Don’t let me be misunderstood (Tucker & Dale vs Evil, Eli Craig, Canada, 2010, 88 mins) ‘Officer’, says Alan Tudyk’s Tucker to a terrified cop, ‘do we look like a couple of psycho killers to you?’ This sweet couple of hillbillies wouldn’t harm a fly, though attempted intercourse wouldn’t be out of the question, but [...]
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Microcosm (The Divide, Xavier Gens, Canada/Germany/US, 2011, 110 mins) Amongst some of the questionable scheduling decisions at FrightFest 2011 was the decision to bury Xavier Gens’ air tight thriller in a graveyard slot on a Sunday morning. Perhaps the curators worried that the lack of gore, or the complicated group dynamics and exploration of humanity [...]
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Topography of Terror (A Lonely Place to Die, Julian Gilbey, UK, 2011, 99 mins) “Because it’s there” isn’t going to cut it once you’ve experienced Julian Gilbey’s mountainside ordeal. The belligerents may be human but it’s the Scottish Highlands, replete with chasms, crumbling edifices, drowning currents and jagged snares underfoot, that give this thriller an [...]
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Horrible Bosses (Kill List, Ben Wheatley, UK, 2011, 95 mins) The UK Film Council, which made the Coalition government’s Kill List, makes one of its last appearances as a funding partner in the opening moments of this release. It’s a fine epitaph. Bad bets on lottery tickets will have guaranteed its completion and that’s fitting [...]
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Moral Panic (Panic Button, Chris Crow, UK, 2011, 95 minutes) [Warning: This review discusses the plot in some detail] Here’s a cautionary tale about cautionary tales. Beware any movie that’s billed as capturing the zeitgeist. This is an honour that’s usually awarded by audiences after the fact, it’s not something that’s easily manufactured. The key [...]
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North by North West (Inbred, Alex Chandon, UK, 2011, 95 mins) When you think of Yorkshire and its contribution to British cultural life, you may think of William Wilberforce, Charlotte Bronte, Jarvis Cocker or Hayley Longster. Alex Chandon however, a North Londoner, brings an altogether more metropolitan and bigoted perspective to his tale of Southern [...]
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Country House (Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Troy Nixey, US, 2011, 99 mins) [Warning: This review discusses some aspects of the plot] The titles call it Troy Nixey’s film but it’s the signature of producer and co-writer Guillermo Del Toro that’s etched across each frame of this impressively mounted but curiously non affecting gothic [...]
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Domestic Disturbance (The Glass Man, Christian Solimeno, UK, 2011, 103 mins) It’s tempting to describe The Glass Man as the first age of austerity drama to hit cinemas, the first British movie to acknowledge the depreciating status of its middle classes. This group might have ridden out past recessions but in the 2010s there’s little [...]
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People Against Good And Normalcy (The Wicker Tree, Robin Hardy, UK, 2011, 90 mins) Robin Hardy, no fool, has been quick to label this adaptation of his own novel, Cowboys for Christ, as a “genre successor” to the 1973 cult curio that the rebrand invokes. The now wizened director, who’s lost none of his lust [...]
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Accidents will happen (Final Destination 5, Steven Quale, US, 2011, 92 mins) The Final Destination series mischievously plays on the fear that all smothering Mothers instill in their nervous children, fortifying the anxiety they’ve pulsed through the womb, that a heightened awareness of, mostly, illusionary dangers is necessary to survive. In this suffocating paradigm, every [...]
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