Prey (2019)

"Low Budget Jungle Adventure 21st Century Style"

The new film from Franck Khalfoun, director of the 2012 remake of MANIAC, gets a digital and DVD release from Signature Entertainment.

Toby (Logan Miller from THE GOOD NEIGHBOUR, ESCAPE ROOM and the soon to go into production ESCAPE ROOM 2) witnesses the brutal stabbing to death of his father in a home invasion attack. As part of his behavioural recovery programme he has to spend three days and nights on an uninhabited island off the coast of Malaysia.

Of course it's not uninhabited or what would have been the point of those opening credits showing a caucasian pastor, his wife and little girl presumably on some sort of mission to convert the local tribe to Christianity. Needless to say by the time we get to the director credit it doesn't look as if everything went to plan for them.

Logan meets Madeleine (Kristine Frøseth from APOSTLE) while she's out hunting & she warns him not to stay on the beach at night, despite that being the pick up point at daybreak on day three. As his time on the island draws to a close Logan realises things (and the monster threatening the place) may not be all they seem.

The kind of 'jungle adventure' that was all the rage in the 1930s and then later in the 1970s, PREY offers us an interesting comparison with those older pictures in terms of behaviour of the male lead. In the 1930s Lionel Atwill would doubtless have tied the girl up for some naughty experiments. In the 1970s Jack Taylor would have slept with her amidst much crash zooming from good old Jess Franco who (if he was in the right mood) might also have given us a decent sex-obsessed tale of love gone wrong. In PREY, the 21st century equivalent, our wimpy 'hero' whines a bit and tries to hit her with a stick. 

And that's the main problem with PREY. It feels very slight indeed compared with what has gone before. Yes there's a jungle on an isolated island and yes there's a monster, but everything feels so impossibly airbrushed and safe that there's very little tension (or anything else) generated throughout the running time. And that's a great shame because director Franck Khalfoun did an excellent job of making MANIAC and his follow up i-LIVED isn't bad either. PREY, however, is strictly one for the trapped-on-an-island-with-an-ex-model obsessives. And I know you're out there, so just for you here's the trailer:

Franck Khalfoun's PREY is out on digital HD on 

Monday 28th October 2019 and on DVD on 

Monday 4th November 2019

i-Lived (2016)

“Another decent horror picture from the director of the MANIAC remake”

Oh yes indeed it is. i-LIVED might not be quite as good as Franck Khalfoun’s crackingly good 2012 slasher picture, but it certainly helps cement his growing reputation as one of the most promising horror film directors of the 21st century.

Nerdy, incredibly annoying Josh (Jeremiah Watkins) is in his 20s. Despite his Stanford university degree his life since graduating has been a dead loss. He has no money to pay his rent, and he spends his time reviewing apps online on his ‘J-Tech’ site. When he signs up to a new self-help app called ‘i-Lived’ his life suddenly takes a turn for the better. His ailing mother’s health improves, he acquires beautiful new girlfriend Greta (Sarah Power) and the likes for his site increase to the point where big business becomes interested. But when he unsubscribes from the app, things start to go horribly wrong, and he finds himself having to commit increasingly gruesome crimes to maintain the life he wants. 

         i-LIVED takes a while to get going, but even at the beginning there’s a fun 13 SINS / 13: GAME OF DEATH vibe to the challenges Josh has to meet in order to achieve his next life success. It’s when things get considerably darker that the style Khalfoun evidenced in MANIAC comes to the fore - clinical, coldly stylish and glitteringly cruel. Plot-wise, it’s unlikely any seasoned horror fans are going to be surprised where things are going, but style-wise the movie keeps you watching as you go there. 

         Full marks to Khalfoun for making the proceedings increasingly disorientating and nightmarish as we reach the climax as well. I’ll admit I still can’t work out if the character of Josh was intended to be almost unbearably annoying for the first two acts, thus making it all the more likely that he would need help to achieve his goals, or not, but don’t let the performance put you off. Second Sight’s DVD offers no extras, but go for the 5.1 surround sound option instead of standard stereo. 

I really liked i-LIVED. If it had been shown at something like Frightfest I don’t doubt it would have ended up in my top ten of the festival. Stylish and entertaining, it’s made me all the more enthusiastic for Franck Khalfoun’s AMITYVILLE: THE AWAKENING, and while it’s not quite a good as MANIAC, it confirms that he’s definitely a director to watch. 

Franck Khalfoun's i-LIVED is being made available to view in the UK as follows:

Download to own from Monday 27th June

On-demand from Monday 4th July

DVD from Monday 11th July