AKA using the franchise as a hook and then ignoring everything fans loved from the original movies.
I was beyond excited when I heard that they were bringing back a trashy franchise that lives close to my heart – Wrong Turn. In 2003 audiences were introduced to the sexy blood baths, the unbelievably messed up ways people die, and a family of insane, inbred cannibals. I freaking love this franchise. I remember watching one of them for the first time around Christmas time, and I was just so immersed in the gore and effects and black comedy of it all. The low production adds to the shaky-cam, student-lead atmosphere. And if it weren’t for plenty of inventive kills, Wrong Turn would have been a much less popular franchise. You take away the gore and you’re left with idiotic cannibals and sex-obsessed teens wandering around the woods.
But, and it breaks my stone cold heart, THIS WAS NOT WRONG TURN FOLKS! This movie had the audacity to utilise the title of Wrong Turn as bait and then hit you with some strange love child of ‘The Ritual’ and ‘Slenderman’. I was so disappointed, I was waiting for my cannibal hillbillys to pop up and slash up some topless teens, but nope. This film is not ‘Wrong Turn’ so if you even want to watch this piece of crap please go into the (ha, not cinema anymore) living room with an open mind and tell yourself it has nothing to do with the franchise. Honestly, if I hadn’t seen title I would have had no idea this movie had anyyyy connections to the franchise.
Main point of advice: Do not watch this movie thinking it is Wrong Turn.
Also, I’m sorry but, what is with the young, gorgeous people. They jog and shit, I can barely get up my flight of stairs without needing an inhaler.
The whole production of the movie felt so far removed from the previous films, the lighting and camerawork are less gritty and comedic which was what made the first films so enjoyable. The traps aren’t as gory or as intelligent, or even as sadistically funny. Although i’ll allow the snake pit, that was a pretty good one.
One of my main issues with this fraud of a movie is that the film goes from nought to one hundred very quickly, we have no character building or tension building. I mean I wasn’t expecting a tonne of character developments but just a little bit.
Slight question for the main characters though…How can four teenagers get their phones stolen without even one of them noticing their TikTok hasnt pinged in a while of something,
Overall it was about humans, a cult. Yes, cults are scary and I admire the eyeless people as that was a shocking image (but the only one in the whole run time), Once again it just ISN’T WRONG TURN.
Sighs, the ending is even more infuriating. I wanted to slap the woman.
AKA a tepid creature feature rehash that left me bored, annoyed and surprised – surprised that it got an 82% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 75% audience score. I was also left with a bitter aftertaste of confusion – how did the same guy behind the fantastic ‘Don’t Breathe’ have made this forgettable frolic into a Florida hurricane.
2/5 Screams
MATURE CONTENT AND SPOILERS AHEAD:
I had high hopes for this summer alligator romp, having loved Sam Raimi’s first delve into the mysterious world of gritty, postmodern psychological horror. But, I was already doubtful about how captivating it was going to prove to be because it seemed to give every single important event in the story line away in the bloody trailer. And I mean everything.
For those of you unfamiliar, this film follows a young woman called Hayley – we learn she is a struggling child swimming prodigy, lazy foreshadowing if you ask me, along with ‘apex predator’, wince – who tries to track down her father in amongst a vicious Florida storm. She tries to find her Dad as her street floods and suddenly alligators have infested their crawl space. The next 87 minutes are just man vs predator. There’s no real intelligence to their survival, no passion seemed to be injected into this project. It came across as if the producers and creators were themselves bored whilst making it.
Side note: Kaya Scloderio really doesn’t suite blonde. The whole film lacks pzazz, creativity and inspiration. There’s no real gore nor jump scares. The CGI is pretty good but the alligators are just hurdles, minor bumps in this pointless story. There’s barely even any characterisation or connection with the father and daughter – they could have done so much with that relationship and tugged at the heartstrings, but they didn’t. They just made them somewhat estranged and aw now they’re all patched up, I mean he had to lose an arm for that but okay.
The attention to detail wasn’t even very good, for example: she would have winced when lowering her very injured leg into the water. And her CPR on her dad at the end is far too fast. Honestly, the scariest part of this film is the horde of spiders crawling – ha, double meaning – all over her face. Nope, nope. My worst nightmare – give me hungry ‘gators any day. The deaths such as Wayne don’t rouse any reaction from the audience because, you guessed it, we’ve seen it all in the trailers. Her arm being bitten? In the trailer. Wayne’s death? In the trailer. Baby gators? You get the picture. Her trapped in the shower with a gator? In the trailer. I could go on.
My lasting impression once the credits rolled to the hilarious ‘See ya’ later alligator’ was that this film was a waste of time, good thing it was short. And…I really have nothing else to say because this film as so bland it was like Rivita crackers trying to be bruschetta. Sorry, Raimi – try better next time. My question for you guys is: would you rather be trapped in a house with a blind, serial killing psycho (all I have to say is turkey baster… yuck) OR trapped in a rapidly flooding house with a group of alligators hunting you? Let me know in the comments below:))
AKA A lot, and I mean a bag load of, WTF moments. Spurting blood from every angle and every oriphice, this film is a work of art in the shock for shock’s sake factor department, to an extent that it makes this film very funny yet so disconcerting too. I’m still trying to boggle my brain about what this film was trying to convey.
3.5/5 screams.
SPOILERS AND MATURE CONTENT AHEAD:
Hello again friends, foes and figments of my imagination. It’s been a while. I finally have my trusty laptop back, and BOY do I have some reviews coming at you. I was hit, like a bird in the sky flying over a large estate house, with a horrid stomach virus and so had a week of watching horror films (as well as a vast number of Netflix shows). It’s been a productive week…ha. But the silver lining is that I have notes for the next five reviews coming at you so yay for my sickly, tired noggin’.
Anyways, let’s delve head first into some serious J-body horror to take our minds off of Brexit, shall we? The dawn of October is nearly upon us and you know what that means, sweets galore and gore galore. I’m actually not a big Halloween fan…I know, I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s an American, pointless import to support commercialisation. BUT I do love eating some weirdly wrapped sweets, turning down the lights, watching a shit tonne of horror movies and getting no judgement for it – people seem to judge me when I’m watching Craven or Kronenberg or James Caan or Tom Six in July. In October, we can get our freak on!
Right off of the bat the opening is odd, it just feels uncomfortable for seemingly unattainable reasons. The backstory is shown well, not forced but also easy enough to understand motives and exposition early on in the narrative. I also enjoyed the camera lingerings on the faces, it adds to the uncomfortable atmosphere. And, damn, if you think the mood and tone are the most uncomfortable things about this film just you wait, just…you…wait. Actually, no, I take that back – don’t destroy your night’s sleep with girls with teeth for nipples, men with pipes for eyes, girls slicing and slicing their own arms (oh, yes, they went there – I’ll get to that!), enough blood spurting out of cut off limbs to last you a lifetime. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Self-harm. We need to talk about self-harm in this movie. I said I’d get to it. Self-harm is an incredibly serious, sensitive and personal problem that affects an awful lot of young people, children, adults and even older adults. It is stigmatised in the media and by word of mouth (not aided by psychiatric reports from the 90’s etc.) and this meant that it is known as a method to gain attention. Whilst this may be true with some people, it is definitely not the general consensus. I don’t mind films dealing with sensitive topics such as this but they have to do it in a manner that respects the issue – this film did the complete opposite. There are scenes of the girl slashing and slashing repeatedly at her own, scarred arm and wrist. It is gruesome, fairly realistic and f***ing unnecessary! It was made in 2008 for Christ’s sake, not the 80’s or 90’s where I could give them a bit of slack for misunderstanding being even worse in those days. I would rate this film so much higher if it weren’t for this issue! Bloody hell film makers, if you’re going there go there with style and pathos and awareness and maybe, even, a little bit of humanity.
Phew, sorry about that tangent. Back to this splatter fest. The overall feel of this film was like Robocop meets the Texas chainsaw massacre meets Brain Dead. It’s a fascinating premise and, in my opinion, actually does a fairly good job of speaking about technology and power, morality and motor, rational and robot. Whether this was the main drive for the, admittedly twisted, writer I don’t know. I haven’t researched the matter because, frankly I need to spend the rest of my night (home alone) looking at puppy videos to cleanse myself of far too much shock-horror. For those of you who don’t know, this, urm, special movie is a body horror slash sci-fi action feast of flesh, the love child of ‘The Fly’ and ‘Kill Bill’ is one way to view it. It follows a policewoman in a futuristic, dystopian version of Tokyo where injuries miraculously become weapons. Yes, weapons. Due to genetic experimentation – it’s always down to shit like this, please guys in the white coats I know we’re all curious as kittens but, please, do us a solid and stop messing with our genomes. Otherwise, well, stuff like this happens. The privitised policeforce hunt down the ‘engineers’ who are a special breed of evil (the ones who grow weapons). And that’s pretty much it for plot, besides Yoshihiro’s revenge mission against the assassin who killed her father. But this film isn’t about plot. It doesn’t need to be. It’s honest and raw about what it is – a shocking, humorous delve into the Lovecraftian extremes of merging with technology. The line where human advancement halts and malfunctioning hybrids begin. I was curious about what the key shaped tumours could mean symbolically, a key to knowledge, opening doors – technology opens doors, contains wisdom, there are secretive and speculative parts of tech. Maybe it is just a simple key and I need to stop going full ‘English degree’ on it.
The film is rife with little nods to dystopian fiction in general – repetitions of slogans and advertisements like in George Orwell’s seminal ‘1984’, this film has its own type of newspeak and a focus on commercialisation being the death of morality and even the death of rationality. Despite the grotesque nature of this odd little film, it’s impossible to stop watching. You instinctively want to see the next awful, stomach-churning hybrid that these whacko designers came up with. I must admit that the strange, gimp-mask-wrapped, ‘pet’ with machetes for limbs is excellently designed, beautiful in this horrible way that I don’t want to look into any further.
The sex scene is creepy. Got to love the fetishism of innocence. The bottles with the blood spurting into them instead of out of the body is oddly effective. Creepy yet intriguing. The imagery throughout is that concoction, to be honest. Mysterious enough to peak your interest but disgusting enough to make your make strange faces whilst watching it. The ‘Heaven’s Punishment’ necklace is pretty evocative in itself. The music is also a fantastic part of this film’s tension.
One of my particular favourite notes I made whilst watching this: ‘Um, what? Why is he peeling off his own scalp and turning himself into a fountain?’. Haha. Also, this film centres around humans who can instantly grow metal from injuries, out of nowhere, and yet their mobile phones look like they’re from the late 80’s. A part of me thought this may be intentional, some contrast to the advancements. Then again, it’s probably me overthinking again. Oops. Occupational hazard of, well, being alive.
Surrealism is a large part of this film. In visuals, in sounds, in logic. Logic is a dirty tissue thrown out of the window in this mess of organs, tin and (very lightly coloured) blood fountains. The dialogue is actually the most bewildering part of this film for me personally, it’s nonsensical and commercial and intentionally antagonistic. It’s almost assaulting. The ‘Remote Control Exterminate’ is hilarious, I just had to put that somewhere in this review. The dialogue even shifts to poetry in some parts, ‘the snow of death falls and accumulates.’ The overhead voices singing bizarre sentences that would make Edward Lear jealous – ‘Older brother licked me so my eye has a sty’. *Shudders*. Seriously, how much acid were the writers on?
You do have to hand it to the design team, the make-up department, the amount of hours sat in chairs having gruesome body mods plastered all over you. Back to the creatures, the scene that had me saying ‘what?’ the most was the half human half chair – yes, you did read that correctly – pissing on strangers, followed swiftly by a girl with teeth for nipples biting a man’s penis off. You see the crudely amputated penis just kinda flop on the floor. It’s bound to make most men wince and cross their legs. And, just in case it doesn’t, they’re a second penis amputation scene. Two for one. I personally thought it was hilarious. There’s some serious girl power in this movie. Another very integral part of this film is its cultural heritage – anime esc. production and bizarre scenes such as a girl with alligator jaws for a vagina, of course – only in Japan, folks, only in Japan.
Overall this film is assaulting, strange, funny, bewildering, metaphorical and intriguing. A fun film – if you enjoy bizarre body horror – with some important underlying messages. I enjoyed it, I got cross with it, I laughed with it. Just watch it and you’ll understand why it’s actually rather hard to summarise in a few sentences. Go watch it and you’ll understand. Or save yourself a headache and don’t. Your move, boss.
AKA a run of the mill teen scream, annoying, (secretly) enjoyable and annoying – oh, I already said annoying? Exactly.
1.5/5 Screams
SPOILERS AHEAD!!
Hello strangers, first of all I have to say a very big, scary SORRY. I’ve been a terrible blogger lately and my only excuse for being MIA for the past few weeks is that I’ve been immersed in writing my novel which I have, finally, cracked. So It’s been all about the book and so blogging had to take a back seat. But, in between planning and plotting and scribbling, I did have time to watch three horrors. So, without further adieu, here’s the first.
Looking back at the notes I made on this 2018 horror is pretty amusing, I wrote ‘Oh, come on!’ and ‘What?’ multiple times. In CAPS LOCK, no less – so ya know I was really unimpressed.
I’d seen the trailer for this one several times as it was fairly intensely marketed as the new big one to see in the cinemas. The trailer had stuck it in my brain but without any lasting impression, apart from the plastic-lined, stretched out grins that reminded me of the masks in ‘The Purge’.
The beginning is intriguing, nothing remarkable nor terrifying, cliche jump scares and predictable violence. Basically, it starts like any run of the mill teen scream. One of the first things that struck me was the milking of the selfie culture in this film. It’s infuriating and, if anything, conveys the target audience as pretty young preteens. I suppose this film would be okay as a first watch, an initiation into the horror scene for thirteen year olds, but not for people who can identify any tropes or classic scenes that are common in horror. Not to mention the fact that these characters act like they’re fifteen or so, highschoolers at the most, rather than university students – not that i’m saying all university students are the epitome of maturity. Believe me when I tell you that that’s far from the truth. But the characters in this flick would definitely have suited a senior school setting more than university. Especially as the cheap jump scares really are just that, cheap and foreseeable.
Another note that, looking back makes me laugh as i’m so picky, is that some of the exposition and backstory are just lazily implanted into the film. For example, we find out that the protagonist’s best friend’s dad committed suicide through the line (from what I can remember) ‘since dad killed himself’ or something of the sort. This is just unrealistic dialogue, the characters know how he died; the only reason to be mentioning it in that way is to tell the audience. Lazy, lazy, lazy. It’s almost as bad as going: ‘Oh yeah, i’ve been feeling really terrible since dad died of complications from puerperal fever from the…….’. Ugh. Read your dialogue back people!!!
One thing I was curious about in this film is what its point is. Is this just a synthetic, cheap Halloween watch or is there a larger theme? I thought perhaps the whole thing could be an allegory for peer pressure but that may be my English student over-analysis!?!?
Another stand alone note that made me laugh in my notebook: ‘Neck break = Lol but good’. My bullet points are very eloquent, right? Who did the bloody dialogue again – ‘I looked like a Snapchat filter’. Seriously? Again, they’re talking like children. It’s infuriating and because they’re such bland characters you don’t actually care when any of them kick the bucket, thus rendering the entire film emotionally uninteresting and severing any connection with the audience that’s more powerful than ‘Oh, look – he snapped his neck on a pool table. Shame’. Another bone I have to pick with this film is less to do with this film in particular and more to do with the entire sub-genre of teen screams. Specifically, the gaslighting involved. The classic is the main character realises there’s some supernatural forces at work or a serial killer on the loose and everyone around her makes her/him feel like they’re going insane and it’s all in their head. And, quite honestly, this trope is neither effective nor appropriate anymore. It’s just dull and, not to get on my feminism high horse or anything, but this tends to happen to female MC’s more than male. Just my humble opinion.
My second high horse to clamber up onto is to do with the way Penelope’s character is explored, she’s referred to as ‘day-drinking Penelope’. STOP USING ADDICTION AND MENTAL HEALTH AS A LAUGHING POINT! Jeesh, this does my head in in these movies. It’s one thing to romanticise binge drinking and recreational drug abuse but to actively use it as a comedic character arc without exploring it any further than the surface is another. Please, directors and writers, just stop using these serious issues as comedy.
Moreover, the characterisation in general is just meh. None of them are likeable, interesting or more than just obvious cliches. Marki (also, who the hell is called Mar-k-i?) is selfish, Olivia is nothingy and bland etc. And realism is shoved aside with the dust and the lint, for example – nobody would be able to talk even somewhat rationally after over a litre of vodka downed like water. Her death is also infuriating. One plus, this film has a surprisingly okay sex scene – despite the fact that Lukas literally tells Olivia he doesn’t love her whilst he’s still inside, I mean…wow – for what is otherwise a seemingly PG13+ movie.
Final point: Sky Cinema rated this movie 1.5/5 stars and I can seriously see why. The ending was just like the rest of the movie, obvious, unintelligent, easy; leaving me exclaiming to my dog, ‘Oh for f’s sake, come on!’.
AKA ‘Well that came out of nowhere, didn’t it?’ 4/5 screams.
SPOILERS AHEAD
I thought i’d get this review out of my system whilst I can still remember my natural reactions to this latest release of Netflix’s homegrown horrors. Funnily enough this was one of the films that made me realise how much I wanted to start this blog. So, manners remembered, thank you Richard Shepherd for your inspiration. After ‘The Babysitter’, ‘Annihilation’, ‘The Open House’, ‘Before I Wake’ amongst others which compile the very mixed bag I had my doubts but tried to go in with an open mind anyhow.
Despite initial concerns about the ambiguous premise and trailer, on one Sunday morning I wrestled in bed with a delightful hangover. Downing orange juice like there was no tomorrow and cuddling into a fort made of pillows, I saw this film pop up on Netflix. I looked the trailer up in my fugue and, in hindsight, I now have very mixed feelings about the scene they chose for the promotional video. I think it was a very clever hook and certainly gripping but it was also such an important crux of the whole twisted journey that I think it may have been worth keeping it back in the arsenal. But maybe that’s just me.
One thing I loved about this movie was how multilayered its sub-genre identification is. Half of it was this shadowy, psychological thriller yet there were elements of body horror in there. The latter part of this artistic, paranoid tapestry even morphs into a revenge film. Instead of, as discussed in my review of ‘The Shrine’, getting lost in the chaos of different tropes it instead picks and chooses very certain and deliberate themes from each sub-genre without muddying the tone.
Honestly the atmosphere of this film is superb. Erotic, tense, bloody, twisted and oh so moody. The reds and beauty of the colour scheme transforms it into something elegant and wrong, something you know you shouldn’t be loving but you really are.
We can’t talk about ‘The Perfection’ without talking about the acting. There wasn’t one character I didn’t believe and didn’t have some sort of relationship with, even if it was revulsion or fear. The sexual connection in the beginning between the two female protagonists is beautiful and sensual and perfectly delicate. Now that is a sign of fantastic writing and production. The cherry on the cake was the music, these stunning eerie violins and cellos, you can almost taste the anxiety of being perfect in each piece.
Then, before I stop gushing over this film, the ending was an absolute grenade to the guts. I didn’t see it coming in the slightest, it was messy and perfectly balanced between shocking visuals, disgust and sympathy yet distracted by how stunning the music is.
Seriously, if you haven’t seen this film go and watch it now – it’s this darkly witty, sharp, sexy and stunningly captured expression of desire, abuse, self-esteem and even, somehow, morality. So clever. I plan on watching it again over the coming weeks and possibly doing a video review.
So what did you guys think about ‘The Perfection’? Do you agree with me or do you think it was trying too hard to be different, trying to be a piece of art rather than a film? Let me know in the comments.
Don't Scream 