Feast, Heartless, Creep, The Hole, Death Race 2000

[philosoraptor42]

Feast (2005)

Carlie (the blasphemous wench) at My Geek Blasphemy was raving about this movie and it sounded like a lot of fun. Sadly I didn't really get the excitement out of it I was expecting. It spends quite a long time tirelessly giving background of different characters in "top trumps" style bits of writing on screen. In each case it gives cryptic and misleading information on the character's life expectancy. It's an interesting idea, drawing on the fact that in a low budget feature like this the audience will most likely be sizing up characters for life expectancy anyway. The problem is that there seem to be a lot of people to get through and, as we know from what's been written about Tetris, you can't really focus on more than 7 objects at once. Unless you have a super-awesome memory, you're probably forgetting who's who by the end, much more so than if the characters were introduced through a decent level of dialogue and some mundane events.

Then there's the monster. Look I know how sometimes it's said that less is more and so you might be better off not showing the monster. Still, the movie has a series of action sequences which are cut in the most mish-mash fashion. While it might be argued that avoiding showing the monster will help suspense, it can't really be argued that hiding how the actors interact with the monster adds anything at all. While the poster shows a rather awesome looking monster, it doesn't seem to look anything like that in the actual movie. It's very hard to make out what they are dealing with.

(Online you'll see plenty of images of the monster, but what you can't tell from that is how little time you are actually given to look at it.)

It's not unusual for characters to be paper-thin in this sort of movie, but without decent action sequences either, it's hard to work out why you're watching. So yeah, if this had some better effects it might have been average. As it is, it's just pants.

2/5

Heartless (2009)

A bit of a mixed bag and it's going to be necessary to weigh up the good bits and the bad bits and see what we end up with. Mark Kermode apparently loves this director and thought this was wonderful, but nevertheless had to admit that it was a straight-to-DVD movie.

Before I make this next point, the issue with this movie isn't the effects. That's a very important thing to note. Visually it does look great. Still, I've had it pointed out to me and it's a very fair point, the demon hoodies in the movie look like something out of recent Doctor Who series. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing. Doctor Who effects aren't terrible and the impression a monster gives depends on what you do with it rather than how it looks. Still, while the demon hoodies start off looking pretty cool, the movie seems to run out of ideas of what to do with them.

There's a rather impressive section where the protagonist goes to a council estate to meet a devil-like figure. While he's in the lift we hear the screeches of the demon hoodies and it's all very atmospheric. So far so good. Then the movie takes a bit of a shift with a deal with the devil being made and the deal not quite going to plan. While all this works very well as build-up, it really needed to lead somewhere. However, once we reach the end of the movie I am sad to say we have the most ridiculous cop-out ending you could possibly imagine.

When the movie is coming up to revealing it's cop-out ending there's a particularly stupid scene involving the devil eating Noel Clarke's head. (Was that a spoiler?) Somehow I doubt it. Noel Clarke is probably one of the best things in this movie and the way his character is used is just pathetic. Perhaps he wasn't meant to be such an important character, but Noel Clarke's acting talents (you'll find that his performance in Doctor Who was misleading) mean that this character feels very important, so when he ends up having very little more to do it's rather annoying.

Before the movie is ruined by it's so-called "twist", we have a particularly awesome turn from Eddie Marsan. He's been in an odd range of stuff recently from "The Disappearance of Alice Creed" to "Me and Orson Welles". Eddie Marsan is fantastic as "Weapons Man", really hammering home the whole 'deal with the devil' aspect. The movie shows the protagonist, who has burns across half his face, being offered the opportunity to get rid of them. It then asks what he'd be willing to do to stay beautiful and have ordinary relationships. Unfortunately, the moviemakers seem to have no idea where they want to go with this premise, however visually impressive and atmospheric they are able to make the initial deal.

So yeah, decent effects, brilliant acting and even some good atmospheric direction can do very little to save a dead-end script with very little to actually say. The cop-out twist kills the movie stone dead.

2.5/5

Creep (2004)

This was the only movie I hadn't seen by director Christopher Smith. His other movies include: "Severance"; a horror comedy with a mixture of whistle and bang scares, genuine drama and genuine comedy. "Triangle"; a time-travelling slasher movie on a mysterious ship. (Triangle is my personal favourite.) And finally there's "Black Death"; a Wicker Man-esque medieval horror where "holy men" of questionable morals go witch-hunting. I was imrpessed by all of these, but "Creep" was supposed to be his least impressive movie.

The premise is rather cool. A monster lurks in the London Underground. That's about it. Certainly it's built up very well. Franka Potente does a really good job in the leading role. (What happened to her? She seems to have fallen off the map lately.) We also see some very endearing tramps brought into the storyline too. The movie genuinely makes us care about the characters. As such, it's heartbreaking when the monster is revealed and the movie goes somewhat downhill.

Now to be honest, the actual reveal of the monster wasn't so bad. There's a kind of urban fantasy feel to the whole thing. What was more problematic for me was the bizarre half-reveal where it looks like we are being told how the monster got there, but we really aren't. We find ourselves at one stage in a random room where surgery has taken place. Now I wondered whether the monster was supposed to be the result of a failed cloning experiment or something like that, but no it just seems to be an old surgery. What's more, though I didn't realise at the time, it seems that it's actually used for abortions. One of the most harrowing scenes in the entire movie involves the monster seemingly half-knowing how to perform the surgery and doing a kind of imitation of an abortion. But why? There's no good reason for it. It doesn't explain the origins of the monster and in the end it raises a massive amount more questions than it solves.

I'm actually left with the horrible feeling that there might be a rather more political message to this movie which is going over my head. That's not a good feeling, especially considering how disgusting the scene in question is already without dodgy political sentiments on top. I think the movie needed to decide whether it was going to explain the monster or leave him unexplained. This half-explanation that makes no sense whatsoever is a real problem.

On the other hand, it's the only problem. Ignore that and you've got a really good movie, albeit not quite as special as his others. Unfortunately, right now I've decided I can't ignore this problem, so I'm giving it a "higher than average, but missing something important" rating of:

3.5/5

The Hole (2009)

An attempt at horror-for-kids. Though we shouldn't think this is some new experiment. This is, after all, coming to us from the director of "Gremlins". (And the love interest is called Julie too!)

Two boys and their single mother have moved to a rural setting and aren't happy with the change. What's more there's a random hole under the house that, when they first find it, is covered by a trap door bolted to the ground by about five or six large padlocks. The hole definitely has something supernatural about it, but what is it?

Weird stuff starts happening (which began to raise my "ghosts without proper rules" alarm), but it's quite a tight script with everything linking together rather nicely. Some of the lines pull you out of the action a bit. The idea of the girl next door whose just been had an encounter with a strange young girl in white who "doesn't want to die" happily saying a few hours later "You've got a gateway to hell in your basement... and that is very cool!" Still, there's no doubting that this is great fun, acted well and well worth watching.

It's got everything you'd expect from the this sort of film, it flows well and it's imaginatively put together. It's just not a masterpiece.

4.5/5

Death Race 2000 (1975)

Oh my goodness this movie was so much better than I remembered it. Sylvester Stallone has the rather unchallenging task of acting like a moron and playing the comic relief. The real action however is with David Carradine who plays the unbeatable Death Race driver "Frankenstein". I think the last time I saw it, I wasn't really sure how to appreciate relatively old and low budget movies like this. Sometimes you need to be in the right mindset.

This movie, in typical Roger Corman fashion, doesn't take itself the least bit seriously. The car chases are impressive and the movie is brimming with ideas of what to do with its bloodthirsty drivers. Death Race 2000 also has a lot of comedy in it. It makes fun of the media, or course. However, the rebel forces in this dystopian future are also a target for comedy. The only person who seems to be taken seriously is the character of "Frankenstein", which is impressive since he's built up as one of the most ridiculous things in the entire movie.

Frankenstein is supposed to have survived a variety of wrecks and have been rebuilt with replacement body parts and even some mechanical parts. Still, once we've got to know Frankenstein more personally and the movie has really drawn us in it can feel rather odd when the ending of the movie is just as silly as the premise. The fact that the comedy ending comes as such a surprise just goes to show how well the moviemakers did at pulling us into their bizarre vision of the future.

Death Race 2000 is one of the best pieces of trashy nonsense I have ever seen. Awesome!

5/5

cross-posted to candycorncomm