One Shot (2021) / One More Shot (2024)

The main selling point of James Nunn’s tale about a Navy Seals squad lead by Jake Harris (house favourite Scott Adkins) having to survive a terrorist siege when they’re about to guard the transport of an inmate of one of those US torture camps for prisoners that officially don’t exist anymore is that is indeed a one shot movie. Logistically, that’s a rather impressive feat even in the age of digital editing, particularly since the film’s action sequences are often surprisingly complicated; I can’t even imagine how difficult it must be to get an choreography together for the hand to hand combat.

Despite the pretty unpleasant torture camp setting, and the restrictions of the one shot style, there’s quite a bit of decently effective character work here as well, enough so that every character at least has believable motivations – even some of the villains are allowed to be human beings. Human beings played by some fine character actors and a very game Ashley Greene to boot, so there’s a surprising amount of humanity in between the exciting murder and explosions.

Made three years later or so, One More Shot takes place only a couple of flight hours after the first film. Harris, the only survivor of his team and his prisoner Amin Mansur (Waleed Elgadi) land not exactly in the country they were expecting to end up in, and soon find themselves thrust into a mercenary attack on the airport, as masterminded by one Robert Jackson (Michael Jai White). As it turns out, the supposed Islamist terrorism case is only a set-up for an attempted coup in the USA.

Harris, not exactly the biggest fan of Mansur after the first film, finds himself dragged into protecting the man as well as Mansur’s pregnant wife while also figuring out what exactly is going on.

This second film is a nice escalation of the first one, sharing most of its virtues – character actors doing their stuff admirably (hi, Tom Berenger) under one shot circumstances, and action sequences that look bigger and even more complicated to set up. The car crash bit does frankly look a bit insane to me to actually have been pulled off.

The plot’s turn into the more convoluted does sit better with me as the old evil Muslim thing but it also does make the second movie somewhat less plausible. Fortunately, I’m not really going into a Scott Adkins movie looking for plausibility – everything else you might want from a low budget action movie, these two films deliver.

In short: Burying the Ex (2014)

Well, this isn’t a complaint you hear from me very often, but what really buries Joe Dante’s newest movie for me is how inherently sexist the whole affair is, showing not a bit of compassion for its zombie returnee (Ashley Greene, whose manic performance once she’s back from dead is to my surprise one of the better elements of the film, and deserving of a better one), and no visible clue that its supposed everyman hero (Anton Yelchin) is a childish, superficial little prick. Of course, the latter isn’t too surprising in a film that seems to believe actual human pair relationships should be between people who are virtually identical, and that can’t seem to ever rise above the lamest of comedy clichés in its characterisation, with Yelchin’s Max the poor beleaguered sod under attack by the oh-so-evil (just look at her ecological fixation, oh noes!), neurotic, dominant shrew back from the dead, even though all he really deserves is Alexandra Daddario’s female other self (just without any actual ego, because clearly, that’s baaad in a woman).

One might hope that at least hilarity ensues, but the film’s jokes are stale, Dante’s usual visual gags and nods in the direction of the tradition of genre cinema are the same old for him, and there’s really not a reason to root for anyone here. Compare this to something like Shaun of the Dead, a film that goes out of its way to show its male main character as a loveable fuck-up but always stays conscious that he is indeed a fuck-up, and what Dante’s film mostly looks like is dated, as if he didn’t learn a thing since his 80s heyday. Well, actually, it’s more like he unlearned quite a few things he knew. It doesn’t help this impression that the film is so clearly struggling with its depiction of contemporary twenty-somethings, using phrases, jokes and characterisation for them that suggest they’re actually living in an old man’s idea of 2004.

Add all this up, and you get yourself a film that actually leaves one somewhat embarrassed for its director. Surely, this can’t be the film Dante was actually aiming to make?

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,comedy,joe dante,ashley greene,anton yelchin,alexandra daddario

In short: Kristy (2014)

An internet-based cult kills young women it dubs “Kristy” (insert some random crap about purity and stuff). Their newest victim is Justine (Haley Bennett) a hard-working student spending a lonely Thanksgiving weekend on a depopulated college campus.

They’ve chosen a bad victim this time around, though, because – “surprise” – after the usual series of terrorizing gestures and murders, Justine is rather good at turning the tables on her would-be killers, and soon the hunter becomes the hunted, etc.

I’m generally not very fond of home invasion and hoodie horror movies, because far too many of these films are thinly veiled excuses for bourgeois filmmakers to express their resentments towards poor people, with generally little of substance or interest to say about class. Oliver Blackburn’s Kristy doesn’t bother with this sort of thing at all, at first making small gestures that might suggest a film willing to do something with class based horror but quickly deteriorating into a film with so little visible passion for its material it doesn’t even get around to being reactionary. Apart from the whole “evil Internet people” thing, of course, but that’s really only an excuse for a few pseudo-cell camera shots, and green and red letters on black background.

Now, of course this sort of thriller doesn’t necessarily need to be rich in subtext – and I for my part can particularly live without another film telling how devious we poor people are – but Kristy (also known as Random or Satanic during various production stages) just isn’t good enough at being thrilling to be able to convince me. That’s partly because Blackburn isn’t very good at making his bad guys very threatening (which is understandable, giving that one of them is Ashley Greene, who isn’t becoming a better actor just because you put some bad make-up and piercings on her), partly because the film just never really grabbed me. It’s certainly competent in its application of jump scares but falters in the more subtle and more effective art of suspense, leaving this viewer with the feeling of watching something technically competent but completely lifeless, the sort of thing that suggests to me I’d rather have watched a really bad movie than one this competently mediocre.

The only thing that rises above the fold here is Haley Bennett’s performance as the film’s victim turned killer but there’s little the film does with her performance. At times, I got the impression Kristy is this dramatically neutral on purpose, attempting to raise really nobody’s hackles, and certainly eschewing any idea of substance (emotional or intellectual). Seen positively, this is for once a horror movie I have a hard time imagining anyone being offended by. Hooray.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,thriller,oliver blackburn,haley bennett,ashley greene

The Apparition (2012)

Kelly (Ashley Greene) and her boyfriend Ben (Sebastian Stan) have freshly moved into a suburban palace in a development nearly bereft of humanity as some sort of long-term house sitters for Kelly's parents. The couple has barely moved in when (all together now) strange things begin to happen. Strange noises slightly inconvenience them, furniture moves when nobody is looking, and mold grows in the strangest places. Soon, the first pet death occurs - though it's not the couple's pet, for that would be too emotionally involving for this particular film.

Ben could actually tell Kelly what's going on, but doesn't for a while for reasons of bad scriptwriting and not enough actual content to make for a full-length movie. When Ben was in college, he and some friends accidentally conjured up something "from the other side" that has rather rude habits. It must have bothered them in the intervening years in some ways but the film makes puffing noises rather than showing or telling any more about that - at least, Ben's buddies attempt to bring the thing back where it came from, which would make little sense if it hadn't bothered them. Of course, the attempt to get rid of it has only made the thing stronger and is the reason for the newly intense (one supposes) attacks on Ben and Kelly.

Will Ben, Kelly, and Ben's old pal Patrick (Tom Felton) manage to get rid of the thing before it does something interesting? Warning, that was a trick question, because they don't get rid of it, but it also won't do anything interesting.

After the high of The Pact it seems only fitting the next contemporary movie about a haunting I watched was this, possibly the blandest movie about a haunting I've seen in a long time. It's probably better this way to keep my expectations for future films about ghosts and hauntings on a more realistic level.

The Apparition is a film that completely lacks the following things: tension, intelligence, imagination, scariness, actors who can actually act, and - surprisingly - jump scares. Not that I truly miss the latter, but their complete absence seems to be symptomatic of writer/director Todd Lincoln's complete unwillingness to make a horror film that actually attempts to engage its audience on any level, and be it just that of shouting "boo!" into their faces.

The whole film is a series of missed opportunities, bungled set-ups for scares and a whole bunch of nothing. It's competently made in so far as things are decently blocked and in focus, but Lincoln's direction is so lifeless even the two and half scenes that actually could work in disturbing or creeping out an audience fall flat on their asses. If I were scraping for something nice to say about the director's work here (which I'm not), I'd mention how much I appreciate that the film's not shot in the desaturated colour scheme filmmakers inexplicably love so much right now, but really, when the only positive thing that comes to mind about a film is that it uses actual colours, said film may have a problem.

The most remarkable thing on screen, on the other hand, is the cringeworthy way its first half takes time off of its busy schedule of boring its audience to show Ashley Greene in as many skimpy outfits as its rating allows. Alas, said rating is "PG-13", so what's supposed to be titillating comes off as a bit sad, provoking wistful memories of women showering in their bikinis. Yes, this is a movie where even the sleazy exploitation of a young actress's body is boring, which is particularly problematic when you keep in mind that Greene can't act her way out of a paper bag. Though that ability at least makes her the perfect fit for her male co-stars who are equally ungifted but for the most part less leered at by the camera.

So, to summarize: I'm feeling rather sleepy now.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,horror,todd lincoln,ashley greene,sebastian stan,reviews