Beast Cert: 15 / 104 mins / Dir. Michael Pearce / Trailer
Ah, this is what the Spring months are about. Creeping in under the radar, between the awards-botherers of January and the superhero spandex which will come out of the wardrobe for May, are the smaller more interesting flicks that many moviegoers will miss*1. We've had monsters, psychopaths and ghosts, so the idea of a claustrophobic murder mystery set in suburban Jersey fits right in...
Writer/director's Michael Pearce's Beast is just that. Following Moll (Jessie Buckley), an introverted young woman living on the island with her domineering mother (Geraldine James) and a father in the early stages of Alzheimer's (Tim Woodward), we see her meeting and falling in love with a local handyman and poacher, Pascal (Johnny Flynn). A spate of abductions and murders of young girls has the islanders on-edge, and while nobody dares to point the finger directly at Pascal, he does have a chequered history. Moll, still struggling to come to terms with events in her own past, is torn between the guilt of a family life which is suffocating her, and freedom with a man she knows no-one will trust.
The first thing which hits you about Beast is that it's quite televisual, in a sort of Sunday night, 10pm sort of a way. But you also know that if it had premiered on television, you'd be wondering why it wasn't on at the cinema. The photography here is gorgeous, capturing the vibrant, bleak and poetic landscape in the same way as it does with its cast. From her very first scene, Jessie Buckley's Moll is both unstable and haunting, almost matched by Johnny Flynn in a role which brings to mind a younger, more suave, but still thoroughly unhinged Sean Harris. And while we're on the cast, Geraldine James is also every bit as terrifying as her part requires. Sympathetic characters are thin on the ground, here.
Cinematographer Benjamin Kracun captures a weird, timeless quality on the island, assisted by Jim Williams lingering score. The interior settings often look to be of the late 1970s, but not in a pastiche, Life On Mars sort of way. This just looks like a community which has become left behind without any of the residents noticing. And while there's nothing specifically setting the events in any fixed timeline, the TV reports and news-crews (and the police's use of digital voice recorders) seem to place this in the 21st century, yet we don't see a single mobile phone for the duration.
While the film drops certain clues and easter eggs with regards to the characters' pasts, Pearce doesn't spend too much time tying everything together. Ultimately, this is about shame, remorse, unresolved psychological issues and abusive relationships. It just happens to have a murder-case at the centre of it all.
To say more would be to unpick the plot, and this is really a character-piece. Beast is worth your time for its performances alone; the landscapes are a bonus...
I suspect this will get a fairly limited release, but if you can, sure.
As enjoyable as it is, this will probably be a streamer. Not a huge amount of rewatch value unless you're in love with the Jersey landscape..
Difficult for me to say, but it's solid work all round.
Doubtful.
There isn't.
Level 1: Battle-of-Scarif Rebel pilot Blue Three is in this.
*1 Certainly if tonight's numbers were anything to go by. As an exclusive Unlimited Screening, the only real commitments members face to attend are travel costs and time itself. And the fact that the recent advance showing of Ready Player One was filled wall-to-wall is an indication that most card-holders will make the journey when it matters to them. I can only imagine that with a title like 'Beast', the occupants of tonight's empty seats either assumed the film was a flat-out horror and hadn't bothered, or they'd watched the trailer and realised it was something altogether more weird. Then hadn't bothered. Hey, I don't mind. While I want my cinema to do well, fewer people in the room means - statistically - less chance of me being annoyed with them. Speaking of which, bonus shout-out to the guy in seat G9 directly behind me, who booted the back of my seat every time he fidgeted. Approximately once a minute for the first half-hour… [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
leaden (adj.)
1. Made of lead.
2. Oppressively heavy; sluggish; lacking spirit or animation.
3. Joe Carnahan's screenplay for the objective-free 2018 remake of Death Wish.
So, is 2018 the best or worst time for a post-modern deconstruction of the fragility of 21st century Western masculinity and gun-control issues? Well, don't you worry about that! Eli Roth has remade Death Wish with Bruce Willis, so troublesome questions will receive all the ponderous scrutiny you'd see from Donald Trump at a salad bar. This film is about as heavyweight as the single sheet of A4 it was pitched on, and every bit as layered...
I imagine we're all vaguely familiar with the plot setup of Death Wish, but here it is anyway: hard working, blue-collar (well, an ER doctor) family man Bruce Willis*1 is out of the house one night when a burglary by some local thugs goes wrong. This leaves his wife dead and daughter hospitalised. Like anyone, Bruce's first reaction is to seek revenge on the escaped perpetrators, because the goddamned cops just can't seem to get the job done. Like anyone in a film, he manages to acquire firearms illegally*2 and begin his gruesome task. There's some shooting, some crying, some more shooting and eventually the same cops let him get away with it because he's a vigilante who is white*3.
But y'know what? This is A Saturday Night Movie and I watched it on a Saturday night*4, so has anyone really been conned?
The central plot-conceit of Willis hunting his family's attackers is at least more of a driving force in this telling*6, but the amount of actual detective work our doctor has to do is kept to a bare minimum, as there are apparently only about twelve criminals in Chicago, so everything falls into his lap in short order. If only the rest of the Death Wish was so efficient.
When the cast aren't discussing exactly what's just happened in the previous scene or what they think is going to occur in the next, they verbalise their feelings and inner monologues, since apparently that's as good as them doing acting. Willis has the look of a man who does not want to be here, and every disinterested grimace brought to mind Kevin Smith's anecdotes about his time on Cop-Out. One suspects that director Eli Roth 'got the moon' on this particular set.
Roth's not that interested in the sleuth work, and he's certainly not in this for the moral ambiguity. Nope, uncle Eli has rocked up for the grudge-match gunfire, but even this is bereft of the unbridled joy he's brought to such endeavours in the past. If this had been Tarantino and two decades earlier, the screenplay might have gotten away with seeming ironic. In 2018 it just feels dated, even (especially) with Memes™ shoehorned in as horrifically as Bastille Day's use of #Hashtags.
When the finale eventually cruises into view, you know the director's been waiting for it every bit as much as he hopes the audience have. As so often in real life, the violence is short, messy and oddly anti-climactic. Maybe that's the real message of the film?
While I'm thankful that Death Wish is nowhere near as grubby as Knock Knock, it's clear that Roth's not trying to make anything unique, here. And since the original film has a further 4 sequels (the last in 1994), you have to wonder what the point is, if there's no new angle being presented.
With Bruce skulking around the back streets in his hoodie, this feels like an unofficial, ramped-up sequel to Unbreakable, which would have been more interesting at least. And if the final scene in Split is anything to go by, it would have been far funnier as well...*7
Things like Homefront.
It's not.
Streaming / £3 DVD, max.
It's not.
That's conceivable.
There isn't.
Level 2: Bruce Willis was in Unbreakable with Sam 'Windu' Jackson.
*1 He has a character-name in this, but I'm not going to use it because it's not important. Bruce Willis has been cast because he looks, sounds and acts like Bruce Willis™. He certainly didn't get the part because he was eager, but we'll get to that... [ BACK ]
*2 Bruce Willis™ is a surgeon in this, you see. A bad man came into the hospital on a trolley and a 3-kilo handgun fell out of his pocket and onto the hard, hospital floor, but it did this silently so that Bruce Willis was able to surreptitiously pick it up without his colleagues or anyone in the corridor seeing him do it. Also, there's a bit in a gun shop where the assistant tells him (practically winking to the camera with both eyes) that passing the minimal safety training for owning a handgun is really easy. This is probably supposed to come off as 21st century satire, but given that everyone in the cinema has come specifically to watch Bruce Willis shoot people in the face, I'm not sure who the butt of the joke is supposed to be. [ BACK ]
*3 Truth be told this aspect isn't even addressed in the film, but I really don't think it needs to be since anyone who watches the news knows how this shit would go down in real life with a white vigilante and a black one. [ BACK ]
*4 A Saturday evening screening of a revenge-shooter attracts an audience which could be described as... how best to put this... 'casual'. Fidgety, chortley*5, and remarkably hungry, the guy next to me had brought his own pretzels. And not in a crinkly-bag, but a fucking foot-long jar. Hey, I'm not the snack police, and while at least he wasn't rustling the wrapper, the upshot was that I had to hear him chewing for most of the movie. Which was still better than a lot of the dialogue. [ BACK ]
*5 And while I'm on, a special shout-out to my fellow patron who exclaimed his appreciation of the script's sardonic jokes in a manner which sounded like a seal operating an air-horn. People with annoying laughs aren't particularly unusual of course, but the same guy had barked through the deapan one-liners in both Ghost StoriesandThoroughbreds that day. Seriously, I know I can't be the only one who goes out for a #FilmDay, but I do that for my own enjoyment, not to inflict my enjoyment back on the auditorium. And yes, a footnote within a footnote. Isn't it, though?[ BACK ]
*6 I mean, let's not lionise the 1974 original movie. Sure, it was 'first', but Michael Winner directs like it's a 1960s TV commercial. [ BACK ]
*7 Which, one assumes, would be right up Seal-Boy's alley... [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
As the third-entry in a recent four movie marathon, Cory Finley's Thoroughbreds was something of a wildcard. The performance-time fitted neatly into my schedule, and I'd seen the trailer once several weeks previously, although I couldn't remember much about it. With this in mind, I felt somewhat unprepared as I sat down in screen 4*1, which is probably why I can't decide if Thoroughbreds is interestingly uneven or completely magnificent.
In an upmarket suburb of Connecticut, troubled high school student Amanda (Olivia Cooke) receives unexpected help with her coursework from the highly-strung but highly intelligent Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy). When Amanda learns that Lily's home-life is even more fraught with tension than her own, the two form a precarious bond and begin to wonder if murder might be a solution…
Well. This felt like hiding in a broom-cupboard during someone else's group therapy session, and if that idea fills you with horror then Thoroughbreds won't be for you. This is very much a performance-piece, bouncing between Olivia Cooke's oddly-detached Amanda and the concealed seething of Anya Taylor-Joy's Lily. Taylor-Joy is dependable as always, although it's great to see her again in a more dramatically-demanding part (cf). Anton Yelchin has a smaller role than the publicity-machine would perhaps suggest (his last, sadly), as low-rent potential assassin Tim, but his presence brings a more human sense of comic-uncertainty (and at times, panic) to the proceedings. He almost feels too likeable for a film which doesn't particularly want to be liked.
Cooke, on the other hand, is the pleasant surprise here. It's not inaccurate to say that I've struggled with her past performances, feeling an emotive disconnect between the actress and the camera. So when Olivia rocks up here as a character with an empathic dissociative disorder, someone incapable of feeling an emotional response to anything, even I can't explain why I suddenly found her to be more relatable than ever*2. Far from being uncomprehending in her responses to people, Amanda reads emotions in others flawlessly, using them to her own advantage with the unclouded logic of someone unencumbered with guilt or even morality. Very much my kind of psychopath*3.
The mechanics of Cory Finley's story are effective, even if any twists in the road are signposted well in advance. But the heart of the film is as morally dysfunctional as its protagonists, not quite willing to endorse their behavioural breakdowns, but not flinching away from showing them anyway.
And cinematographer Lyle Vincent's lengthy 'sofa shot' in the third act, complete with its crawling zoom, is a work of art in itself. Bravo.
Thoroughbreds won't get the exposure it deserves this early in its release, but the natural home of this movie is that unnerving and unexpected surprise on the streaming service of your choice…
To rent/stream, sure. Most people won't get much out of repeat screenings.
Then again, you're not most people, right?
Let's not go mad, but everyone involved can be pleased with what they've made.
I wouldn't have thought so.
There isn't.
Level 2: Anya Taylor-Joy's in this, and she was in The VVitch with Ralph 'Garmuth' Ineson and Kate 'Hux's First Order Monitor Who Apparently Doesn't Have A Character Name Yet' Dickie. Seriously guys, she's got dialogue in The Last Jedi, Garmuth doesn't. Get her a name already…
*1 Although I have it on good authority that this is how many people choose watch movies; just turn up at the cinema and see what's on. This seems like a borderline insane scheduling of free time, but I have to concede that as someone who keeps a blog-assisting spreadsheet, I'm very much at the other end of that particular scale... [ BACK ]
*2 Although I suspect that says more about me as the audience than Cooke as the performer, admittedly... [ BACK ]
*3 Like I said, this admiration reflects upon me, I know. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Well it's not often I get to walk out of a horror movie, excited by how much I loved it and just glad to be back in the light of the foyer. To do this twice in one week seems unheard of*1.
Ghost Stories is an anthology-format feature film from Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson, adapted from their stage play of the same name. In it, Nyman plays Professor Phillip Goodman, a paranormal investigator who specialises in debunking claims of the supernatural and exposing charlatans on the 'stage medium' circuit. When he's called to a dilapidated caravan park in Yorkshire by Charles Cameron, a retired debunker and one of Phillip's similarly-minded idols, our hero is presented with three 'unsolved' cases. Speaking with the originators of each experience, Goodman slowly realises that something connects their inexplicable stories, and that link may be closer to home than he likes...
Now on paper, this should be a pretty standard affair. Although titled Ghost Stories, this is, make no bones about it, a horror film*2. With segments taking place in an abandoned asylum and a car which breaks down in the woods at night, it's not so much that the film is 'textbook' in its approach, more that this is a lesson being taught with that textbook.
The nested storytelling is like an Inception of the macabre, beginning with urban decay, slamming doors and an escalating sense of suffocation. The third tale in Goodman's investigation goes to the windswept moors and a spacious, empty nursery, changing gears with unfettered agoraphobia, reminding the characters and audience alike that they're not safe anywhere*3.
Ghost Stories is, quite frankly, terrifying. Gleefully sadistic in its scares, even though it's a celebration of well-used mechanics in the genre. For the seasoned horror fan, the film acts as its own challenge to the cynical, as we become Goodman, the skeptic being preached to from all sides on the importance of belief, but still stubbornly waiting to be scared by the ride.
The roots as a stage-performance are evident throughout, but this adds to the intensity of the piece. Nyman and Dyson understand on a fundamental level that having someone hear strange noises in a derelict building isn't scary. Horror lies more in fear of the unknown than the reveal (which is why you generally don't show the monster in a first act), but to convey that sense of utter dread, the viewer needs to relate to the character experiencing it. Enter Paul Whitehouse and Alex Lawther, separately recounting their supernatural encounters and assuring the twitching audience that they'd fare no better in the same situations. The performances all-round are an acting masterclass. Martin Freeman is also in the film.
Each story seems to end without a definitive payoff (other than the knowledge that the teller of each tale survived to relay it to the interviewer), but it's all wrapped up in the finale. Ghost Stories' pulling together of the threads is magnificent. Again, there's little actual twist in 'the twist' if you're sitting second-guessing, but the storytelling follows the rules of the genre with absolute distinction.
These are the creative fruits of the tree watered with Hammer House of Horror and books that we were too scared to open*4. A movie which knows the key difference between telling its audience when to be frightened, and just frightening its audience.
Ghost Stories is masterful. As someone who has seen enough mediocre horror to have become thoroughly bored with the genre, I can give this no higher recommendation...
Tales Of The Unexpected, The League of Gentlemen and, oddly enough, Mindhorn.
It is.
All of the above.
It could well be.
We wouldn't disagree about this because you'll love it, too.
Won't you.
*1 I'm afraid I don't really categorise my reviews by genre, so it's more than the work of a few clicks to backtrack and find out, I'm afraid. As regular readers will be aware, I'm as harshly critical on horror as I am comedy (each having a very specific brief), so I know for a fact that me liking two horror flicks within the same half of a year is unusual, never mind in the same week... [ BACK ]
*2 Back in August, I told Mrs Blackout (who doesn't like horror movies) she'd love A Ghost Story as it's not a horror but an actual story about ghosts. Ghost Stories, on the other hand, is co-helmed by Jeremy Dyson, whose televisual and literary work she enjoys, yet she'd make it about seven minutes into this film before having to leave the room... [ BACK ]
*3 Speaking of the audience, there was an advert for Taylor Swift's UK stadium tour in front of this film. That's not an unusual type of product in itself, but there's normally some broad demographic link (a similar promo ran for N*ckleback in front of The Huntsman) - that's generally how advertising works. But the Taylor Swift advert didn't run before A Wrinkle In Time on the same day. Who do the film distributors think is watching Ghost Stories, exactly? [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
