women have to fight on a daily basis.

  • Necropath: Review

    Necropath: Review

    Scag (Moe Issac) is a junkie looking to get his kicks any way that he can. Alongside his drug addiction he has no qualms about randomly killing people either, so Necropath follows him on his journey across town just as a zombie virus is taking over the population.

    Along the way he meets many characters including a father of business (Nathan Faudree), a lost girl (Lillian Colvin) who’s looking after her sister’s baby and even encounters a mother (Brandy Cihocki) who has recently succumbed to the zombie outbreak.

    The problem is that Necropath is a horror movie with a unique perspective and when you realise that writer/director Joshua Reale has been involved with real life haunted house experiences, it may dawn on you as to why Necropath doesn’t work as a movie.

    The haunted house experience is reliant on a lot of things. Firstly, it needs an audience who are willing to be scared and want to go there in order to laugh and be frightened by the imaginative setting that puts real actors in there with you. Unfortunately, when watching a horror movie most of the audience will be expecting a fright or two, but most will be reluctant to let the horror in. That is unless they’re already anticipating a scare because they don’t like horror anyway.

    Secondly, real life experiences rely on real people being around you and the constant frightening imagery is what they’re going for and not necessarily a decent plot. Even some of the worst horror movies and survival horror games have a little exposition or at least notes left around to tell the audience what is happening and why.

    In haunted house experiences it comes thick and fast with little time to think about too much. However, with a movie, the audience has plenty of time to sit back and if there’s no sign of a plot then they may get bored easily.

    Necropath feels like an experiment of putting the haunted house experience in the living rooms of its audience. The problem is that unless you’re actually physically in another location where you don’t know what’s going to happen, you can always turn off the TV and go to bed.

  • Death Trip: Review

    Death Trip: Review

    Four friends, Kelly (Kelly Kay Hurcomb), Tatyana (Tatyana Olal), Melina (Melina Trimarchi) and Garret (Garret Johnson) all take a trip together to a cottage in the middle of a snowy winter. They’re all very close, particularly Kelly and Garret who have unresolved issues from their past relationship and are looking forward to a few parties and getting drunk.

    There’s also a woman that lives in the cottage next to them who seems to live freely, so they enjoy spying on her and speculating on what her life is like. Then one night Garret witnesses an intruder in their neighbour’s house and the gang start to realise that they may not be alone.

    Death Trip is a horror film directed by James Watts and co-written by Kelly Kay Hurcomb. Starting out, the audience is introduced to the main cast and they all seem to get on like a house on fire, like they’ve known each other for years.

    The script doesn’t give much time to introduce the main characters however, expecting the audience to go along with it and watch as the events develop. After a while it seems that nothing in particular may happen, but the tension slowly builds until Garret’s discovery. Although after a few jump scares and horror tropes, things continue as before.

    Despite some connections between the main cast, there really isn’t much to go on in terms of plot and this may grate on some of the audience. As the foursome go from their party to another, the dialogue and interactions do feel realistic, but it ends up feeling like being invited to a party where you don’t know anybody.

    Then the audience comes to the finale of the movie and the big twist, thus far there really haven’t been anything too horrific in terms of horror, so those expecting a slasher gore fest or a slow burn thriller may be disappointed. The problem is that for those who want what they were expecting only really get it during the last act of the movie.

    Sadly, this is done with little nuance, and what was supposed to be a shocking twist comes across as an out of character moment just brought up to heighten the blood factor. In fact, the last twenty minutes feel like they’re from another movie entirely and may even put off those audience members who had settled down into the party.