In short: World War Dead: Rise of the Fallen (2015)

So, what’s an inevitably doomed documentary film crew – yup, we’re in POV horror territory again – to do to get themselves killed this time? Farting around on the battlefields of the Somme, traipsing after the trail of a potentially imaginary, cursed South African regiment, until some ill-advised corpse robbing causes the local zombie population to rise and do what local zombie populations are wont to do is what. Though it might be the zombies are just as annoyed by these bickering clowns as I was. Hooray for zombies! If only they’d eat faster.

So yes, I’m not too fond of directing duo Freddie Hutton-Mills’s and Bart Ruspoli’s adorably titled World War Dead: Rise of the Fallen. It’s another one of these films I find difficult to actually call bad because I find it too technically competent for that description (things are in focus when they’re meant to be, the sound’s audible, and so on), and features a perfectly professional cast that probably could have done something with a mildly more audacious (as in, containing at least two ideas I’ve only seen in ten other movies before) script. Alas, it is also much too boring, lacking in originality as well as any actual spark of life that could help me over the fact I’ve seen this all before. Changing the war in which the zombies died isn’t a creative achievement, and otherwise, there’s just so little here even worth talking about.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,in short,freddie hutton-mills,bart ruspoli,philip barantini,kacey barnfield,robert bladen,wendy glenn

SyFy vs. The Mynd: Roadkill (2011)

This one's a bit different from most SyFy productions, seeing as it was shot in Ireland with a mostly British crew and cast, and directed by Johannes Roberts who usually works for the UK low budget market. It seems fair to assume that Roadkill wasn't produced primarily made with the Channel in mind, but rather found its way there somewhere for its premiere. Consequently, the film follows the formulas of direct to DVD horror rather than those of the SyFy Channel film.

A bunch of American young ones (which is to say, British actors attempting American accents because the British just hate casting Americans in their movies, though the actors are faring rather better with it than most Americans trying a British one, and slightly better than most of their peers going for American) are making a tour through scenic Ireland in an old RV. It's all a ploy of Ryan (Oliver James) to win back his former girlfriend Kate (Kacey Barnfield) who is living and working in Ireland now. Things actually would go well with Ryan's plan, if an encounter with some Travellers led by a particularly sleazy guy named Luca (Ned Dennehy) didn't pave the way to catastrophe.

During the course of said encounter, the kids steal/take (it's complicated) a cheap-looking amulet, Chuck the designated jerk of the crew (Diramuid Noyes) accidentally runs over an old Traveller woman, and everybody gets cursed by her to be one by one killed by that most Irish of monsters, a roc.

Going on the run, our dubious bunch of heroes soon find themselves lost in a peculiar fog, and soon enough - as promised - are picked off one by one by an actual (serviceable) CGI roc. If that's not enough trouble for American tourists to cope with, Luca and his bunch of backwoods folk really, really want their amulet back.

So yes, basically, Roadkill attempts to spice up the "kids on the run from a monster" movie by adding bits and pieces of backwoods horror to it. At first, this attempt didn't exactly win me over: it's always difficult to get interested in what happens to characters who are quite as bland (though pretty) and/or jerky as our heroes here are. The old gypsy curse bit is also rather problematic and pretty much played out since the 1940s or so (wait, does that make gypsy curses retro now?).

Once the film gets going, though, and the herd of characters is thinned, Roberts does at least do some rather effective things with them. Roadkill is surprisingly ruthless too, much more willing to inflict not just death but pain on its characters than you usually see in a SyFy movie. I'm not talking major writing revelations here, but at least a willingness to break some of the rules for character types and their deaths and actions in horror movies. The movie does not just reward heroism in characters because we like to see it rewarded.

On the acting side, there's a minor appearance by Stephen Rea, some choice scenery chewing by Ned Dennehy, and better than they need to be performances by Kacey Barnfield (whose character additionally has never explained powers of ass-kicking, which I always approve of in horror heroines) and Diarmuid Noyes. The rest of the cast is perfectly alright, unless you need The Method in your films about rocs chasing people through the Irish countryside.

So, all in all, this not-quite SyFy Original is quite a bit better than it initially looks like, and definitely more entertaining than the other films of Roberts I've seen.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,american tv,in short,horror,johannes roberts,kacey barnfield,ned dennehy,diarmuid noyes

SyFy vs. the Mynd: Jabberwock (2011)

In a curious medieval Europe (one supposes, at least the film mentions the Romans, so should take place on planet Earth; filming did of course take place in Bulgaria) full of American accents, where neither church nor liege lords seem to exist, but rather a lot of short swords are bandied about, a lightning storm - that all-purpose fiend - opens the remaining egg of one of the horrible flying creatures which once created the local wastelands. The Jabberwock, as the creature only still remembered via a children's rhyme (or - cough - what we know as a poem by Lewis Carroll), is called, follows an unlucky traveller (Raffaello Degruttola) to a peculiar local village whose inhabitants live from who knows what yet still have a weapon smith if no other visible means of subsistence.

The creature - as is creatures' wont - starts terrorizing the countryside, killing people and grabbing take-away virgins to eat. It will fall to Francis (Tahmoh Penikett), the smith I mentioned, his undeclared love interest Anabel (Kacey Barnfield), his dying father Reginald (Hugh Ross), and his warrior brother just returning from war Alec (Michael Worth) to find a way to get rid of the monster. Their plan will involve a dubious looking home-made armour and an oversized mouse trap, so surely nothing can go wrong.

Oh no, it's another SyFy production I liked. Despite its curiously weak worldbuilding (seriously, what do these people live off, and what are Anabel and the other villagers doing when they're not fighting a monster, and so on?), Steven R. Monroe's sword and sorcery without the sorcery movie is a really fine time.

Sure, it's not a deep film, and I sure as hell could have lived without the "Tamoh Penikett is finally growing up and learning to grow closer to his family (too bad they'll have to die for it)" subplot, but the film does at least handle its cliché characters development with a firm hand, and the actors work pretty well together, so that the character parts are never standing in the way of the medieval monster movie parts, are in fact motivating them in a not subtle yet useful manner. Plus, there's no annoying comic relief at all, the film taking its smith versus monster plot seriously.

Talking about the Jabberwock, the monster in question is a decent CGI creation with a pretty interesting looking head that is of course at its most convincing when it's alone on screen, and is the most troublesome when it's supposed to interact with the characters around it. There's an early scene with the creature sitting on the village's wall (by the way, wouldn't that kind of wall not make it a town?), and the villagers fighting it where perspective and reach seem particularly dubious, but for most of the time, Monroe shoots around the limitations of its creature well enough.

Working around the limitations of his material and his budget is really what Monroe does for most of the time here, turning out a low budget sword and sorcery CGI monster movie that gains quite an entertaining pull through its insistence on not taking lazy shortcuts when it doesn't need to, and telling an old story with enough conviction to make it feel lively again.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,american tv,in short,sword and sorcery,steven r. monroe,tamoh penikett,michael worth,kacey barnfield