Armin_Nikkhah_Shirazi Reviews

Silo (2019)

A vicarious experience of one of the dangers of rural life

[8/10 · 23 May 2024]

SILO is a well-executed high concept thriller in which a teenage helping hand gets entrapped in a silo full of corn due to an accident and must be rescued as soon as possible, otherwise he will be crushed and suffocate to death.

As a city dweller, I must admit I did not know that grain entrapment was a thing, yet evidently nearly a thousand people have died of it already. So, this movie broadens our horizon by bringing attention to a danger you might not have known about, unless you are familiar with farm life.

But the movie doesn't just stop there: it also broadens our horizon by providing a window into how these small town folk think, talk and act. This is accomplished by means of several tangential plot lines which bring out the characters involved.

The cinematography is beautiful, and the movie is willing to ask deep questions, of which the deepest one turns out to be version of the problem of evil. I liked how the movie gently suggested a possible response without trying to impose it on us.

This is a worthwhile film which especially those will enjoy who know aspects of rural America or are open to learning more about it.

Pas De Restes (2012)

Gives you something to think about

[7/10 · 23 May 2024]

PAS DE RESTES (my rusty French tells me that the grammatically correct form is "Pas des Restes", which means "no remainders") has a premise that lends itself well to comedy: what if there were a gourmet restaurant that served meals with the understanding that they had to be finished at the table? An arrogant xenophobic American family is about to find out, as the patriarch orders far more food than he can eat in one sitting.

Unfortunately, the great premise generates only mild humor. I feel that a lot more could have been done with it. It almost feels as if the script, which is clearly satirical, was too timid to go further out in exploring the topic.

I still rate this as a good film because it is competent in its technical aspects, the acting is good, and it does give you something to think about.

Evidence (III) (2012)

Takes a left turn in the last half hour

[7/10 · 22 May 2024]

EVIDENCE, not to be confused with EVIDENCE (2013), another found footage horror film, starts off like a million other found footage films: a group of young people go camping, and one of them decides to document their trip. Eventually they see or, rather, hear strange noises which should tip them off to impending danger, but they don't act in time to avoid it.

So, this was gearing up to be you typical FF in the Woods movie, but then, during the last half hour, the story takes a big left turn. Some characters we might not have expected to die (at least so soon) are killed off and then the story itself goes in a totally unexpected direction, which, however, in retrospect, supplies the explanation for the events we witnessed.

I love this kind of abrupt change in story direction, and if you do, too, then this FF horror movie is for you. There could have been a tad more explanation about the chaotic proceedings of the last 20 minutes, and the integration of the end credits into the footage did not really go very smoothly, but overall I still rate this as a good found footage horror film.

616 Wilford Lane (2021)

This movie lies to the audience

[3/10 · 20 May 2024]

616 WILFORD LANE begins with what is meant to be a shocking prologue (if we had not already seen this kind of sequence in other movies): a teenage boy, apparently while sleepwalking, shoots his family and then himself late at night, all captured on security cam footage.

Then we see a man and his two daughters grieving at the beside of the dying mom, followed by funeral footage in which the dad tries to be affectionate with his daughter before the film finally gets to the main story: he moves with his daughters to a luxury mansion that is being sold at a fraction of its value, not knowing that this was the site of the grisly murders: the town has covered it up to maintain property values (an approach which curiously did not work for his house). Soon strange things begin to happen, and his daughter begins to sleepwalk.

The plot proceeds by the numbers for this type of movie, until in the climax the young daughter almost shoots her family. A lawsuit 6 months later, upon dad mysteriously having obtained the prologue footage, results in a large settlement for the family because the murders were not disclosed upon the sale.

And then the movie hits us with a couple plot twists that are as preposterous as they are stupid: it turns out this is either a family of psychopaths or it is just a guy and two women grifters pretending to be a family (the movie does not really make it clear) who orchestrated the whole thing to be able to cash in on the town's failure to disclose the murders in the purchase agreement. Dad ends up banging the older daughter, and the younger one ends up poisoning the other two because, it turns out, the dying mom had secretly whispered to her "kill them before they kill you" before she died.

Okay, with a proper set up and lead-up, these twists might (might!!) have worked, but the movie not only completely fails to do the necessary work to make them believable, worse, it lies to the audience to make them surprising!

The deception already starts with a completely irrelevant card at the beginning telling us that the number of the beast is actually 616, a hamfisted attempt to lead the audience to expect to see genuinely supernatural events. Then there are these father-daughter dialogues witnessed by exactly nobody, such as at the funeral of the mom, which would not have taken place if these types were the con-artists they are revealed to be. Also, none of the presumed trickery behind the paranormal eventa was explained, nor how the pudgy dad managed to get a hot realtor fall for him so quickly, or how he obtained the prologue footage.

This is just lazy scriptwriting, but actually the laziness crosses into disrespecting the audience. It is no wonder that the movie has provoked such hostile reaction in general.

A better script would have done away with the dishonest scenes and managed to show us the father-daughter interactions always when either someone is around to witness them or if it was captured in footage that was going to be seen by others. It would have worked out in a convincing way how the dad actually seduces the real estate agent and eventually gets her to show him the prologue footage. It would have shown how the "paranormal" events were accomplished using trickery instead of using a single throwaway line about having bought prank materials. It would have made clear whether this is an actual family or not, and if they are, it would have taken care to flesh them out in the third act as the incestuous psychopaths they are presented to be.

It would not be easy, but there is at least one movie which showed that it can be done by successfully pulling off a comparable double twist, namely WILD THINGS (1998). It was able to succeed because both the screenwriters and director put the necessary effort in to make it believable, and they did not lie to the audience. In fact, I wonder if that movie might have inspired the concept behind this one.

Be that as it may, managing to pull off the double twist convincingly would have immensely elevated this otherwise mediocre film because then the twist itself could have been the main source of horror.

Instead, what he have here is mediocrity descending into garbage. Avoid, unless you like being lied to.

Human Zoo (2020)

Unpleasant Film that leaves you hanging

[3/10 · 18 May 2024]

HUMAN ZOO actually has an interesting premise: a group of people compete on a reality show, vying for 2 million dollars. All the winner has to do is to be the person who holds out the longest while in solitary confinement. Little do they know what they get themselves into...

Unfortunately, the premise is turned into what amounts to a half-finished movie. Basically, we watch a group of people get progressively desperate and break down, especially after they find out that there appear to be no plans to release them from solitary confinement, and then the movie abruptly ends. No resolution, explanation, motivation or anything else.

It is as though the film makers wanted to stick a big fat "F you" to the audience.

Maybe that really was the point: if you are willing to subject yourself to the unpleasantness of watching well-acted suffering for nearly two hours, perhaps that's what you deserve, nevermind that the film makers would be even bigger hypocrites for making this in the first place.

Or maybe this was meant as an experimental film trying to highlight the inhumanity of solitary confinement, a detention method still used in many countries, including the US.

Or maybe this was meant as social commentary critiquing the confinement of animals in Zoos (though most animals are not in solitary confinement, and Zoos still serve other purposes, such as research and preservation of endangered species).

Or maybe I am just giving the film makers way too much credit and they just ran out of money or ideas, and decided to market what they had as a "movie".

The hammy performances of the reality show staff (but not the actors who played the contestants and portrayed their suffering all too convincingly), the bargain basement production values, the inconsistent cinematography which takes us out of the movie by switching between security camera and real footage, and the lack of any dramatic devices or hints on what this is really all about all lead me to believe that the last possibility is the case.

Also, a major plot hole is left completely unaddressed: if a large group of people suddenly went missing, would the police not look for them, and for commonalities that would eventually lead them back to the "show"?

The only good thing I can say is that as a result of this movie, I became aware that there have been sadistic reality shows along the same lines in real-life already, something I would not have believed (google "Nasubi", if you must).

#Followme (2019)

A horror commentary on influencer culture

[5/10 · 17 May 2024]

#FOLLOWME is a found footage movie which follows three young London women on a trip to the US. They arrive in Los Angeles and set out to drive to San Francisco, where the main character, a youtuber with a couple million followers, is to be featured at a fan event.

What this movie does really well is to depict the vapidity of people whose sole purpose in life, beside having fun, is to present an impossibly glamorous image of themselves to the world via social media. It does this so well that it comes dangerously close to becoming a misogynist movie, but certain reveals very late in the movie save it from that by adding a little thickness to the cardboard characters.

One thing I don't understand is criticism of the acting of the three young ladies. As two-dimensional as they were, I found all three characters to be quite convincing, so I wonder whether those people who made this allegation confused bad acting with acting a character well whom they intensely dislike.

A major problem of the movie is that the exposition part goes on for a bit too long, especially considering that a good portion of the audience has only limited patience for following the everyday lives of these types of people, though I personally found the exchanges between the three women still entertaining enough.

The idea of a killer who gives you riddles to solve is not bad at all, and the final kill is as intense as they come (I was reminded of a kill scene early in the movie IRREVERSIBLE (2002)) but other aspects of the murder mystery are handled pretty badly. The film suffers from a bad case of stupid character syndrome, and beside questions like how the killer was able to disable the group's car in such a targeted way twice, and be at various places in short order, the ending feels very unsatisfactory.

11:23 - 09:59 (About Fear) (2018)

Not as bad as it is made out to be

[6/10 · 17 May 2024]

PROJEKT ANGST, which should have been translated as "Project Fear" instead of its actual clunky English title, is a found footage horror film using the familiar plot outline of a group of young people putting themselves in harm's way and then suffering the consequences.

Although the plot outline has been done a million times before, I believe there is always room for creativity and originality to lift it up to a viewing experience that still feels fresh. That is unfortunately not quite the case here, but the story still offers a couple interesting if not entirely novel story aspects.

First, the central concept is that the purpose of the excursion by the group is for each member to face their most dreaded fear: for one it is fear of heights, for another fear of darkness, yet another fear of closed spaces and so on. I actually like that: the group sets out to expand the boundaries of their comfort zone, something we are often told (and rightly, in my opinion) almost all of us should do more often.

Second, most of the story plays out inside a bunker in the Swiss Alps, a setting I had not previously seen in a found footage film. It appears that shortly before the onset of World War 2, the Swiss built a whole bunch of these as a means of self-defense. After the war, they fell into disuse and eventually many of them were apparently sold off (how cool is it to say that one owns a WWII bunker in the Alps?), until very recently, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Swiss military decided to commission them once again for potential defensive use.

Of the reviews I have read, there are allegations that the story makes no sense, or that there is no plot, but I think it is not difficult to conceptualize the happenings within a coherent narrative that encompasses both.

In the early parts of the movie, some of the members of the group do behave in seemingly strange ways, but we have to remember, they are trying to scare each other, and in that light, their actions at least no longer seem irrational. The basic story idea or lesson is, apparently, that we should be careful how far we try to extend the boundary of our comfort zone, especially if it involves potential danger to ourselves and others.

In the later parts of the movie, some members of the group also behave in strange ways, but it is easy to conceptualize within a narrative that makes sense out of what we see.

In the prologue, a recording of a physician is played who says that several soldiers stationed at the bunker were injured and that something is not right, followed by a title card which says that the bunker was closed to public access. The film never specifies the nature of the danger in the bunker, but it seems quite plausible to me to suppose that it was toxic mold.

There is some real-life evidence that toxic mold can cause or contribute to psychotic episodes, and reactions can vary from person to person. So, from my perspective, this movie was about a group of young people who wanted to test the limits of their courage, but were unfortunate to choose a setting which affected their psychic well-being, thereby bringing about the psychic breakdown of several of them.

One of the members, Manu, might have been so sensitive to the toxic mold that it affected him physiologically, and that would explain his demise. Finally, the "Manfred" actor was shown early in the film to be eating some of the mold, which may have poisoned him so that he died in some obscure place before he could come to rescue the group.

Within this particular narrative, there is even a bit of irony, because the person who seemed to be the most resilient to the effects of the mold ended up dying from its aggravating the effects of a history of child abuse (her "I am evil" seems to me clearly a manifestation of guilt induced by gaslighting of her abusive dad, who blamed her for his abuse).

Again, the film leaves open what actually might have affected the group, but the toxic mold narrative seems to me sufficiently consistent with all aspects of the story to be satisfactory. Maybe the film makers should have put a reason behind the injuries that led to the closing of the bunker.

Overall, I rated this film higher than others not only because the movie did entertain me, but because the story seemed quite coherent, I could discern a clear plot, and there were a couple interesting aspects to the story.

Erasmus: Not Everything Is Fun (2016)

Too confusing to be fun

[4/10 · 30 April 2024]

ERASMUS, it seems, refers to a program for students who are citizens of the EU to study in other countries and more. The official summary says it "is the EU's programme to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe. It has an estimated budget of 26.2 billion euros."

So, following a prologue depicting the murder of a British Erasmus student, this found footage movie documents the experiences of an international group of EU Erasmus students in Barcelona who go out together to party, booze and hook up, but end up facing mortal danger.

Barcelona seems to be a hot spot for found footage movies, since I know of several which are set there: REC (2007), REC 2 (2009) APARTMENT 143 (2011) and HOOKED UP (2013). All of these are much better and especially more fun than this movie.

There are two major problems:

First, the characters are very 2-dimensional, and most them are neither very likable nor memorable, despite the fact that the cast is unusually good-looking.

Second, during the action scenes it is hard to tell what is going on as many scenes are too dark, and combined with our detachment from the characters, this turns the hectic proceedings into a very uninvolving one, if not a complete mess. Because of that, the double twist at the end, which I presume was meant to surprise the audience, can at best elicit a shoulder shrug.

It is too bad because the movie had some things going for it: unlike most other found footage movies, which tend to reward sitting through a movie in slow burn mode with a few minutes of frantic action at the end, the pace picks up relatively early and doesn't let up. This is something I do appreciate.

Also, there is a lesson that in matters of love, mortal danger has tremendous power to clarify where one stands, but it gets wasted on characters about whom we don't care that much.

Altogether, this is a disappointing effort because it had the potential to be a top notch found footage horror film.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow 2 (2022)

Bad script and no atmosphere

[3/10 · 29 April 2024]

It took over 40 years for a sequel to appear for DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW (1981), which tells the story of a mentally handicapped man who is unjustly killed while hiding inside a scarecrow, and whose spirit takes supernatural revenge on his murderers.

The original was very straightforward in telling the story, but handled everything in a solid manner: it had a decent plot, the acting and cinematography were executed well, and it was very atmospheric.

The central concept of the movie was that the possessed scarecrow did not actually kill anyone (at least not actively, shall we say), but served as a harbinger of death for those who saw it. They would subsequently fall victim to events which conspired to prove deadly, an idea that was earlier realized, for example, in THE OMEN (1975) and later most conspicuously in FINAL DESTINATION (2000).

I think this concept made the supernatural threat even more menacing because it was not "localized" in a scarecrow but could appear anywhere. It was an effective horror device.

The sequel was written by J. D. Feigelson, who also wrote the original, but inexplicably changes the central concept to turn the scarecrow into a killing entity, thereby rendering the movie not only essentially indistinguishable from a million other slasher movies, but also making it sillier. Ray Bradbury is listed as a story consultant, though he died almost 10 years before this film was made.

There is no atmosphere to speak of, the plot is not only contrived but confusing, and the acting holds no water to the original. The dialogue is also weaker. I actually noticed this only due to contrast when I heard the only decent piece of dialogue toward the end, when the main villain ambushes the protagonist, a lady who moved to the area with her young son.

All in all, this forgettable horror movie is an unworthy sequel to the original.

The Fabric (2018)

Good Effects, confusing story

[6/10 · 27 April 2024]

THE FABRIC begins by showing a man in a futuristic prison cells the walls of which are full of scribbled mysterious formulas. He is trying to figure something out, and in short order it becomes clear that he is attempting to use some heretofore unknown laws of physics to essentially teleport himself out of his cell. Eventually he succeeds, and in the course of subsequent events, he begins to remember his past as a famous physicist.

Being a physicist myself, this sort of story naturally appeals to me. The effects and the atmosphere in this movie are really well-done; unfortunately, even though we learn more about the character and others he encounters in the course of the short, there is still a lot in the plot left open, so that after the open ending, one is left unsatisfied.

Also, the characters he encounters are drawn in a very cliche manner. The villainess, in particular, is so over the top in her expressions that I was literally reminded of cartoon villains.

It really felt like this story was missing some parts, and if it had those together with better fleshed-out characters, this could have been an excellent short film.

Deja Vu (2006)

Nice Ideas, perfect execution, gigantic plot holes

[7/10 · 27 April 2024]

An ATF agent investigates a terror attack that killed more than 500 people and then joins an FBI team which has a access to a novel surveillance technology to help them find the culprit.

DEJA VU takes its title from a psychological phenomenon in which a person feels as though they had previously experienced a situation they are currently experiencing. Without spoiling the plot, let's just say that this movie takes the idea behind it in a literal direction.

There are a lot of really nice ideas for story elements, especially on the dramatic side. The writers clearly thought about how to make the proceedings interesting, and little touches which reveal attention to detail are everywhere.

I also enjoyed the philosophical questions this movie raises. For example, even if we could go into a past, could we actually change anything?

The direction by Tony Scott was essentially flawless, hitting all the right notes at various stages in the development of the plot and the actors did a good job. The special effects can hold their ground even today.

This movie could have been among the very best in its genre, but unfortunately, several large plot holes and gaps in logic bring it down. Not enough so that if you turn off your brain, you won't have an enjoyable movie experience, mind you. But in my case, doing this is difficult, especially if a movie raises philosophical questions.

That the movie has such glaring plot holes is all the more baffling and disappointing given that, as mentioned, the writers clearly paid a lot of attention to other aspects of the script.

Many of the plot holes relate to the central conceit of the movie which I cannot reveal without spoiling it, but there are some that are independent of it. For example, in one scene late in the movie, the protagonist is in a hurry to get somewhere, but right after he mentions how little time he has to get there, he decides to stop somewhere to basically freshen up.

Anyway, I am still rating this overall as a good movie because in all other aspects the movie is strong, and because I am an ideas guy (i.e. Someone who sees genuinely value in ideas just for their own sake, and feels profound satisfaction at being exposed to new ones) and that aspect of the movie appealed to me especially.

73 Minutes (2021)

A good high concept Mystery Thriller

[7/10 · 24 April 2024]

73 MINUTES is the amount of time available to an ambulance chasing lawyer to get a case file to a mysterious caller who threatens to kill her daughter and her mother if she does not do so.

This film has a good plot and builds a fair amount of suspense, so that the fact that most of the movie plays inside her car, as she talks to various people over the phone or videophone, does not make it boring. However, there are similar movies which manage to ratchet the tension up even higher (see list below).

I really like how it uses technology which would not have been possible until fairly recently as essential plot elements. I also liked the fact that movie did not end in a cliched manner.

This is good entertainment for slightly over 80 minutes and recommended for anyone who enjoys these types of movies. Other movies with similar plot elements which I found more suspenseful/thrilling:

PHONE BOOTH (2002) RETRIBUTION (2015) (it was remade as RETRIBUTION (2023)) THE GUILTY (2018) (it was remade as THE GUILTY (2021)) SIXTY MINUTES (2024) BURIED (2010).

Hacksaw (2020)

Just saw a hack work

[1/10 · 24 April 2024]

HACKSAW is a found footage film which tells the story of a couple who while on a road trip have the misfortune of encountering a mass killer/urban legend.

I am a hardcore horror fan, but even I must admit this movie is really, really bad:

-a confusing and pointless intro that mixes gore with opening credits

-a generic and razor-thin plot that has been done a million times, with nothing original except the useless filler to achieve a runtime of just over an hour

-characters who are BOTH totally unrealistic AND supremely annoying

-a dialogue that is absolutely atrocious. A fav example:

"It will"

"Not"

"It will"

"Not"

"Will"

"Not"

"Will"

"Not"

"Will"

"Not"

...

"Aaaah, Stop it"

-a hamfisted attempt at exposition by means of insertion shots of some lame ass show that has "try hard" written all over it

-heavies who laugh evilly and pointlessly like sesame street villains

-scenes filmed in darkness so we can't tell what is going on

-practical gore effects in such close ups that you can't tell what is what

-logical gaps like a shirt that is all torn and spilling intestines suddenly being neat and undamaged a few minutes later

-mortally wounded extras that just won't the f die

-a supernatural twist so dumb you would think a six-year old thought of it

-the usual horror tropes, except executed execrably

The only positive aspect is the naturalistic acting by the beautiful Cortney Palm, but her cameo in the beginning of the film has no relevance to the rest of the movie and is essentially wasted.

Avoid.

Ultravioleta (2014)

Well-shot atmospheric Horror Short

[7/10 · 22 April 2024]

ULTRAVIOLETA tells the story of an art restoration specialist who prepares a painting for public view which has been obscured by a layer of wax stamped with occult signs, and which had originally been applied in order to contain the evil within the painting. Little does she know what awaits her once she finishes her project...

This is a very professionally executed supernatural horror short that could easily be part of the first act of a full-length feature film. The director, Paco Plaza, is well known for his REC (2008) found footage horror franchise, and here he shows that he is a master at building atmosphere.

The ending is kinda expected, and the final twist is from a logical point of view a little bit of a downer, but getting to that point could have been hardly filmed any better.

This is a nice 10--minute diversion for fans of atmospheric horror.

Anthrax (2017)

Gripping found footage political conspiracy thriller

[9/10 · 22 April 2024]

Of the small handful of found footage political conspiracy thrillers I have seen (see list below), all of which are above average, ANTHRAX stands heads and shoulders above the rest in terms of suspense.

A group of five friends who, while in the Israeli military, had signed up for an experimental vaccine trial realize that it seems to have serious long-term effects. Their attempts to find out what exactly happened are stonewalled and eventually they end up in mortal danger.

The film begins with a 3-minute prologue that is its weakest part: it rushes through shots of the first of the friends who gets sick and dies, and because it recounts the events so quickly, it disorients the viewer.

The story then properly begins when the remaining four reminisce about him at his funeral, and soon after, another one of the group falls ill.

The acting is extremely naturalistic, the story is really good and the execution as a found footage thriller is almost flawless.

Many found footage films succumb to what I call the "slow-burn syndrome", where efforts to gather clues to a mystery come at such an exceedingly slow pace that they risks losing the audience due to boredom. But not this movie: the pace is brisk, and the twists are well-placed, so it keeps audience attention throughout.

The film is based on the Omer-2 Anthrax vaccine trial, in which over 700 Israeli military personnel were subjected to a treatment which caused long-term side effects for many of the participants.

The Israeli government initially denied the victims' claims, but after the findings of an investigative commission were ordered by Israel's high court to be made public, it was eventually (nearly 20 years later) decided to give compensation to some of the victims. While the secret vaccine trial was presented to the participants as an effort to bolster national security, the findings of the commission were that the participants were selected merely based on "convenience".

This movie contains an important lesson about the dangers of blind obedience of and trust in government, and specifically the military. I consider it now the gold standard for found footage political conspiracy thrillers. Some other good ones are:

1. THE CONSPIRACY (2012)

2. WEKUFE (2016)

3. FRAME SWITCH (2016)

Day of the Mummy (2014)

Slightly underrated Adventure Horror Found Footage

[5/10 · 20 April 2024]

Out of the over 260 Found Footage films I have seen, only a handful combine exotic locales with a setting rich in history (see list at the end). There definitely needs to be more, for when a found footage movie manages to take advantage of the setting, the result can be an amazing vicarious experience. Unfortunately, it does not happen too often, and here the result is mixed.

DAY OF THE MUMMY is a found footage horror adventure movie in which a team of archaeologists are looking for the tomb of a cursed pharaoh, and the protagonist in addition is secretly given the task by the wealthy financier of the expedition, played by Danny Glover, to find a valuable gemstone.

The movie feels very much like a live-action video game, with the gimmick of a camera being clandestinely installed in the protagonist's eyeglasses and the financier boss periodically adding commentary to the happenings on screen through a hidden ear piece. I take it that the protagonist, an Indiana Jones type, is meant to be drawn as a complex character, not entirely good and not entirely bad, but he ends up feeling like a video game character, too.

Although the film has some atmosphere, the happenings on screen are always at arm's length and therefore fail to involve the audience. There are also some major requirements of suspension of disbelief (e.g. A signal going through even while deep inside a cave: the group reaching a chamber full of lit candles and never even asking who lit them and when, and so on). The ending was less than satisfying.

Still, there was enough to at least keep me entertained. So, while it is not a good found footage movie, I think the IMDB rating (2.6 as of this writing) is too harsh. The film may well have an audience in those who, like me, enjoy found footage movies with an adventure component and exotic setting.

There is one other ancient Egypt-themed FF movie I know of, made even the same year as this, THE PYRAMID (2014), which is a couple of notches better (see my review). Some other comparable movies I liked are

1. JERUZALEM (2015)

2. AS ABOVE, SO BELOW (2014)

3. FINAL PRAYER (2013)

Surprise (I) (2019)

High Concept found footage comedy

[6/10 · 11 April 2024]

A man buys a video camera to film the surprise party he is throwing for his girlfriend. Unbeknownst to him, the camera is defective and cannot be stopped from recording. In the course of the party, the camera is witness to surprising secrets from virtually every guest in the party, many of whom would rather keep their secrets under wraps and therefore try to destroy the footage and/or camera in a discreet manner when they realize that they have been filmed.

SURPRISE has a really neat concept, but while there were some genuinely funny moments, I ended up not finding it as a funny as I wanted to. I am not sure why, because the dialogue was pretty good, the actors decent and the situations in which the camera was put imaginative. It may be that the comedic timing was not always on point, and some of the secrets were a little too contrived for my taste.

Nevertheless, fans of high concept, found footage, or unusual comedic cinema may wish to give this a watch. Another comedy which is conceptually a bit similar but much funnier is CAMERA SHY (2012).

A Record of Sweet Murder (2014)

If Shyamalan and Miike had collaborated on footage horror

[7/10 · 8 April 2024]

A RECORD OF SWEET MURDER is a found footage horror film which tells the story of a journalist duo who are invited into an abandoned apartment in order to do an exclusive interview with an apparently mentally disturbed serial murderer who had escaped from psychiatric custody . Once there, he tells them that God told him to kill 27 people to bring back a dead childhood friend, that his count is 25, and and that he wants them to record his final two killings of a loving couple which will soon appear.

The film is very unusual for the found footage genre and takes a number of unexpected twists and turns while maintaining a good tension based on the audience not knowing whether the murderer is insane or whether there is genuinely some supernatural stuff going on, very much in the spirit of M. Night Shyamalan's KNOCK AT THE CABIN (2023).

Some of the twists and turns are more successful than others, but even the less successful ones can be enjoyed as a sort of dark satire, especially since some of the characters are reminiscent of the weird characters in Takashi Miike's satirical horror movies (I was especially reminded of the antagonists in ICHI THE KILLER (2001)).

One aspect I wonder about is whether the fact that some of the characters are Korean and others are Japanese is meant as an oblique commentary on the dark history between the two countries. In 1910, Japan annexed Korea as a colony and severely subjugated and oppressed the local population, something for which Japan has not properly apologized to this day.

Be that as it may, I like movies with highly original stories, I found it entertaining, and it ended in a way I did not predict, so overall I rate this as a good movie.

The Uninvited (2008)

Why do some filmmakers try to deceive the audience instead of making better films?

[1/10 · 1 March 2024]

THE UNINVITED is a movie with an intriguing premise that is handled in such an amateurish and unsatisfying way that by the time the end credits roll, one is left with confusion and displeasure. I originally gave this a score of 3, but then I noticed that there are a bunch of fishy things going on with it:

1. It appears the IMDB score is being gamed: there are, as of this writing, 385 perfect scores of 10/10 out of about 1.1k scores, making it by far the most frequent score. There is no way anybody but unethical filmmakers or paid shills would give this stinker a perfect score.

2. the Wikipedia page of this movie gives only comments from a single critic whose review, though containing criticism, is overall quite positive. What seems strange to me is that the critic praises the movie exactly for the aspects at which the movie particularly sucks. Also, the wiki seems as though written by a person who is biased in favor of the movie.

3. The title is identical to several other movies, including one much better known which was released in January 2009. IMDb gives the release date of this movie as 2008 (no exact date), but Amazon and Google play give it as 2010.

As I was watching the opening, I was taken aback by how amateurish this film seemed, but because I confused this with the 2009 movie, I decided to hang in there.

Though admittedly the premise of a woman suffering a strange phobia being terrorized by some kind of supernatural entity or Satanic cult is good, the movie manages to completely botch the execution. Apart from the amateurish direction, the movie is simply incoherent. I have watched thousands of movies, and I rarely feel like I wasted my time watching one, but on this I did.

I will make sure to strictly avoid any further movies from this director.

The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895)

18 second film mainly for those interested in the history of cinema

[6/10 · 1 February 2024]

The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots is an 18 second short film depicting exactly what its title says. There is no real story, and beside what the title tells us, we have no further context. Also, the actual swinging of the axe is curiously slow.

Still, this is the first known film to use a special effect, namely a cut where the person of Mary is replaced by a mannequin, and it also may be the first film to use trained actors.

The actual special effect, while visible, is not that bad. If the legend is to be believed, some audience members even thought that the film depicted an actual beheading.

18 seconds is not much to see one of the pioneering works in cinema history.

Found Footage (I) (2011)

Seriously disturbing, but what was the point?

[5/10 · 23 January 2024]

FOUND FOOTAGE begins with a notice telling us that this is footage in the possession of a police within the context of a crime investigation. Then the movie proper begins.

Darius steals a camera from a store with the intent, stated shortly after, of documenting his daily life. It turns out he is a small-time drug dealer and stalker/serial killer and over the next hour and few minutes, we see a first-person perspective of his murder spree.

One one level, this is a well-executed found footage movie: it has an interesting premise, it is very gritty and realistic, and the actors involved do a good job.

The film directly puts us in the shoes of a profoundly evil person, and thereby generates a lot of unease. THE POUGHKEEPSIE TAPES (2007) did something very similar, but did not have as much violence. It is a testament to the latter movie that it could still be highly disturbing despite most violence taking place off-screen.

Not so in FOUND FOOTAGE: the serial killer fixates on attractive young women, having mapped out their daily routes-what he calls the "grand design" of their lives-and when it comes time to do the deed, which he does with a knife, the film forces the audience to witness the graphic murder almost as if it was doing it. Although those sequences are short, they are very disturbing.

In serial killer movies, part of the point of the film is to convey something about the kind of person the psychopath is. The best found footage serial killer movies, such as MAN BITES DOG (1992), THE MAGICIAN (2010)(another Aussie take on the subject), RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE (2012), CREEP(2014), and CREEP 2(2017) present us with fully fleshed-out characters, where we can gain some insight and learn something about extremes of the human condition.

I felt that Darius was incompletely fleshed out. What we learn about him is that he is a nihilist, something of a coward, as when he is confronted by a much larger neighbor, and that he reduces people to their grand designs. Also, that for someone who reduces people to abstract concepts, he is pretty good at pretending to have warm human emotions when it is required.

Okay, that is a good start, but by the end of the film I was still in the dark about who he really was. If nothing matters, why go through the bother of killing people?

There is a hint that his murders are motivated by feelings of sexual inadequacy (which would explain the knife) but it is never really explored.

The other problem is the lack of a real story. To be sure, there are events late in the movie which happen because they were set up earlier, but the film has almost something like an episodic feel to it, without much of a story arc. Actually, this ties into the character issue, since the best stories also reveal the characters.

So, after the movie abruptly ended, I still felt left hanging, having gone through a little over an hour of the unpleasant experience of putting myself in his shoes with little payoff. For some, the vicarious experience itself is the payoff, and if that describes you, by any means, see it. Just don't expect to learn much from it.

Starfish (2018)

This film pulls a bait and switch on Sci-fi and horror fans

[4/10 · 23 January 2024]

STARFISH tells the story of a young woman who arrives in town for her best friend's funeral, and who breaks into her friend's house shortly thereafter to grieve and ponder.

On that same day, apocalyptic events, ushered in by the appearance of murderous monsters, begin which portend the end of humanity. Her friend has left her an envelope containing a mixtape with instructions to find another six which, when put together, produce a signal which can still save the world. She then goes on a journey to find the mixtapes and play them in order to complete the signal.

Okay, so this sounds like the set-up for a slightly unusual sci-fi/mystery/horror movie, but it turns out this story is merely a metaphor for deep personal loss and guilt and treated like an afterthought.

What this movie is evidently really about is how a person uses music to guide her in the process of grieving the death of a dearly loved one, one where the grief is additionally topped with an overwhelming sense of guilt.

There is an audience for languidly paced emotion-driven movies where the logic of the mind defers to the logic of the heart, and I think that audience will really appreciate this movie.

The trouble is, that is not how this movie is marketed or comes across, and as a result many people who are not part of the target audience watch this movie and get disappointed. Indeed, the few monster/horror scenes add little to nothing to the movie and could have been left out. It amounts in my view to a bait and switch.

Technically, the movie is well-made, with nice visuals and plenty of music, courtesy of the writer/director. Sometimes it is bold in its approach in that it experiments with art-house techniques, such as an in-movie anime which culminates in the protagonist drowning, and another scene which breaks the fourth wall. But for an audience which is led to expect a movie that is supposed to make sense at the level at which it is ostensibly presented, it fails.

The very conceit of having someone who is already in possession of the mysterious signal to break it up, go out and hide its pieces around town for no given reason, on the off-chance that her friend might find them, sounds ridiculous on its face.

The best movies, considered as works of art, often feature multiple layers of interpretation. If this story was going to incorporate the apocalyptic monster scenario, then why not really go for it and make it one of the layers at which this movie functions, in addition to the deeply intimate, emotional one?

At the perfunctory level at which the sci-fi/horror story is told, this element tends to subtract from the story, in my view. If these monsters and the end of the world are supposed to be a metaphor for the protagonist's inner world, then presenting all that in such a literal manner, as this movie does, make her come off as self-centered and almost narcissistic.

On another note, I found the long stretches where nothing happens except that we see a gloomy, grieving woman, really irritating, and it instructive to compare this to another film I saw recently which received massive amounts of flak for being extremely slow-paced.

The horror movie HONEYDEW(2018) has practically nothing do with this film, except that it also features lengthy sequences where "nothing" happens. Yet to me, it was not only intellectually clear that these sequences served a purpose-they were meant to dial up the creep factor and unease-but they also achieved that emotionally. I am positive the movie would have felt less creepy and disturbing without those sequences. That is in part why I consider it a good movie, unlike apparently the majority of reviewers.

In contrast, while in STARFISH I can intellectually grasp that the lengthy sequences where "nothing" happens are meant to serve a purpose-to "feel" the character's pain and grief-they did absolutely nothing for me emotionally, except to bore me. I believe in part that is because the movie offers us too little on the relationship between the friends to care, and if this is right, then it represents a failure of the movie on its own terms.

STARFISH ends in a rather mystifying manner, not the least baffling aspect of which is that, apparently, "Forgive+Forget" completes the opening of the doors for the monsters to enter our world and consummate the apocalypse. But then, little else in this movie makes sense at a logical level.

Only watch this if you are part of the target audience.

Infinity Chamber (2016)

Fantastic Philosophical Sci-Fi Movie (plus explanation of ending)

[10/10 · 22 January 2024]

INFINITY CHAMBER raises a question that is quite uncomfortable: what if some day in the future, an authoritarian government obtains the technology to penetrate your thoughts and dreams, to get into the deepest crevices of your mind while blurring the boundary between dream and reality?

At present, the most an authoritarian government can do, short of taking your life, is to take your physical freedom and to torture you. "Truth Serums" and such are extremely limited in their effectiveness and not very reliable in extracting secrets.

But the kind of technology shown in this film is at a whole different level. In some sense, it dehumanizes us, because it reduces us to a kind of predictable robot, albeit made of flesh and blood.

To better understand what I mean, consider how the gap between abilities of the human mind and similar ones generated by AI is being reduced with each passing day. Now, the usual way to reduce it is to make the AI more human-like. But an alternative way to reduce the gap is to transform the human mind from this almost mystical source of creative power and insight unique to our species into something that can be manipulated, explored and exploited like a piece of software. Most often, we overlook this angle.

The story concerns a man in the near future by the name of Frank, who in the opening shot is literally shot in the back, and then wakes up in a sparse room to a computer that calls itself Howard. There is very little information at the beginning, but as the movie progresses, we learn more about Frank, his world and Howard, and we also learn that not everything shown to us is real.

I have read reviews that tagged this as a movie that touches upon themes of surveillance or over-surveillance, but it is about so much more than that.

For a good portion of the latter half of the movie, it is not clear what is real and what it not,but the ending, which is one of the most brilliant of any movie I have ever seen (see SPOILER ALERT below), drives home just how unimaginably awesome such a power would be in the hands of a government: if it really possessed this power, you could never again be sure what is real and what is not, and this would transform the Cartesian concept of a Deus deceptor-a malicious demon that tries to deceive you at each step-from an abstract philosophical problem into a pressing and mortifying concrete one.

This theme has been explored by other movies, most famously the MATRIX (1999) franchise (also THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR (1999) which had the misfortune of being overshadowed by MATRIX, even though it gives a deeper philosophical treatment of the same theme), but not, as far as I know, in such an intimate way which really drives home just how profoundly life-altering such a power in the hands of a government would be.

Although this movie was made on a shoe-string budget, this is not evident at all. The acting, direction, cinematography and production design were all great.

I feel the movie is underrated because it is a little ahead of its time. We do not yet have to worry about such technology in a realistic sense, and because thinking about it seriously is unsettling, few of us now do.

But the day this could become reality draws closer, and at some point in the future we will have no choice but to deal with it. I hope we will be well-prepared.

Now to the explanation

SPOILER ALERT

It might seem that the ending is ambiguous, but if one takes the subtle hints throughout the movie seriously, it is possible to construct an interpretation that fits everything shown without any ambiguity, as best as I can tell:

The only scene that plays out in reality is the opening shot. After that, Frank is on life-support (similar to how his father had been), kept alive by government authorities, who probe his mind to find out where he had hidden his USB drive.

Instead of trying to hide this information in his mind, he has subtly modified his memory of where he hid it by exchanging aspects of his memory (like waffles for pancakes) in order to mislead the authorities.

All the scenes in the infinity chamber are therefore attempts by the authorities to try to obtain that information from Frank's mind. This is hinted at when we first hear Howard speak, for we hear a human voice morphing into Howard's voice, a human voice which represents the government authority behind Howard.

In order to break Frank, the authorities come up with scenarios that provide hope for Frank, only to be dashed. These scenarios include Howard's reset, the power outage, the first escape and the second escape. These scenarios are basically "games" that the authorities play with Frank's mind to discover his secret.

At the conclusion of the second escape, the government authorities finally succeed in getting Frank to reveal his secret. Once he reveals where he put the USB drive, his mind's imaginings take on a new direction because the government now has what it needed from him.

Hints that the last scene in the coffee bar is not real include the curious personalization and synchronization between the male and female newscaster announcements when they say "we praise your(!) safe return and welcome you back to the new world", the same dog as in the dream version, the nearly identical dialogue between him and the barista as in the previous dreams, and obviously Howard in the last shot.

The change from "Gabby" to "Madelyn" signifies that the government finally got what it wanted and no longer needs to play games with Frank, so what is ostensibly portrayed as a happy end in the final scene actually represents the defeat of Frank's anti-authoritarian resistance; the equivalent of his taking the blue pill in the MATRIX. The authoritarian government won.

Honeydew (2020)

Slow-burning retelling of a familiar story in an unfamiliar way

[7/10 · 21 January 2024]

A young couple goes to the countryside to research a fungus that infects cereals and which can cause gangrene, convulsions and insanity (based on the real-life ergot fungus). While out camping, a man identifying himself as the property owner shows up and asks them to leave. They do, but find that their car won't start, so they are forced to walk. Eventually, they come upon a house occupied by a sweet and hospitable but loopy old lady who invites them in. As the story progresses from there, the couple finds itself in an increasingly dangerous situation.

This is a slow-burn horror film that makes use of a Texas-Chainsaw-Massacre-type story, but tells it in a different way. Instead of body horror, we get slow-burn creeps and food-related repulsion, and instead of having victims killed in all kinds of outlandish and gory death scenes, we have the arguably even greater horror of humans being eaten piecemeal while still alive.

Most of the critical reviews have cited the slow pace and derivative story as reasons for their assessment, but I would argue that even a familiar story told in an unfamiliar way is a creative innovation. And while the slow burn may turn off at least some horror fans, it is actually quite atmospheric and well-constructed, and will therefore appeal to fans of that type of movie.

There are interesting directorial and cinematographic choices, overall this is well-shot and Barbara Kingsley, who plays the old lady, is a scene-stealer.

Again, this is not for every horror fan, but those who like a paced and atmospheric unfolding of a mystery with effective use of repulsive imagery will probably like it.

Black Bags (2023)

A good small-scale twisty thriller

[7/10 · 21 January 2024]

BLACK BAGS tells the story of two women whose fates are ostensibly intertwined by a switch-up of their luggage. There are many twists and turns in the story, so saying more would spoil the movie.

Although the switched luggage trope might seem like a meagre source for driving plots, the thrillers I know of which are based on it have turned out to be more or less good movies (or at least movies I liked), such as Roman Polanski's FRANTIC (1988), 8 HEADS IN A DUFFEL BAG (1997) and, though not a thriller but a classic nonetheless, WHAT's UP DOC (1972). BLACK BAGS joins this small group of good movies.

What impresses most in the movie is the acting by the two main characters, which is thoroughly believable and renders them real. Worse acting could have sunk this movie, since the story, though well-constructed, increasingly pulls on our suspension of disbelief. However, the quasi-philosophical questions about motherhood, and its relation to questions of good vs. Evil are raised in an organic way which make up for that, in my view

I also like that the movie deviates from the standard progression common in thrillers; the third act seems almost like a different kind of film, but nevertheless joins with what came before quite well, something which is not easy to pull off.

The direction, cinematography and editing were a little bland. I feel like there were opportunities for more tension and suspense which were missed. However, at no point was I bored and despite the criticism, these aspects of the move were definitely not bad.

The audience for this would consist of people who want to watch twisty indie thrillers with a greater-than-usual emphasis on fleshing out characters. Another such movie which is quite good, though not based on a switched luggage trope, is BULLITT COUNTY (2018).