Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop  LUNG 2 – From the guy who did 'extreme horror underground' hit 'Flowers'. It's a black and white trawl through a silent nightmare and follows a dude who goes around being followed by and / or following another dude. I can't be more specific than that, but there are lots of body parts, bits of gore and strange hermaphroditic globs of flesh in a serial killer's fridge. Look, it's art, right? Recommended for those in the relevant state of mind.
THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS – Post-fungal holocaust shenanigans with a semi-infected girl whose main gift is her ability to tolerate a very grumpy Paddy Considine. It's a survivors-type scenario which features a small group of people on a quest for meaning in a derelict world full of viral zombies. We find out that relationships, love and letting go are all very important. Actually, it's fairly grim, bleak and claustrophobic, but very well done and as expertly performed as you might imagine with the likes of Considine and Glenn Close at hand.
TRASH FIRE – From the maker of the rather good 'Excision'. But this is less about gross out surrealism and more about people giving each other a hard time. Adrian Grenier is a wired alcoholic nihilist who specialises in pissing off his girlfriend and pretty much everyone else. After a relationship ultimatum, he takes his partner across the country to visit the leftovers of his dysfunctional family – horrible gran and damaged sister. Needless to say, there's plenty of gothic backstory surrounding the slow motion implosion of this particular house full of dread. Grenier is absolutely magnetic, and pretty much makes the film... it goes of the boil when it stops being a character study of him and veers more into weird, dark family territory. Definitely worth catching though.
HOUNDS OF LOVE – Australian crime horror about a nasty couple who abduct and abuse young girls. I was taken with its detached, dreamy stylisation, which felt a bit like Lynn Ramsay channeling a seventies exploitation flick in places (although please note, it is very deliberately and gratuitously set in the eighties). Can't quite sustain its initial promise of cold art house kicks, but the tension is there even when it tends to melodrama at the end. I won't forgive the misuse of JD's 'Atmosphere' (they should've stuck with the Russ Abbot one for the particular sequence I'm thinking about), but still, very much a recommend.
THE VISIT – Shyamalan's film about creepy old people menacing a pair of obnoxious brats often gets dissed by horror fans, but I didn't think it was that bad. “Well made, pretty absorbing, fluent and well paced” were my thoughts after I'd seen it. He's a good director, he just gets a lot of stick. Admittedly, there are shortcomings. The whole “mad people are dangerous” thing is, well, quite 'old school', and the found media aspect is a drag. The capper is that kid who raps – it's universally acknowledged that he can just f*ck off, and I don't differ from the jeering masses in this respect. Was quite satisfying to see him flip after he got that diaper full of shit thrust in his face... and a film which thinks like that can't have got it entirely wrong. |