Review: Scream (2022)

Scream (2022)
Cert: 18 / 114 mins / Dir. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett / Trailer

It is, it has to be said, not a particularly great time for fans of the picture-house. Not withstanding (understandable) audience reticence and the tug-of-war between theatrical distribution and streaming services, a glance at the scheduling for this weekend reveals Boss Baby 2, The 355, The King's Man, The Matrix Resurrections, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Clifford The Big Red Dog and West Side Story. Or, to put it another way: sequel, straight-to-video genre bilge, prequel, sequel, sequel, cinematic reboot and remake. And as satisfying as some of these are, it's hard to get excited when the message from the industry seems to be 'follow the easy money; give them what they think they want, not what cinema needs'.

Oh yeah, and another Scream movie opens as well...

Old scores become ripe for settling as a figure in a notorious mask begins a new killing spree in Woodsboro, sparking fears that a decade-long cycle is just about to tick over. And as this implies, the film is very much aware of the gap between its fourth and fifth installments*¹, determined to work it into the mythology as a feature rather than a bug. And it's this knowing raise of an eyebrow which sees the new entry teetering between self-referential homage and shameless retread throughout.

COMFORT

So as you can tell by this point, Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin's debut into this sporadic franchise is potentially problematic for viewers who are seeking entertainment which refreshes with something new and inventive, rather than comforts with familiarity (or as close to 'comfort' as a slasher flick can get, anyhow). But of course, how much bristling originality can a viewer really want or expect five movies into a series?

Older (Legacy™) characters return to the fray having moved on just enough to make their inclusion feel natural, while the new young protagonists drive the story through familiar streets (literally). James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick's script pushes the same buttons as its cinematic predecessors and, it's thankful to note, largely gets results thanks to the commitment of its cast. Sure, everyone's having fun, but they're taking that fun seriously. In addition to the in-universe meta references, there are of course a plethora of more subtle (ie not literally described) homages and winks to fans of the genre at large. And bonus points have to be awarded for what is probably the finest unofficial callback to Once Upon A Time In Hollywood that we'll ever see.

LENOR

But the main hurdle that the film struggles to clear is that Slasher Film Deconstruction™ has been going on for so long now (and started, specifically, by Scream) that a generation of cinemagoers have grown up with it as their default watching-mode. It's 2022 so naturally this film seems to spend longer explaining what it's going to do than actually just doing it. One almost imagines it snagged that 18 certificate for Extended Scenes Of Structural Exposition*²...

So given that dialogued references to 4Chan and the state of Re-quel™ cinema aren't quite cutting it as unique insight, what can a new chapter really bring to the table in 2022? The snark and faux-lecturing about toxic fandom and worn-out franchising is all well and good, but don't come across as particularly clever if the smart-ass characters are just verbalising what the audience is thinking at that moment anyway. But hey, as much as Scream is clearly in love with its own aura, the film at least doesn't take itself as seriously as the likes of Halloween.

And as the minutes tick along to an almost frustratingly ouroboric ending, the suspicion grows that ultimately this is just More Of The Same. Although to be fair, when The Same is done as solidly as this, things could certainly be far worse.

And yet for all the chin-stroking cynicism from me and indeed the screenplay itself, the film finally reaches its bloody crescendo of righteous retaliation and everything clicks into place. The real trick was distraction. And it worked. Because as adrenaline surges and the audience feels itself inwardly cheering along with every climactic blow, slash, stab and gunshot, they realise they've been hooked. And it's revealed that Scream has in fact worked perfectly in fulfilling its only true remit: being - against all odds - a pretty fucking great Scream movie.

The problems exist but they aren't a bug, they're a feature.

*¹ Oh what, so you're happy to market "SCRE4M" but you draw the line at 5CREAM? Fucking cowards...
(I jest obviously, to be fair there wasn't a SCR3AM in this series, either) ^{[ BACK ]}

*² I know I'm labouring the point, but so does the film. It really feels like Scream makes a good companion-piece with The Matrix Resurrections, just for blatantly repeating things while telling the audience that's clever rather than lazy.^{[ 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.

Review: Don't Breathe

Don't Breathe (SPOILERS (separate, underneath post))
Cert: 15 / 88 mins / Dir. Fede Alvarez / Trailer



First things first, this review features an introductory paragraph (this), a brief synopsis of the film's setup, a list of things I enjoyed then a list of things I didn't. In doing this, the review is structured classically but thoroughly predictably. Much like Don't Breathe itself...

The Plot: When a trio of amateur burglars in run-down Detroit get a tip that a local, blinded war veteran is holed up in his house with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, the gig seems to good to pass up. However, The Blind Man is harbouring more secrets than his money, and getting out of the house proves to be far more difficult than getting in...

The Good: Don't Breathe features some fantastic performances and thoroughly intriguing cinematography throughout. The camera almost floats around the house, casually showing us the things the protagonists don't see and the things the antagonist can't, and a pretty marvellous night-vision sequence in the house's cellar levels the playing field plunging everyone into darkness while the audience look on holding their breath, as if the film's title is an instruction for us as much as the would-be escapees...

The Bad: Unfortunately all this is let down by one-dimensional characters and a screenplay which segues unevenly between the woefully hackneyed and the gleefully perverse. And therein lies the beef. I'm willing to cut any film some slack if it at least makes sense internally, but as it stands this film is just too silly to be taken seriously*¹. And if you're not taking the idea of three misguided kids being chased around a locked and fortified house by a traumatised war veteran with an array of weapons seriously, there's little point in being there.

Despite having a very real and credible threat at its core, there's far to much of the quiet-quiet-BANG going on for a film which shows so much promise in its technical areas. At one early point we're treated to a whistle-stop tour of the house which only serves to set the markers for upcoming callbacks, like the audience should pat themselves on the back for remembering a hammer...

The Ugly: And then the script has the audacity to reveal the film to be a moral battle about Atheists vs Burglars, somehow? This is proffered so cack-handedly (whilst similarly ignoring issues of grief, PTSD, mental illness and gun-control) that the wheels fall off completely and I was just willing anyone to die so that the film could end.

Although the score-point that the movie squarely loses for this assault on the audience's intelligence is almost (almost, but not) won back for the all-to-brief recreation of the famous Alien 3 shot. Blink and you'll miss that.

Don't Breathe is a fascinating exercise in film-making; not so much in storytelling...

To be honest, it's a bit like a cross between 2007's Disturbia and 1991's The People Under The Stairs
Even though I enjoyed both of those movies more than this..



The tension will be higher in a cinema, I gladly admit.



For me? Evidently not…



No.



Nah.



No.



Level 2: This film's got that Stephen Lang in it, and he was in The Men Who Stare At Goats alongside Ewan 'Kenobi' McGregor...





*¹ Things I couldn't get past; I've made a list...
(spoilers obviously, plus these will only make sense if you've seen the film anyway)

1) So a team of repeat-but-amateur burglars target houses whose security systems are managed by the same company and which are all within driving distance of the company-owner's house, and the police haven't pieced anything together by the time this film starts?

2) And the most brash of the three offenders, Money, routinely leaves DNA evidence at the scene of the crime, as if a kid like him's got no previous?

3) The main plot-strand seems to work on the basis that a blind war veteran won't hear a window being broken in his own house with all the internal doors open, or the alarm beeping for thirty seconds. Okay, we find out the TV's running while he sleeps, but still. More on this later.

4) After The Blind Man foils the first attempt on robbing his house and boards up the bathroom window that was the entry-route, why doesn't he then go and check/reset the alarm?

5) And this security-conscious Blind Man has all his windows securely barred except for those five massive, non-strengthened single-panes forming a conservatory roof over his ground-floor kitchen, yeah?

6) War veteran or not, with that many shots being fired, unsilenced, in confined spaces, there's no way any of the characters would be able to hear jack shit for most of the movie, let alone The Blind Man who can apparently detect a pin dropping while everybody else still has double-vision...

7) Now, he's either got a) superb hearing which has compensated for his sight-loss in the intervening years, or b) chronic tinnitus from years of active service spent in close proximity to firearms. Either way, how come the repeated gunfire in the aforementioned enclosed spaces causes him no apparent discomfort, but when the burglar alarm is finally triggered he's paralysed by the deafening ringing? I've heard a burglar alarm, and I've heard gunfire. I know which was more uncomfortable.

8) Had our antagonist's not-at-all-creepy plan worked, and not withstanding the explanation that he's going to have to give the authorities at some stage in the future, how the hell is The Blind Man going to raise a baby? No, seriously. He might be a psychopath, but he's a psychopath who apparently knows how to plan shit out, yet this never occurred to him..?

9) And if the police are a two-minute drive away to respond to that triggered alarm, how come there was no call the night before when around thirty shots were fired? I know he lives in a rough area, but really?

Apart from that it was fine, I guess.


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.

Review: Goosebumps

Goosebumps (3D)
Cert: PG / 103 mins / Dir. Rob Letterman / Trailer



Why has this movie taken so long to come out in the UK? It debuted in October in the US, and it's now out on DVD while the UK still hasn't had the full opening yet. It's that sort of lacklustre marketing and staggered release which makes it appear that the studio is noncommittal about what they've created, which is a real shame because Goosebumps is quite marvellous in its own way. Damn, that sounds noncommittal. Right, let me try again...

This big-screen adaptation of what can only be described as a literary phenomenon sometimes feels a little overshadowed by the presence of Jack Black and saunters in on the heels of some rather unimpressive trailers. Black over-eggs the pudding of course, but that's why you hire Jack Black. In a comedy/adventure environment, he's value for money if nothing else.

The film takes a good twenty minutes of its run-time to get warmed up (or rather, to become more than the sum of its parts), and the early backstory/exposition can feel a little heavy-handed, even making allowances for the target demographic. But after the initial scene-setting, the script is far more comfortable in itself as Goosebumps becomes a family-friendly horror adventure, with slapstick and dry humour in equal measure.

The books which inspired the film may be a product of the 1990s, but the movie itself is an almost Spielbergian homage to adolescent adventure movies of the 80s, like a feel-good version of The Lost Boys. For obvious reasons, it's packed to the rafters with Goosebumps references and in-jokes, but there are also Easter-eggs and nods to all manner of horror flicks from the last fifty-or-so years, too (including an above-average number of jibes in Stephen King's direction).

On a graphical front (and the film is proudly flagged as a Sony Animation production, so nit-picking is fair game), it's got to be said that a few of the creatures look a little 'plasticky' and almost unfinished, although those moments are outnumbered by the ones which pass the bar set by most studio movies in the 21st century. While it's not the best or worst CGI you've seen recently, Sony's trumpeting certainly suggests it's their A-game. The 3D, on the other hand, skips between average and ineffectual. It's not that it's badly rendered, it just isn't used to the potential that a film like this carries.

But Goosebumps is very much a movie for the youngsters, and is very much proud of that without being patronising to its audience. It's perhaps a little throwaway, but any film which demonstrates the power of books and imagination to a new audience is a great thing, indeed (even if it does so in quite a self-serving and brand-aware sort of way). I'd have gotten even more out of the film if it had just slowed down and done fewer things more thoroughly, but then it wasn't really made for me.

Enormous fun for the right audience, if a PG-rated Jack Black comedy can win over a cynic like me, you might just enjoy it too…

Gremlins, Earth To Echo, and maybe even Paper Towns?



That's debatable, to be fair, although it's certainly going to look its best on a big screen.



I think it does.



Hmmm…



Probably not.



I didn't hear one, although the film's about 70% shrieking, so it wouldn't surprise me if a Wilhelm slipped through in one of the crowd scenes.



Level 2: Goosebumps stars Odeya Rush, who appeared in 2012's The Odd Life Of Timothy Green alongside Joel 'Uncle Owen' Edgerton.







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.

Review: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Cert: PG / 81 mins / Dir. Miguel Arteta




Disney don't seem to have much confidence in their family-comedy, Alexander and the Title Which Is Too Cumbersome and Unwieldy To Be Actually Memorable. Released in the UK just after the half-term week, and with a contractually-watertight minimum of fuss, you get the impression that they've already given up on hoping it's going to make money, so they've just shoved it out to fend for itself. I watch more Kids' Films™ than most adults (especially considering I'm not a parent), and even I've only seen the trailer for it once. This might be understandable if the film wasn't based on a very well known children's book, and if Disney hadn't paid Hollywood mainstreamers Jennifer Garner and Steve Carrell to star in it. But y'know, it is and they have.

It might also be understandable if the film was rubbish. That's not the case; it's really rather good.

It's always a live-action Disney Family Comedy™ of course, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, and I can't dislike any protagonist who wears a Star Wars t-shirt in their first full scene (subliminal marketing from The Mouse, there?). Opening with a brief, third-act mid-carnage wraparound, before resetting the film's clock to 'the previous day', AatTHNGVBD*¹ has a surprisingly slow build-up for such a short film, although it's this build up which allows young Ed Oxenbould to shine as the titular Alexander Cooper. He's a fantastic, expressive actor; with a deadpan subtlety that reminds me of Paul Rudd's better roles, and does quiet exasperation better than many adult comedy actors. Along with the rest of the young cast however, he's sometimes let down by a clunky script; almost as if the kids' dialogue has been written by adults who have heard of children, but never met any.

The film's adult characters (so, largely Jennifer Garner and Steve Carrell) fare better with feeling more suited to their lines, even if they're far more twee than those of their young counterparts. The film really belongs to the youngsters. Carrell is great as usual, and while Garner gives a more-than-acceptable performance, she's ultimately quite forgettable (although maybe that's down to the character). The unevenness of the script could be because we're seeing everything from Alexander's point of view, of course, and this is how he views and experiences his contemporaries. Or it could just be slightly shonky writing for a live-action family comedy. AatTHNGVBD*² seems to be a stronger movie once the carnage of the second act and "The Very Bad Day" kicks in, although this is at the price of having Alexander become a bystander, watching his family become enveloped in the bad luck he's become inured to.

It's also worth noting that the reason the Cooper family have the worst day of their collective lives, is a benignly petulant wish made by young Alexander on the eve of his birthday, fed up after a crappy day at school. Considering this is the backbone of the story (and considering this is a Disney film we're talking about), this plot-point is all but buried, so the realisation, apology and redemption at the end of the film loses some of its weight. That doesn't matter too much, though, because for its execution and target audience, AatTHNGVBD*³ works very well indeed. Keep in mind that if this film was a 15 Certificate, it'd star Jason Segel as Alexander and he'd be saying the fuck-word every third line; other than that it'd be almost unchanged.

A very amiable comedy for those who don't mind a saccharine binge every now and again, what Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day lacks in marketing prowess it more than makes up for in spirit. Ed Oxenbould has a great career in comedy ahead of him, and you'll have seen mainstream comedy flicks this year with far fewer gags than there are here.

It captures the comedy of the film, but not the heart.



Pretty much, yeah.



Probably, but I still think there's a more connective film to be made here.



This is a DVD for a Sunday afternoon.



Nah.



At some point, but it's not really re-watch material for my demographic.



Didn't hear one.

Come on, when was the last time you saw a Disney™ family movie where someone (and a human, not an animal) pisses on the kitchen floor for comic effect?

*¹ I'm pretty sure this is what all the cool kids are calling it.
*² This is what the cool kids are calling it, I've checked.
*³ No, you shut up. You give me a better movie title and I'll give you a better acronym.

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.