‘Saint Nicholas won’t be coming this year’. This isn’t your traditional Christmas film. Oh no.
This is an original horror film, and there’s not many of those around these days. Apart from the brilliant Norwegian film ‘Rare Exports’ there have been little other takes on this Germanic legend. For those who are not familiar with Krampus, he is the dark side of Santa, his shadow, an entity that punishes children who have been bad and drags them down to Hell.
Krampus opens brightly with scenes deploring the greed of commercialism, as we watch swathes of shoppers ransacking a Walmart days before Christmas. We come to the Engel family, your typical dysfunctional family made up of the work–centric father, unfulfilled housewife, moody teenager and naïve son, Max. And it is Max who sets this madness off, by angrily tearing up his letter to Santa Claus and throwing it out of the window. The pieces fly off into the distance and signal the start of the worst Christmas the Engel’s have ever seen.
What’s more the extended family arrive, bratty kids, gun-toting father, alcoholic great-aunt, you get the picture. It’s going to be hell, but not the way they imagined… A snowstorm breaks out, trapping the residents of the suburban town and taking away their electricity. One by one the townsfolk are picked off as Krampus and his legions wreak havoc.
The cast are very good. Toni Collette, Adam Scott and David Koechner all know how to switch between comedy and drama with the flick of a switch. Scott really excels as the father desperate to protect his family in this crazy situation.
The film loses its way around the sixty-minute mark, but the ride up to that point makes it worthwhile to hang on. The tricky balance between comedy and horror might be the reason for the lack of pace in the third act; the film doesn’t know if it wants to be very scary or very silly. But that’s part of the charm; like in Gremlins it jumps between laughs and scares. Indeed there are nods to many 80’s horror films from Gremlins to Poltergeist. You’ll either love the killer gingerbread men or hate them.
A brilliant premise and a fun cast make this horror a worthwhile watch.
PLEASE DON’T READ IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS. SPOILERS ABOUND.
The Good
Star Wars: The Force Awakens looks and “feels” more like a Star Wars pic than any pic since 1983’s Return of the Jedi, without a shadow of a doubt. More than the prequel trilogy, the animated Clone Wars movie or series, the Lego films, the videogame tie-ins, anything. The way each scene “wipes” into the next, the matte backdrops (or at least, they looked as though they were matte backdrops), the decision to keep as much of the action as possible in-camera – all perfect. The characters themselves, in both look and intent, spot on. I mean, just look at all the characters introduced since RotJ: Plo Koon, anyone? Kit Fisto? Jar Jar? They all felt like those rather irritating “Expanded Universe” types, not proper “movie canon”. But Maz Kanata and her assorted Takodana denizens fitted right in for me, as did the folk occupying the Tattooine-like Jakku (I appreciate that many of the “new” character and place names are taken from the expanded universe but it’s all about picking/choosing which ones to bring to life, and how that’s done). And I loved the Rathtars, the Lovecraftian monstrosities being hauled by Han and Chewie at the point of their reintroduction into the proceedings. And I didn’t mind the numerous nods and winks back to the old movies at all, I felt these touches helped ground us, the audience, back in the Star Wars universe.
Oh, and I really liked Adam Driver as Kylo Ren. Jarred a little when he removed his mask only to resemble Marilyn Manson aged 13¾, but he did well and he’ll grow into the role, assuming the character’s not dead already.
Kylo Ren: The Beautiful People
The Bad
Too many contrivances, and too many unanswered questions, some of which I appreciate come as a result of this being only part of a larger tale but many of which come, I suspect, as a result of Star Wars: The Force Awakens not working within its own logic. Rey and Finn had to skedaddle, pronto, off of Jakku, and just happened to steal The Millennium Falcon? And they then just happened to get swallowed up by a Baleen freighter manned by none other than Han Solo and Chewbacca, who themselves had apparently been seeking The Millennium Falcon for some time? How big is this bloody far, far away galaxy anyway? I’d find that sequence of coincidences unlikely even if the universe was confined entirely to my street in “wonderful” Pitsea.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens didn’t leave me very sure about the recent political history of its universe, or how any of that worked. So, The First Order is a relatively new uprising, headed by this Snoke guy, is that right? Why are they rising up from the lovely Republic, which I assumed regained control from the horrible old Empire after RotJ? They don’t look like a recent insurgence, they look exactly like the old Empire. Which I suppose makes a lot of sense if one considers the destruction of the second Death Star and the deaths of the Emperor and Darth Vader to be a mere lost battle rather than a lost war. I mean, the infrastructure of the Empire would still have been vast, wouldn’t it? Someone else would’ve just become “Emperor” instead, right? Okay then. So why is this “First Order” being sold as a new development? What’s been the state of play for the last three decades? Did Leia and the Republic at some stage lose all of the ground they’d won in defeating the Empire the first time? In which case, why’s she still in power? Who are the “resistance” and who are the “Republic”? I’m sure there are answers to all of this, but the reasons for the maintenance of the same old status quo ‘twixt the Sleek-and-Mighty-Empire Bad Guys and the Rag-Tag-Rebellion Good Guys seem disconcertingly vague at this point, and I don’t feel that that’s going to be addressed except in some wafty Expanded Universe graphic novel or fan-fic or somesuch. And did I miss something or did the end come for that Starkiller planet a bit… well, quickly? One second, raging dogfights! Next… Explosion! It didn’t have the same resonance as Luke hitting that two-metre target – using only the force, no less – and blowing the first Death Star way back when.
The characters about whom we’re supposed to care the most; Rey, Finn, Poe etc.: Still woefully flat, low on charm or charisma. Now, I’ve stuck this in amongst what I consider to be the “bad” points of the movie since, in and of itself, characterless characters are always an inherently bad thing in a story. BUT, clunky dialogue and weakly drawn characters have been a by-product of George Lucas’ penmanship from the very beginning, so for all I know JJ Abrams’ decision to underdevelop his characters was a conscious one, made in order to keep those characters consistent with the Star Wars universe as it already existed. So, in that light, I guess it could almost be applauded to make Finn and co so one-note. Almost. I’m not going to, though. Daisy Ridley mostly just looked pained-yet-determined, John Boyega mostly just looked flustered. Quick, something’s happening! Daisy, look pained-yet-determined! John, look flustered! I mean, I shouldn’t complain on this matter too hard; Rey and Finn are Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega compared to the f*cking breadsticks with whom we were expected to empathize from the prequel trilogy, but still.
Why was Gwendoline Christie cast as Captain Phasma? Never took her helmet off, there was no mileage given to the decision to cast her or to make the character a female whatsoever. I don’t get it.
Also: I quite liked BB8, more than I thought I was going to given how heavily they’ve leant on him in promoting the movie. Still, they managed to overplay him all the same. Was he that vital? No.
I feel that this new batch of movies came too late for the original trilogy cast members. The only character with any true relevance to the plot they’ve elected to pursue was/is that of Luke Skywalker. The rest of them didn’t need to be in it, and shouldn’t have been. I don’t want to see them like that. Han Solo? More like Ken Barlow. And Leia looked like the first truly bad special effect in the movie, until I realised that that was just her face. Harrison Ford lobbied hard many years ago to have Han Solo killed off at some point in Return of the Jedi, to add weight to the eventual Rebel victory, so’s it wouldn’t come without great personal sacrifice for our protagonists (and, by proxy, for the audience), as wars always do, of course. He finally got his wish but, at the character’s age and at this point of his brief re-entry into the melee, it didn’t carry anywhere near as much weight as it might’ve once upon a time, even accounting for the father/son dynamic, which felt like naught but a shoehorned stab at lending the situation some fast and unearned gravitas (and, as with Ben’s demise in Star Wars, you could see it coming a mile off). I didn’t feel shocked or saddened at the loss of arguably the best character of the entire franchise, I just felt a degree of relief; partly for Harrison Ford but mostly for myself, that I wouldn’t now be subjected to watching him stagger about in another movie in 2017, and then possibly another in 2019, by which point Harrison would be 108 years old I believe. And as for C-3PO: Why is this f*cking character still in this tale? Worse than Jar Jar and far more pointless, always has been. They made decent use of him in Return of the Jedi with the Ewoks, and that’s it. And he’s been in all seven movies.
Ken v Han: Spot the Difference
Ultimately though, did I like it? Well, I did like it, yes. For all my griping I think that Star Wars: The Force Awakens was better than a Star Wars pic had any right to be at this stage. Considerably better. The spectacle from the original trilogy was there, as was the familiarity I expected from the prequel trilogy (but didn’t get). That said, the plot holes and contrivances may have been okay for a kiddie to skim over (fwiw my son, almost twelve, bloody LOVED it, from start to finish) but they were a little too insurmountable for me to be able to truly lose myself in the picture, and I suspect that this movie won’t be as beloved by its child audience in decades to come as the original trilogy is by its child audience as they’ve grown up. And nothing in Star Wars: The Force Awakens allayed my concerns that Disney are ultimately going to strangle this particular golden goose. I very much hope I’m wrong on that score. We shall see.
Like the music to Jurassic Park, the Star Wars theme conjures up certain Proustian feelings when it’s heard. Sitting in the black of an IMAX theatre John Williams’ soaring score elicits a certain sense of nostalgia, combined with a sense of anticipation. Luckily this film finds the perfect balance between nostalgia and awe. It reminds us of the past but makes sure our eyes are firmly set on the future. It’s a movie for the child in all of us. I found myself smiling through every second of it.
Thirty years after the Death Star was blown up, Luke Skywalker has gone missing. During this time the First Order have risen from the ashes of the Galactic Empire and their mission is to crush the resistance, led by General Leia Organa. The film focuses on Finn (Boyega) a former stormtrooper who unwittingly becomes involved in the resistance, when he meets Rey on Jakku, where she is living in the hope that her parents will return for her.
It is a credit to JJ Abrams that they have used practical effects so often in this film rather than overloading on the C.G.I. This film recaptures the magic that was lost in the prequels and goes back to simple storytelling, great characters and wondrous locations.
It also helps that this is possibly the funniest of all the Star Wars films. There are lots of nods to older films in which the damsel in distress is saved by the hero. These tropes are subverted through humorous lines like ‘I can run without you holding my hand’. The film even laughs at the people who take issue with Finn’s skin colour: ‘This is what resistance people look like. Well not all of us but some of us do’.
Harrison Ford threatens to steal every scene he’s in but it his chemistry with the two young stars that gives the film its energy. John Boyega is great as the playful Finn and a star is born in Daisy Ridley’s Rey. Such is the popularity of Star Wars that celebrities are happy to make cameos, no matter how small, from Simon Pegg’s turn as a greedy alien to Daniel Craig’s role as a weak-minded Stormtrooper.
Comparisons between this film and the original are inevitable but this film does so much more than merely replicate its predecessors. It builds on the universe, gives us a story to care about and a villain to truly despise. Adam Driver excels as the pernicious Kylo Ren.
The Force Awakens left me eager for another trip to the galaxy far far away. In my eyes, that’s mission accomplished.
Writer/Director Mark Bousfield’s short film Ghost Nets, filmed at Joss Bay on the Kent coast, sends three very different people on a camping trip. The dramatic tension from the start combined with the cold, beautiful yet hostile environment, reflects their relationship.
As the story progresses, so too do the necessary but damaging revelations between the brothers. The film benefits from excellent camera work and performances from Joe Sowerbutts, Charlotte Mounter and Bruce Lawrence. The dramatic and dominating soundtrack became a distraction in an environment where crow and seagull cries combined with crashing waves should have been the major accompaniment.
Reminiscent of Raymond Carver’s story So much water so close to home, Bousfield’s film is a morally ambiguous tale where one is left with the question, who is saving whom?
Ghost Nets will be coming to a film festival near you.
Zombi 2, released as Zombie in the USA and as Zombie Flesh Eaters in the UK, is an Italian made exploitation horror which, due to it’s gratuitous scenes of gore, ended up getting caught up in the ‘Video Nasty’ nonsense of the early 1980’s. It’s directed by the respected Lucio Fulci, who made a few decent Giallo films and Spaghetti Westerns before dedicating his time to horror and gore. The original screenplay that this was adapted from was designed to serve as a sequel to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead
The film tells the story of a zombie outbreak on a Carribean island, possibly caused by voodoo, or possibly by infection. This is unfortunately never really resolved anywhere in the plot. It begins with a seemingly abandoned boat intercepted in New York harbour. During the search of the boat, two patrolmen are attacked by a zombie – one is killed and the other manages to open fire on it and force it over the edge and into the sea. A girl is questioned by the police and claims that the boat belongs to her father, who is conducting research on the Carribean island of Matul. The girl, along with a reporter, travel to Matul to seek out her father after she discovers he’s allegedly suffering from a strange illness.
The infamous eye splinter scene
It’s perhaps best to start with the parts of the movie that worked before moving on to its flaws. The scenes that are most likely to spring to mind when remembering the film are the ones containing the excessive gore that led to the video nasty label – and of those, the one that will stay in memory the longest will be the eye splinter scene. No discussion of Zombi 2 is complete without mentioning this little work of art. A zombies arm smashes through a flimsy door and grabs hold of a woman’s head whilst she pointlessly attempts to barricade the door with an extremely small, yet apparently very heavy cupboard, pulling her slowly, inch by inch, towards a large wooden splinter nicely positioned in line with her eye. The splinter eventually penetrates her jelly-like eyeball. It’s a scene that would make most viewers wince and is certainly up there in cinemas top ‘eye trauma’ moments. As is to be expected, the effects have dated a little but, considering the age of the film and the low budget that it was made on, it does still look very good and I’ve seen much worse in more modern movies with bigger budgets.
This, incidentally, is where the film succeeds; excellent make-up effects and gore. In many old movies of this genre, you see zombies that look relatively normal, as if they only died a few hours ago, except for the fact they have tatty or dirty clothing and pale skin, and maybe a bit of blood smeared around the mouth. Not in this movie! The zombies here look properly decayed, rotten and putrid. Worms and maggots are visible in tattered clothing, and in open eye sockets. They move very slowly, one painful and awkward step at a time, the way you’d expect if their muscles had wasted away. The make-up techniques that produce the gore effects are also done very well and, for the most part, work flawlessly. They’re completely and necessarily over the top, and certainly have the effect of making you wish you hadn’t eaten just before watching – especially the many scenes containing chunks of flesh being bitten greedily out of arms, necks, or any other easily accessible part of the body. Before I move onto the films flaws, it’s also worth mentioning the excellent score from Fabio Frizzi, which did a fine job in adding some much-needed atmosphere to the film with it’s creepy, undulating, synthesised tones.
The zombies enjoy a tasty looking lady
But… gore scenes alone don’t make a good movie. The acting on show here, and especially the awkward dialogue, is pretty darn terrible. The whole drama might as well have been investigated by Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Gang, who would have felt more at ease with the incredibly corny, ham-fisted lines. The film also contained a huge amount of gaping plot holes and continuity errors; so many that it was virtually on a par with Schwarzenegger’s Commando – and that takes some doing! This unfortunately transformed what could have been a quality horror movie, into something that would be better described as ‘so bad, it’s good’. An example of this is the zombie in an imaginative underwater fight with a shark; a wonderfully unique scene for sure and not the easiest thing in the world to film, but the fact that the zombie was managing to swim so elegantly and had air bubbles escaping out of its nose and mouth did not go unnoticed. Another example is the scene with the highly inefficient Molotov cocktails that produced lots of very temporary flames; each time a new one was thrown, the flames from the previous one seemed to have vanished.
Mega Shark vs Zombie. Coming soon on the SyFy channel
Of course, we do expect a certain level of ‘badness’ to the dialogue and acting when it comes to Italian exploitation cinema and its atrocious dubbing. Argento’s movies were no different in that respect, but where the two directors differ is in creativity behind the camera. Argento makes up for the flaws by treating the audience to an audio-visual master class, along with some wonderfully inventive camera work. Fulci, on the other hand, is far less creative. His direction, particularly in this film, feels rather flat and uninspired, and the camera work, which largely entails slow pan after slow pan, feels one dimensional. Many shots just seem to linger that little bit too long and would have benefitted from some subtle trimming in the cutting room. The film is rather dull between the gore scenes, lacking any real tension and relying totally on the score for atmosphere, and the film seems to take too long to really get going. When it does, it becomes difficult to take seriously – which brings me to my main issue with this type of movie.
How do you make a zombie, that’s half rotten and can only move at a speed of a metre per minute, dangerous? There are only two possible ways: either have hundreds upon hundreds of them, all tightly packed, making them very difficult to escape from. Or failing that – if you only have a few zombies available and probably no more than fifty spread across a whole island – make sure all the characters are totally inept. It’s that second route that Zombie 2 decides to travel down. A good example of this is the “I’ve bust my ankle in the middle of escaping from zombies, I’d better take a lie down in this ancient graveyard to recuperate” moment. Or the moment near the end where the woman sees two zombies moving across the room towards her, so she backs up against the wall and screams pointlessly for at least a couple of minutes, despite the fact that the zombies are shuffling towards her at the speed of an arthritic centenarian with a Zimmer frame, and the woman clearly has an open doorway right by the side of her to escape through.
So in summary, I feel that the success of the film is possibly more to do with the brilliance of Frizzi and the skill of make-up artist Giannetto De Rossi than it is to do with Fulci’s work behind the camera. It’s probably worth watching for the excellent make-up effects, the eye splinter scene, the laughably inventive zombie vs shark fight, and maybe also for the unintentionally amusing dialogue and plot. But it’s not the best zombie movie out there and it doesn’t work in any way, shape, or form as a sequel to Dawn of the Dead. It’s not even Fulci’s best film, and it’s most certainly not the masterpiece it’s sometimes purported to be.
