In short: The Misfits (2021)

A bunch of, well, misfits on a Robin Hood trip (Nick Cannon, Jamie Chung, Rami Jaber and Mike Angelo) attempt to rope experienced conman Richard Pace (Pierce Brosnan) into their newest project of stealing terrorist gold. Even though his archenemy Schultz (Tim Roth) is involved with the terrorists, Pace is rather reticent doing anything for no monetary gain. Fortunately he changes his mind when he learns that his estranged do-gooder daughter Hope (Hermione Corfield) is part of the gang. So, after more than half an hour of feet dragging, a heist does eventually ensue.

Poor old Renny Harlin’s newest movie The Misfits has some major problems. Harlin himself isn’t one of them – while this isn’t one of his more interesting and stylish directing jobs, he does his best to get picture postcard shots of Dubai, Pierce Brosnan and the two or three fast cars that were in the budget.

Alas, he has to work from a terrible script by Kurt Wimmer and Robert Henny (who both have written some terrible films in their time, with a couple of decent ones sprinkled in) that seems to have little idea on how to properly structure and pace a heist movie. Sure, as with nearly every heist film made in the last decade or so, the Fast and Furious films have clearly become structural models, so one can’t go into a film like this expecting old school heist movie beats, but if you aim for being a big fat action heist movie with cars, you actually need to deliver the action early and often and find a way to sandwich the character work in-between. The Misfits seems to have been made in the belief that such a thing is easy, and so of course drags when it should move and moves when it should take a breather. It certainly doesn’t help that the film can’t actually afford big set pieces, and is simply not clever enough to then come up with clever ones it can actually afford.

Instead, there’s quite a bit of absolutely terrible comedy, drab character work, and a heist without tension with “twists” you can at best shrug about.

There’s also the little problem that an ensemble movie like this actually needs a fully capable ensemble: while Brosnan is certainly not unwilling to work, he also seems rather too conscious he is slumming. Chung and Corfield are perfectly decent presences throughout, at least. Roth – the villain with the most screen time and theoretically a great actor for this sort of material -seems too bored to do much whatsoever, and Cannon’s performance is simply terrible, not just because he has to deliver most of the “funny” lines (though that certainly isn’t helping). Angelo and Jaber for their parts are just kinda there, doing nothing any man-shaped piece of cardboard couldn’t do just as well. All of which makes it rather difficult to root for or against anyone here.

Three Films Make A Post: FEAR THE FAMILIAR.

1st Summoning (2018): Your usual troupe of student filmmakers does the POV horror thing. These particular guys and gal are – eventually – visiting an abandoned factory building in the middle of the woods (do Americans really build their factories there?) that’s said to be used in Satanic pact rituals. The whole affair is not terribly involving or exciting, though director Raymond Wood goes for a somewhat cleaner style than most POV horror movies have, and there is at least some interest in characterisation shown.

Alas, the pace is needlessly slow, the horrible happenings aren’t really that interesting to watch, and the little clever twist the film goes for in the end is rather too obvious to work and not actually all that clever. Though, to be fair, the movie plays far fairer with it than is typical.

Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018): Speaking of needlessly slow films, how about this horror comedy by Crispian Mills that only gets around to the horror after fifty minutes or so of not exactly unexpected “British private schools are classist and crap” shenanigans have passed. Now, the “school is hell” trope is a classic for good reasons, but the way the film presents it is terribly bloodless. It doesn’t help that the “comedy” part of the “horror comedy” never really manifests. The script’s just not very funny though it is trying rather hard, and even a cast consisting of perfectly capable young things like Finn Cole, Hermione Corfield and Jamie Blackley can’t do much with comedic writing where about every tenth joke actually hits. Even Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are mostly unfunny in this one, which usually takes some doing, or a terrible Scottish accent.

Crucible of the Vampire (2019): Which curiously enough leaves me with Iain Ross-McNamee’s very indie – and therefore cheap - lesbian vampire movie as the best film in this particular bunch. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the movie is full of problems. The acting’s only ever half on point and especially Florence Cady doesn’t make a very good lesbian vampire at all, I have to say. The direction hits some sweet spots of sleaze and/or mild creepiness only from time to time but just as often looks amateurish and cheap without the sense of goth-y poetry that makes up for much in an amateurish and cheap movie in this particular sub-genre. There’s some pretty cool and interesting vampire lore in here, at least.


Plus, of these three films, Crucible seems to be the only one genuinely trying to be the best film it can be; that this doesn’t necessarily translate into a good movie, especially when resources and time are strained, is just one of the little cruelties in life.

In short: Rust Creek (2018)

Warning: vague structural spoilers ahead!

On her way driving to a job interview in Washington, college student Sawyer (Hermione Corfield) gets very lost in the woods of Kentucky. Even worse, while trying to get her bearings, she encounters two of the local male populace who clearly have very untoward designs on her. She manages to fight them off, but gets wounded in the process and has to flee into the woods, without any idea on how to get back to civilization or really, just survive. And this will turn out to be only the beginning of her ordeal.

Because, and here come the spoilers, while one might very well expect Jen McGowan’s Rust Creek to be a backwoods horror movie with a survivalist bent, it does turn into a very different film once it has gotten going, partially becoming one of these American rural crime films concerned with criminals who aren’t quite as clever as they think they are and the escalation of violence resulting from their misguided plans. But here, too, McGowan tends to take interesting detours from the genre standards, never completely going down the road of deconstructing the genres she’s working in, but rather inhabiting them in what feels like a more personal way. While she’s certainly no slouch in the thriller-style scenes that start and end the film, McGowan particularly excels in the calmer moments, in the careful eye she has for the unspoken nuances in the developing relationship between Sawyer and her rescuer/kidnapper Lowell (Jay Paulson), or the deft way she slowly reveals what exactly hides behind the simpleton good old boy surface of the local sheriff (Sean O’Bryan).


I also very much appreciate how deeply the film trusts its audience to understand the things it hints at instead of making explicit, like Lowell’s backstory as told through environmental details, a half-sentence and a couple of glances. There’s a self-assured feeling to the whole of Rust Creek, a confidence that’s very much justified by the resulting film.