Writer & Director - Eric Steele
Stars - Tosca BellLaura Montgomery BennettBrian Dunne
2021, UK
A traumatised social worker is assigned a boy who
believes himself to be a vampire. He’s a sad sack vampire that brings out her
maternal delusions. The low budget is forgivable, and the mutation is great, but
there’s a fundamentally unconvincing quality that it can’t overcome.
Claw
Director- Gerald Rascionato
Writers - Gerald Rascionato & Joel Hogan
Stars - Chynna Walker, Richard Rennie & Mel Mede
USA, 2021
Raptor in a ghost town. This is one of those agreeably light-natured monster flicks where the writing transcends any budgetary constraints. The three lead performances and characters are convincing, likeable and above average; and even the CGI, augmented with model-work, is mostly convincing. The “one year later” overbalances things, but there’s enough goodwill here to make this an undemanding winner.
GAIA
Director - Jaco Bouwer
Writer - Tertius Kapp
Stars - Monique Rockman, Carel Nel, Alex van Dyk
After a clumsy set-up to get or protagonist where she’s
going – “Hey, a strange man just smashed my drone. I’m just going deep into the
forest to get it back.” – forest Ranger Gabi (Rockson) ends up in the care of two
survivalists when she is injured. What follows is a mixture of the body- and
eco-horrors. And the terrors of fanaticism. It mixes criticism of the
technological world, but also of unmoored home-made faiths against the
creepiness and aggression of nature. However, its ambiguities trend towards
garbled rather than abstract, so it’s intent and sense of striking visuals are
what resonate the most.
When the Screaming Starts
Director - Conor Boru
Writers - Conor Boru & Ed Hartland
UK, 2021
Norman just wants to make a documentary about the growth
of a serial killer, from aspiration to legend. But Aidan is somewhat a hapless
subject, in love with idea of murder-as-fame but not quite killer material.
Luckily he and his murder-obsessed girlfriend have the plan to start a cult, a’la
Charles Manson (but without the racism). It’s a mockumentary style that owes a
lot to ‘The Office’ and so on, but doesn’t convince as a documentary
mock-up at all – editing, multiple angles, etc. – but this doesn’t matter so
much as there are several good jokes and good ensemble acting (“We’re going to
start a family!”; or the game where they have to eliminate candidates for
serial killers on gender and race; and although Katherine Bennett-Fox dominates
as the real deal, I had a soft spot for Ysen Atour as Jack whose cheeky-chappy
London fishmonger exterior hides a repulsive murderer). Although it doesn’t
quite say anything deep about the perversity of murder-as-fame, it covers most
bases – the losers looking for agency; those looking just for the pose; the oddballs;
the truly psychotic – and is always entertaining.
Shadow of the Cat
La Sombra Del Gato
Director - José María Cicala
With – Danny Trejo, Peter O'Brien, Mónica Antonópulos,
Clara Kovacic, Guillermo Zapata.
Argentina 202
Starts out with the heightened reality typical of many bildungsroman with young Emma skipping everywhere around her family’s isolated farm and greeting everything with a perpetual smile of the joys of the quirks of her life. Very quickly, it’s obvious ‘Shadow of the Cat’ is going to be visually rich and full of tricks. Then Emma runs away to find the truth about her mother and straight into the clutches of a sect, whereupon we are more into horror-fantasy, the kind popularised more by Guillermo del Toro. It speeds along and its giddy nature is always in danger of incoherence, but it’s pretty, lively and its strangeness and carnivalesque essence are vibrant and entertaining.
No comments:
Post a Comment