In short: 88 (2015)

Gwen (Katharine Isabelle), suddenly finds herself in one of those archetypical US diners in the middle of nowhere. She has no idea how she got there, and doesn’t seem to be too sure who she is either. Parts of that will come back in a series of disjointed, out of order flashbacks to two different points in time when she seems to have been two very different persons – the rather mild-mannered version remembering this again, and a pretty damn murderous woman on a killing spree calling herself “Flamingo”.

Apparently, much of the violence has to do with taking vengeance on her former boss, psychotic drug lord Cyrus (Christopher Lloyd) for the death of the love of her life Aster (Kyle Schmid). Things get messy and violent in every one of the film’s timelines.

There is obviously quite a bit of Memento in the DNA of April Mullen’s film, but where Nolan’s film was very strictly structured, 88 is often confusing and disjointed. That’s not bad filmmaking, I believe, but rather a conscious decision by Mullen and screenwriter Tim Doiron (who also plays a supporting role on screen) to let the film mirror the shattered psyche of its protagonist, leaving the viewer often just as confused by the way things in her world and in her personality hang together as she is for most of the film. Mullen’s visual style adds to this feeling, giving everything a woozy and unreal quality that works well for what she’s doing here, at least for my taste, and also helps keep up a certain pulpy energy.

Isabelle is pretty great, too, providing a visual and personal anchor to proceedings, at once playing three – Gwen I and Gwen II are not perfectly consistent with one another – very different characters yet signalling clearly who is who while also showing a coherent emotional core.

In short: The Sound (2017)

Warning: there will be spoilers!

Kelly Johansen (Rose McGowan) debunks supernatural occurrences for the pleasure of the Internet. Her pet theory explains those sightings of ghosts and ghoulies that aren’t hoaxes as hallucinations caused by low frequency sound waves. That’s what she expects to uncover when she visits an abandoned subway station in beautiful Toronto where the ghost of a woman is supposed to cause a bit of havoc to those daring to visit.

However, the place is worse than Kelly expected. It’s not just full of low frequency sound waves so extreme they could actually kill somebody – Kelly’s so stubborn when it comes to her debunking she still camps there even when headaches and nosebleeds start, mind you – our heroine experiences strange encounters and apparitions that seem closely connected to something terrible happening in her past concerning her sister.

I’ve not heard much good about Jenna Mattison’s The Sound, but I think it’s a perfectly decent little film. The acting – apart from McGowan, there’s also a smallish appearance by Christopher Lloyd who is really getting into his creepy elderly man persona – isn’t particularly loud or exciting, but quiet and generally competent. The script (also by Mattison) certainly manages to sell its big twist much better than many another low or high budget horror film, mainly because the twist here is actually important to establish the meaning of the story. And yes, the film actually has something to say about its main character. While I got what the film was going for there, I wasn’t quite as convinced of Kelly’s mandatory turn from sceptic to full-on believer. That turn is by now too much of a cliché, and it certainly doesn’t help the film’s case that Kelly in the end doesn’t just become more open-minded about supernatural things but turns into the kind of gal who bloviates about helpful spirits leading one to the light. Which doesn’t really fit what she went through: that was amateur trauma confrontation therapy made by ghosts.

As a horror film, The Sound does work okay – there are a handful of effective fright scenes beside another handful of much too obvious ones, while Mattison does establish the subway station as a frightening and strange place effectively enough to keep one’s interest up for the running time.


While all this isn’t exactly a high recommendation, I think The Sound does have enough enjoyable moments to certainly be worth a watch. How very Canadian of it.

In short: I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016)

On first look, John Wayne Cleaver (Max Records) is your typical teenage outsider in your typical US small town – socially awkward, with only one actual friend, and rather more interested in weird stuff than his peers. “Weird stuff” in John’s case being serial killers and death.

Unlike most teenage outsiders, though, John is a diagnosed sociopath who has set himself a whole load of rules he follows to be “normal”, and not go around murdering people. Although as the film – and Records – plays him, I’m not sure his therapist isn’t misdiagnosing heavy social anxieties and depression.

Be that as it may, John’s home town is struck by a series of murders, with the victims brutally ripped apart and missing one body part or organ a piece. Looks as if the place has its own serial killer now. John soon finds out the killer is his elderly, friendly neighbour Mister Crowley (Christopher Lloyd). Turns out the man’s not exactly human. Knowing this and doing something about it will turn out to be rather different things for John.

Unfortunately, the film never really explains why a guy who supposedly has no empathy at all for other human beings would feels the need to do something about Crowley at all, giving us a sociopathic central character whose difference Billy O’Brien’s film never really makes enough use of. In fact, the film seems to shy away from ever facing what it says doesn’t go on in its main character full on, and without the therapist character telling us repeatedly, John wouldn’t actually read as a sociopath. This does of course weaken all of the film’s attempts at contrasting Mister Crowley, who does his deeds to a degree out of love, with John who doesn’t do bad things because it says so in the script, and leaves us with a rather more well-worn story of a small town kid discovering his neighbour is a monster.

I really think the film – I don’t know about the novel by Dan Wells this is based on – misses interesting possibilities there. In general, the film’s approach to everything seems a bit too low key to me, be it Crowley’s true nature, John’s interior life, or dramatic tension.

I Am Not a Serial Killer isn’t exactly boring, mind you, it feels more like an attempt at making a horror movie which follows the outside markers of indie dramas about teenagers and forgets about the bit where it needs to actually build tension. Instead it would rather introduce a bunch of characters who won’t have any import on the plot or its characters (for example, why is the girl who has a crush on John even in the movie?).

The film’s approach just seems a bit too harmless for the sort of thing it is supposed to be about, never actually willing to face the abyss and the things this abyss suggests about people head-on. Instead the film dithers on a perfectly competent level without ever committing to anything terribly interesting.