Three Films Make A Post: So deadly, it may be the last movie you ever see.

The Veil (2016): Despite some very decent acting and a fine enough basic idea, director Phil Joanou quickly falls into the usual traps and trappings of modern mainstream horror: there’s the script that needs to isolate its characters but can only find the most stupid way to do it, a colour palette so muted the film’s greyish brown and boring to look at, and of course an idea of horror that loves jump scares so much more than anything else it can’t live without at least one every five minutes. And there’s obviously the lame twist ending too.

Witchville (2010): This SyFy movie was for some reason and to good effect shot in China, giving the affair some local visual influences on the production design. There are also Chinese actors in smaller roles. It’s basically a cheap sword and sorcery movie with Luke Goss enriched with mild wuxia elements, and as such Pearry Reginald Teo’s film pushes a lot of my buttons quite adeptly. It’s merrily paced, has a lot of perfectly decent Sword and Sorcery ideas about witches and the way people fight, adorably small armies, and is good, stupid fun all around.

The Mystery of Mr. X (1934): Edgar Selwyn’s film about a cracksman (Robert Montgomery) hunting a serial killer of policemen because he’s under suspicion himself (without much actual evidence, mind you) on the other hand is very slow going. It seems to have the reputation of being a hidden gem in classic Hollywood lover circles but I does very little for me. I’m a sucker for the “charming thief hunts worse criminals” kind of tale, but I could do little with Montgomery’s performance here, that for my tastes was more smug and self-satisfied than roguishly charming.

The romance angle doesn’t work for me either, the romantic plot moments and the mystery always getting in each other’s way while they’re only competent looked at separately. So we’re safely in the area of “boring competence” here again, and that’s something I have no love for in films made now or in 1934.

In short: The Night Crew (2015)

Bounty hunters Wade (Luke Goss), Rose (Luciana Faulhaber), Crenshaw (Bokeem Woodbine) and Ronnie (Paul Sloan) are tasked with getting a certain Mae (Chasty Ballesteros) out of Mexico to the US for bail bonds reasons. For reasons unexplained, that’s supposed to make their partner and boss enough money to be able to avoid being killed by Armenian gangsters.

Unfortunately, the job is a wee bit more complicated than they thought: when first they meet Mae, she’s just about to be killed by some Mexican gangsters working for cartel boss and creep Aguilar (Danny Trejo). Obviously, getting Mae out of the country will pose more of a problem than our heroes expected, seeing as they have to cope with Aguilar’s rather shoot-happy men, a woman who’d really rather not be transported to the US by them, and – worst of all – their own stupidity.

That’s not quite enough to fill a whole film, though, so there’s also the mysterious supernatural secret Mae is carrying around, as well as a love triangle between three of the bounty hunters.

Christian Sesma’s The Night Crew has a lot of the problems endemic to contemporary low budget action movies produced for the home video market: the dialogue’s generally stupid, as is the plot, there’s not much money for decent sets or locations, and visually, you get the usual combination of bleached out colours and a camera that just won’t stop wobbling drunkenly during the action scenes, which – to no one’s surprise – doesn’t exactly make them look any better or more convincing.

Still, I found myself enjoying the thing more than many films of its ilk, mostly for the handful of moments when the usual cheese turns quite fragrant (like the absurd posing in the moment before Sesma decides to not show us the climactic boss fight which you can either explain by the film’s budget not containing a position for “Danny Trejo, action scene” or a sudden interest in being avantgarde), and its honest, sometimes semi-successful attempts at creating a bleak and spooky mood through murky darkness and shady surroundings. I can also only commend the way The Night Crew employs its horror elements – unapologetic, boneheaded and with the gestures of someone who has had a very bad idea, shrugs, and just goes with it. Alright, that  might still doesn’t sound like much of a recommendation but when it comes to direct-to-DVD movies of the moment, I much prefer one like that has a cheesy idea and goes with it to the more usual kind that just doesn’t want to have any ideas – good or bad – at all.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,action,horror,christian sesma,luke goss,danny trejo,chasty ballesteros,luciana faulhaber,bokeem woodbine