I like my plague the way I like my coffee/men: black & Beany. Um...

Ever since I stayed up late four weeknights in the 6th grade to watch ABC’s adaptation of The Stand, I’ve had something you might call ‘a thing’ for plagues. Whether it’s a movie like Carriers or a novel like Blindness, the idea of infection sparing no one is just such a ripe and rich premise for any horror film.

Toss in the word bubonic--easily one of my favorites--and  you’ve got the ingredients for one kicking movie. Oh, and did I mention Christopher Triangle Smith is behind the camera?

Yes, you could easily say my expectations for Black Death was about as high as the body count of the actual Black Death.

Quick Plot: It’s 1348, a great time for rats, mead, and long hair but a crappy time for life expectancy. A deadly sickness is tearing through Europe leaving nothing but paranoid Christians and rotting corpses in its path. 

Enter Oswald, a young monk torn between his village love and his word to God. Fearing the worst, he sends his girlfriend home to the woods where she plans to wait for him every morning as he decides where his true heart lies. 

A sign comes in the form of the rarely shampooed Sean Bean playing Ulric, a knight leading a tribe of Christian mercenaries into the woods to capture a rumored necromancer. As they venture deeper into the wild, they encounter violent savages and eventually, Black Book’s lovely Carice van Houten’s Langiva, a mysterious beauty lording over a gang of pagans.

Christopher Smith has one of the most impressive resumes of any genre filmmaker working today, so the idea of putting one of my favorite film premises in his hands is beyond exciting. In a way, unless Black Death met Wizard of Oz standards, it was probably never going to truly be as good as I wanted it to be.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t like Black Death. It had body boils, angry mobs, David Warner, a bleak ending and Sean Bean snarling. Of COURSE I enjoyed the movie. But coming from the man who made a beautiful day of sailing into a time warping horror complete with a baghead killer, Black Death fell a tad short of being the bubonic bonanza I was hoping for. 

High Points

One of the interesting aspects of any film set pre-1700 is the necessary lack of firearms. Black Death gives us a great moment of dialogue where the young monk learns from a grizzled knight about the mercy knife and how a carefully placed stab wound serves as the medieval headshot for merciful killings

SPOILERS

I drifted off a bit from Black Death during its somewhat disappointing third act, but I found the epilogue to be absolutely great. Having Oswald, our young and lovelorn hero, 

transform into a dark witch-hunting murderer (with Episode 2 Anakin Skywalker hair to boot) was devastatingly brilliant, making it a spiritual prequel to films like Mark of the Devil and Witchfinder General

The only good thing I was ever able to say about the awful Hitcher remake was that hey, at least the truck stretch out was cool. So it’s kind of neat that Black Death, another Sean Bean vehicle, gets to do the limb pulling, period style


THUS ENDETH SPOILERS

Low Points

While some of the sound design is haunting (ew death gurgles!) I find it hard to believe that every time sword moves it makes that slicey sound

There’s a fantastic shot when one of Ullric’s men is crucified by the pagans, as Smith’s camera follows him face-on in a frenetic Wicker Man-like final prayer. The problem is that this type of moment is far too rare. With a hauntingly fogged landscape and some set pieces that speak for themselves (hooded executioners marching on, corpses a’plenty) it’s kind of a shame that Black Death doesn’t feel truly immersed in the natural madness like, say, Vinyan or Aguire: The Wrath of God.

Lessons Learned

Christians appreciate the concept of betrayal

The longbow is quicker to load AND farther in flight. Take THAT buck of tar!

It’s indeed possible to smell a lie on a man

As Red Riding Hood taught us well, eye makeup was never more lovely than during pre-Industrial Revolution times

The Winning Line

“I look forward to shagging your mother’s ass in hell”

Who knew medieval times were filled with such great trash mama talk!

Rent/Bury/Buy

Black Death is certainly worth a lights-off watch, particularly since it’s currently streaming on Instant Watch. My slight disappointment probably stems more from the fact that I just watched Werner Herzog’s drop dead gorgeous Nosferatu (review coming soon) and was slightly spoiled by his masterful use of medieval times, plagues, and European forestry. So Black Death ain’t Nosferatu, but it’s still an engrossing period horror refreshing for our age.

Melissa George Has a Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day

I love a film like Triangle. Loopy, mind-bending, refreshingly ambitious and well made. I want you to watch it, plain and simple. And for that reason, what follows will be a spoiler-free (save for my Low Point) review.

Don’t say I never give you nothing.

Quick Plot: Single mom waitress (is there any other kind when it comes to indie films?) Jess (Melissa George) heads to a Florida harbor to spend a warm afternoon on a boat with a prospective laid-back rich boy beau (think Noah from the latter seasons of Beverly Hills 90210) and his small assortment of richer friends. The birds are flying, the sun’s as bright as a baked potata and it sure seems like a shaboinkle day.

Cue the sudden drop of wind and entrance of some very angry clouds. A storm quickly rages, capsizing the vacationing crew and leaving them stranded in the middle of a very blue ocean. Things look grim until a giant cruiser cruises by. The gang board but quickly sense something is very off...mainly the fact that nobody seems to be anywhere.

Triangle is a smart film but not, as some would have you think, a total mind trip intent on driving you insane. I imagine those who call it such are the same people who claim Inception doesn’t make sense on its first viewing. It leaves you with a boatful of questions, both moral and logical, but at the same time, the storytelling is intense enough to keep your mind in gear. We don’t always know exactly what’s going on, but we’re involved enough with Jess to follow her as she figures it out. 

Most excitedly, Triangle is kind of scary. This isn’t a necessarily movie designed to give you nightmares, but there are plenty of earned jumps and since you’re so focused on trying unraveling the mystery, they genuinely do grab you. Maybe it’s just the natural offness of the creepy Town That Dreaded Sundown baghead mask.

Writer/director Christopher Smith is probably best known for the horror comedy Severance,  a film I thoroughly enjoyed even if it never quite reached Shaun of the Dead heights. With Triangle, he goes in a very different direction, offering a Twilight Zone-esque story with interesting moral implications. At times, it’s frustrating, but the script holds up through the end and proves to be tighter and more provocative than we’re led to belive.

Also, it must be said, Triangle is a gorgeous, gorgeous film. The early scenes on the water build a grand picture of being stuck at sea, while the set design and photography of the ship offer an interesting and almost ironically claustrophobic feel so fitting to the actual plot. Smith was clearly making some nods to The Shining, and while some references are a tad too cute (Room 237, for instance) the idea works well to establish a place that just isn’t right.

High Points

While I always liked the fact that Melissa George worked a lot in the horror genre, I’ve never really had a reason to think much of her acting abilities. In Triangle, she’s pretty fantastic, believably inhabiting a role that proves far more complicated than we initially think

I’ve grown rather tired of the old single-mom-with-special-needs-child ploy to instantly grab some sympathy for a female lead, but Triangle manages to make this cliche work, both due to George’s performance and some of the minor plot kinks. We genuinely want Jess to get home and pick up poor Tommy at the bus stop

Yes I loved the visuals of Triangle and while I don’t want to just gush at every major feature of the film, I’ll also throw out a compliment to the haunting piano score

Low Points

This is the only part of this post where I’ll delve into spoiler territory, so close your eyes, jump down one, and I’ll be there:

One of my biggest pet peeves in cinema is the irresponsible driver, the character--more often than not, a parent--who continuously turns his or her head at an obtuse angle to speak to whatever passenger (usually a child) is sitting comfortably in the back. Every single time this happens on camera, I throw up my hands and expect, without any doubt, to see a mack truck in the foreground speed towards our supposed protagonist’s windshield. Every. Single. Time. Not too surprisingly, Triangle is guilty of such a crime, odd considering how tense and alert Jess should be at this point in the story

END OF SPOILERS

Lessons Learned

When planning on fixing up two of your friends, you should probably confirm that one half of the prospective couple isn’t planning on bringing his own date to the communal event

Florida is home to quite a few almost Australians

Wedge heels can be quite inconvenient, particularly when your day will, without almost any doubt, include a whole lot of running

Rent/Bury/Buy 

I was prompted to watch by the ominous red front warning from Netflix that Triangle will no longer be streaming, plus a year’s worth of quiet hype the film had built in the genre community. Boy am I glad I listened. Triangle is the kind of film I love, one that takes a familiar premise but gives it a fresh spin. It’s an engrossing, challenging, and highly entertaining watch that most genre and in general, film fans will at least respect. A definite rental, and considering its complexity, an easy rewatch that warrants a buy. 

You Can't Fire Me. I'm Dead!

Your co-workers are generally not your friends. Nor are they family or even the people you might share half priced appetizers with over happy hour. Still, what a show like The Office knows is that the men and women you see every day occupy a definite place in your life. There is unwritten protocol for dealing with your manager, who in turn has his or her own understanding in agreeing or disagreeing with the big boss. Temp a bit in any work setting and chances are good that you’ll meet the token kissup, the hotshot who somehow avoids termination despite a bad attitude towards superiors, and the good-looking worker who amasses a batch of unrequited crushes around the cubicles.


Severance, a 2006 horror comedy from the UK, starts with a deliciously ripe premise. Employees from Palisade Defense (the kind of company funded by both the American and British government, hence, in one character’s words, “They’re not going to do anything immoral”) are being rewarded/tortured with a “team building” getaway in the forests of what seems to be Hungary. When their bus encounters a block in the road and the driver refuses to go any farther, the mid-level manager forces his underlings onward to an abandoned home he takes to be the luxury lodge they were promised. Before long, strategically placed bear traps, land mines, and flame throwers force staff cooperation that no paintball game could ever muster.

Having gone on two “management training” weekends (once to a ski resort, once to an abandoned country house not unlike the setting of this film), I identified quickly with the poor chaps in Severance. While my experiences were not quite as bloody, they did include “teamwork” exercises like building egg parachutes and making crayon murals of what our jobs meant to us. The idea was nice, but spending those precious days of the week normally reserved for avoiding all semblances of the workplace with co-workers in their pajamas does nothing to endear your occupation to your heart. Severance gets that.

Also, it’s pretty much hysterical. The actors--mostly British with a token Canadian Faculty alum Laura Harris--have excellent comic timing and genuinely feel like an unhappy office family. Toby Stephens stands out as the snarkiest of the bunch, but every performance rings true. Director/co-writer Christopher Smith consistently balances humor with horror in a way that made me chuckle and wince throughout the running time. There’s gore a’plenty, and since you actually like the characters, the deaths come with added weight.

High Points
A conversation about decapitation gets a payoff that’s kept a smile on my face for two days and counting


Removable shelves should be standard on compact refrigerators; you never know what large object you might need to stick inside

It’s refreshing to see multiple female characters making smart and ballsy decisions throughout the film


Low Points
Perhaps the early talking scenes go on a tad too long for bloodthirsty horror hounds, but it’s all entertaining


No trust exercises?


Lessons Learned
Do not attempt to pry open a bear trap unless you have the strength to keep it opened long enough to dislodge what’s stuck inside

Hold music is crappy in any language


Always read the instructions before firing a rocket launcher


The standard baking time for a found meat pie is one hour


Rent/Bury/Buy
This one belongs on your shelf, preferably next to Shawn of the Dead for a match made in British Horror Heaven (where Peter Cushing guards the gates, of course). Imagine throwing the characters of The Office into the hostel in Hostel, and you’ll get a good idea of what to expect. The gore is high and the laughs are hearty. Pour some tea and enjoy with a scone.