The Hunt Cert: 15 / 90 mins / Dir. Craig Zobel / Trailer
It's not that I never thought I'd see the time when we got three Blumhouse movies within a three week span, more that I never expected that trio to be good with it. Although truth be told, it's also the third Blumhouse movie that's a rehash of older material, but hey. After all of The Controversy (I won't link to that), Craig Zobel's The Hunt is essentially a class-flipped Purge for the binary times in which we find ourselves. A disparate, all-ages gathering of stereotypical, right-wing 'rednecks' find themselves drugged, abducted, and awakened in rural countryside as they become prey to a select lodge of strangely amoral, gun-toting liberals*1. Furnished with a selection of weapons to give the hunt more of a sporting edge, it quickly becomes apparent that the odds are not in their favour.
Make no mistake, The Hunt is not subtle and it is not trying to be subtle. Nowhere near as archly provocative as its knee-jerk critics would have you believe, this is the cinematic equivalent of shitposting and is best enjoyed as a grotesque comedy where the lines between left, right, wrong and right aren't so much blurred as smeared in blood then pounded with a baseball bat. And while it's easy to dismiss this as lazy, keep in mind that writers Damon Lindelof and Nick Cuse were behind HBO's recent Watchmen series; they can do nuance and intrigue, that's just not what this is about.
What's initially interesting is that the film doesn't build up any sense of mystery for its audience. The kidnapping setup is pretty much explained in the first five minutes, and the victims themselves work it out within ten. At first it seems like this could be a new approach in order to explore other angles of the story, then the pacing of the action itself gives away that this is so we can cut to the chase much more quickly*2. With eleven subjects released into the woodland to fight for survival, characters are introduced and despatched in very short order. Some of the injuries that people walk away from here are delightfully unhinged, but rest assured that there's always another danger around the corner.
As we power through the movie, its third act sees something of a slowdown as a metric ton of exposition is shovelled in (for the most part, needlessly), but there's still enough dark humour to just about earn the change of pace. Not least because by that point there are fewer players to kill off. Besides, it's all scene-setting for a gloriously climactic showdown. But the bottom line is that The Hunt is more concerned with gleefully spraying claret than making moral judgements, and is all the better for that. A massive amount of fun...
Level 2: Betty Gilpin is in this, and she was in Stuber along with Iko 'Quin-Fee' Uwais.
*1 Upon seeing the trailer a couple of months ago, my first thought wasn't so much The Purge as 'hang on, isn't this a bit like that shonky old Hauer/Busey thriller from the mid 90s?'. Then I looked more into that and realised these are just two adaptations of the 1924 novel, The Most Dangerous Game. And when you see just how many times that's been translated to the screen, you've got to figure that one more go can't hurt. [ BACK ]
*2 90 minutes, including credits; an almost unheard of runtime in this day and age, and the minutes saved on story-building are very much put into the action scenes instead. [ 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.
Nerve (SPOILERS: BIG. SPOILERS.)
Cert: 15 / 96 mins / Dir. Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman / Trailer
It must have been a horrifically boring and humid Friday afternoon at Lionsgate when they agreed to distribute this movie shortly before banging off down the pub. We've all been there, and I'm sure the Monday morning catchup meeting consisted of assurances that it would probably all pan out alright in the end. After all, Nerve might hinge on a thoroughly unworkable premise but it's based on a novel. And when has that ever gone wrong?
The story revolves around the shy, introverted Vee*1 as she steps out of her comfort-zone to play a cult online game, Nerve, where players vie to complete an escalating series of crowd-sourced dares to win prize money accumulated from the massive audience who are paying to watch it all pan out. When Vee quickly becomes paired up with fellow player Ian*2 by the game, it turns out that this is no chance meeting, and there's more at play than cheap kicks…
The 'dare' format allows for some nicely constructed set-pieces (riding a motorcycle up to 60mph in traffic through New York, blindfolded, for example), and it's clear that some of the ideas which worked well on the page translate to the screen with even more urgency. The subtext is the problem, though. Lying behind the story-mechanics is an interweaving commentary on social-media, online gambling and cyber-bullying. And it's not that any of this is misjudged in concept, just in execution.
I see no reason to hold back; Nerve is, ultimately, pretty crap. It's not completely awful, but I spent an inordinate amount of time massaging my temples throughout this film. The core-premise is that the game is A Secret™; some shadowy-underworld which normal civilians don't even know exists. Except that narrative necessity dictates that there are hundreds of thousands of 'watchers', ie paying subscribers, which couldn't possibly go un-noticed by some authority on some level. Particularly since in the story, the game has been running for at least a year*3. That said, the screenplay also waves the words "dark web" around like some Get Out Of Jail Free card, hoping wildly that the audience will just accept the things which aren't properly explained (cf, disrupting databases with the programming language of databases). Particularly prevalent is the assumption that in 2016, All Of The Youth have a constant high-speed mobile data connections and apparently infinite battery life. As far as the film's own target audience is concerned, this is definitely fiction (and that's without getting into the technicalities of prize-money being deposited in a bank account, the details of which were apparently gleaned from social media, given that Vee wasn't seen to enter them upon application*4).
Nerve mixes the mob-mentality or The Purge with the techno-paranoia of Unfriended, set against the nihilistic, neon-lit nightscapes of Drive. If only the film had the visual or narrative originality of any of those. The mix is muddied further as the story telegraphs every single reveal at least one act in advance, and then uses its third act to bring out the twin-guns of deus ex machina with a)Vee petulantly lecturing hundreds of assembled anarchists on the morality of online-anonymity and b) her best friend basically turning round and saying "Yeah, I suppose me and my elite-hacker buddies in our secret New York bunker could just re-write the game's code. I mean, it's not like the collective of programmers who made this game could possibly have thought of that in advance, or that anyone else has attempted to do so previously. I'm amazed the idea didn't occur to us before, frankly, what with us being so philosophically responsible an'all."
And by the time we get to the climax and Vee being shot with blanks (complete with fake-blood), I just expected her to give Ian a Hot Fuzz, ketchup-fuelled "ta-daa!". It was at that point I burst out laughing, much to the amusement of the patron next to me.
• On the plus-side, the principal cast (Emma Roberts, Dave Franco, Emily Meade and Miles Heizer) do all this with poker-faces which are awards-worthy in themselves. But those are the only awards likely to be won, here. Nerve isn't even bad enough to qualify for the Razzies.
• On the minus-side, the film has the sheer audacity to visually reference both The Lost BoysandThe Empire Strikes Back in the construction-crane scenes, without earning the right to even mention either. Shameful.
Not so much a cutting-edge digital morality play, more a big-screen adaptation of a Daily Mail article where technology is inherently evil in its peer-controlled, unregulated form.
Nerve is every bit as grubby and exploitative as the people it claims to satirise, and treats social-networking in the same way Lawnmower Man presented virtual-reality. Which is to say laughably, at least. I suppose we should be thankful they didn't re-title it 'N3RVE'…
That line in Bastille Day when he says "...the hashtags will tip them over!".
Oh, why not?
If this really is your bag, then either go big or go home, yeah..
…make people stop and think about the line between their online and meat-space actions and personas?
Not likely.
Well, the directorial-duo also brought us Paranormal Activity 3and4, so quite possibly…
Level 2: This film features Ms Juliette Lewis (now apparently relegated into "clueless mother of lead character" roles), who starred in 1988's My Stepmother is an Alien alongside Seth 'Todo 360' Green.
*1 Oh, you know the type. The shy, introverted girl who's attractive, intelligent, creative and hangs out with all the cool, popular kids. Yes that's right, like no-one, ever.
*2 No, seriously. Yes, I laughed out loud as well.
*3 The characters also refer to "last year's game", implying that Nerve is some sort of annual crescendo. But in the story we watch, Vee joins the game at around 4pm on the last day and still manages to make it into the final round later that night. As a central plot-point, this is magnificently unfeasible.
*4 And also that the game - apparently - deposits money in the player's account as dares are completed, but if that player 'fails or bails' on the tasks, then has the authority to remove the money, too. As if players couldn't have an accomplice systematically moving the payments to another account in order to prevent this. Oh no, I forgot: the game's code is open-source, so there's little/nothing preventing malicious hackers from just pocketing all the 'watcher' fees in the first place, leaving nothing for the prize-money. Silly me.
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.
We're The Millers Cert: 15 / 110 mins / Dir. Rawson Marshall Thurber
The main strength at the core of Rawson Thurber's heist / farce / road-movie is that its principal leads, Aniston and Sudekis, make for throughly a convincing stripper and drug-dealer respectively, and constantly look comedically out of place when they're in their 'mom and dad' roles. Because with that much of a twist so early in the film, the audience is left reeling with no clear idea of how things will pan out.
No, wait. Not that. The opposite. The exact opposite of everything I just said. Yes, that's it.
Seriously though, if you can get past the terrible mis-casting of the leads and the clockwork plot that links the set-pieces together, it's not an altogether bad comedy. Mostly. And despite the actor and the character failing to combine, Jason Sudekis is the highlight of the film, with the best lines and the best delivery by far. Will Poulter puts in a good turn as his 'son', Kenny, but is limited by six writers all pulling in different directions. Jennifer Aniston and Emma Roberts suffer the same fate, but with the added disadvantage of having little-to-no character development to work with. Outside of 'The Millers', a few extra laughs (mostly those awkward, nervous ones) come from the addition of Kathryn Hahn and Nick Offerman's Fitzgerald family, a trio of repressed, conservative fellow RV'ers. Unfortunately, even the best of their scenes is underscored by that feel of blatant ad-libbing*1, which lets down their otherwise solid performances.
Listen to me, banging on like any of this shit even matters when you've got Jennifer Aniston in her pants. Twice. Actually, the very thing that's been the cornerstone of marketing this film turns out to be the one that's the most squirm-inducing. I'm not doubting that she's got the looks and the moves to carry it off, but there's something… undignified about the scenes with Jen in her scanties. I'm not sure why exactly, but I think that she's capable of better things than this. It never gets to exploitative-level, but you get the feeling that with any other actress, it would have.
Listen to me, banging on like any of this shit even matters when all you want to is watch a lairy comedy with your friends and a few beers. And that's exactly what We're The Millers is for; perfectly reasonable for viewing at home, not so much for paying a tenner each to do it in a cinema. Apart from anything else, the quiet isolation of the auditorium did leave me thinking "erm, that is not the dressing room of a downtown Denver strip club" and "erm, that is not the apartment of a drug-dealer, no matter how principled he apparently is" and "Wow, Emma Roberts basically got paid for turning up and standing in the background, didn't she?"
Ultimately, We're The Millers is consistently chucklesome, but the gags are on a separate track from the rest of a disjointed screenplay. Unless you're smitten with Aniston, you can safely put this in your rental queue.
Pretty much.
The laughing part was mostly satisfactory.
Not a clue. Probably, I imagine.
DVD. Rental tops, but this has got an Asda '£3' sticker written all over it..
Nah.
At some point, but not in a hurry.
There isn't, no.
How long do you think it took to film the segments featuring Ed Helms? I reckon two days, tops.
*1 You've seen this with Melissa McCarthy and Danny McBride. It's that desperate, panicked look in their eyes where they've gone off script, stalled for too long and then said 'fuck' or 'vagina', hoping this will pass as a punchline.
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.
It's not that I never thought I'd see the time when we got three Blumhouse movies within a three week span, more that I never expected that trio to be good with it. Although truth be told, it's also the third Blumhouse movie that's a rehash of older material, but hey. After all of The Controversy (I won't link to that), Craig Zobel's The Hunt is essentially a class-flipped Purge for the binary times in which we find ourselves. A disparate, all-ages gathering of stereotypical, right-wing 'rednecks' find themselves drugged, abducted, and awakened in rural countryside as they become prey to a select lodge of strangely amoral, gun-toting liberals*1. Furnished with a selection of weapons to give the hunt more of a sporting edge, it quickly becomes apparent that the odds are not in their favour.
