Saturday night at the movies, who cares what picture you see? As long as someone gets beaten to death with a tape-dispenser and all the office-workers in the audience grin and silently fist-bump. Greg McLean's The Belko Experiment is a non-supernatural horror movie which is not for the faint of heart (relatively few films actually get an 18-certificate these days).
During an apparently normal working day, a seven-story building full of administrators for the mysterious Belko Corportation is put on enforced lockdown, whereby employees are informed by an unknown agency that they're to begin systematically reducing their numbers by any means possible. With no particularly favourable way out, the group begins dividing into leaders and followers, survivors and compliers, killers and victims.
The Belko Experiment is exactly the film it sounds like, and is all the better for it. The opening scenes are packed with background exposition and visual-callback setups, but at a lean 89 minutes, it wastes absolutely no time in getting to the starting line of having eighty colleagues holed up and panicking. The film's not particularly incisive with its social satire, and it's not even trying to be that clever. It's just gleefully amoral and nihilistic, not offering any solutions, just underlining the problem which has always been humanity's biggest enemy: other humans*1. Much like The Walking Dead, the plot-structure means that pretty much any of the characters can die at pretty much any point, without warning or justification (albeit often with ecstatic poetic licence).
Given the outlandish nature of the movie in general, it's fairly solidly performed all round, with strong leads from John Gallagher Jr, Adria Arjona and Tony Goldwin, a fairly easy paycheck for Michael Rooker (although the employees aren't going to stay trapped in the building for long with the amount of scenery John C. McGinley's chewing his way through, surely?). And when the James Gunn-penned flick opens with José Prieto's Yo Vivire, you just know this is going to be fun. Outside of the orchestrated score, the film's song-selection is often camp, always arch and never over-egged. Oh, and bonus point for the old-school Orion Pictures ident, too. Fantastic stuff.
The Belko Experiment was never going to redefine the genre, but if you get no enjoyment out of it then you obviously don't spend forty hours a week trapped in a building with beige electronics and idiots…
Don't know if I'd go quite that far, not that it makes the film any less glorious.
No.
No.
Level 2: This flick's got that Michael Rooker in it, and he was in 2008's Jumper alongside Hayden 'Skywalker' Christensen.
*1 Although it's 2017 for crying out loud, if the film's sharpest stick is 'people are awful by default', that's hardly a point which needs reinforcing, now is it?[ 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.
Prisoners (Spoiler-free)
Cert: 15 / 153 mins / Dir. Denis Villeneuve
Well, the good news is that Prisoners isn't quite the 2½ hour downer the trailer might suggest. I mean, it's still quite hard work, obviously, but Villeneuve ensures there's a tension which grips you, rather than a malaise which smothers. Most of the scenes in the trailer occur in the first act of the film, and once the girls have been confirmed as missing, a larger puzzle starts to appear. The main thread with the children is never put on the back burner, as such, but the backstory behind their abduction certainly comes to the fore as both families struggle to cope as best they can in their absence.
Now the opening act sets a very claustrophobic tone, focusing on the reactions of Jackman, Howard, Davis and Bello as the girls' parents (unfortunately Zoe Borde and Dylan Minnette get slightly shortchanged as the older children of each family), and it's suitably uncomfortable to watch as shock and panic set in while the police begin their investigations. Once Jake Gyllenhaal's Detective Loki becomes involved, the film becomes a little more like a standard Mystery Thriller, as clues and red herrings are laid out and things take a more disturbing turn as Jackman's Keller Dover begins to lose the plot. Also keeping the audience on its collective toes are Paul Dano, Melissa Leo and David Dastmalchian, all trying to out-weird each other, and all pretty much succeeding. The power of this film lies in the first watch, so avoid spoilers where possible*1.
At two and a half hours, it does start to creak under its weight a little, although nothing's deliberately dragged out, it's just not a ninety minute story. Director Denis Villeneuve and writer Aaron Guzikowski take great care to tease the plot out at its own speed, and make the audience complicit in some of the more disturbing scenes of the film, by virtue of witnessing them through the eyes of other characters. When it's exploring guilt, vigilantism, penance and vengeance, Prisoners is masterfully done; the rest of the time it's a solid (if reliable) thriller. If it doesn't force you to ask yourself some questions then you're probably not paying attention.
It's not an easy watch, and at many points it's reminiscent of a made-for-TV thriller, but Prisoners is saved by fantastic performances from Jackman, Gyllenhaal, Leo and Dano. It's not necessarily a cinema-movie, but recommended all the same.
Kinda. The trailer only tells the opening act, though.
Yeah.
I'm pretty sure it does.
As good as it is, it's a DVD.
No.
At some point, maybe, but the first-watch is where the power lies.
There isn't.
You'd think Wolverine and War Machine, working together, would have gotten to the bottom of it sooner though, wouldn't you?
*1 Also, don't be one of those people sitting second-guessing the film at every turn; Prisoners takes its own time in unravelling, and Marpling the plot doesn't make you a greater person. And it you absolutely must do it, don't sit in the row behind me and whisper your brain-commentary to whoever's sitting next to you and who only 'uh-hm's you instead of telling you to shut the hell up like they should. Because next time I'll turn around and punch you.
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.
