The Resort (2021) - So many cliches

I'm not saying that I'm the greatest screenwriter ever (my screenwriting credits amount to a grand total of NO films!), but I have been watching horror films since the seventies.  I like to think this at least gives me an idea of what to expect when watching a horror/slasher film. 'Scream' was released back in 1997 and poked fun at all the cliches and silliness associated with the genre so I find it hard to believe a film like this can be made in 2021.

It's not a terrible film, it's just filled with so many elements that anyone who's ever watched a horror film will roll their eyes at what happens here.  It's about four friends (their ages are never revealed here, but if they're actually supposed to be teenagers then they look at least thirty!) who visit a remote island off Hawaii in the hope of getting some photographs of a deserted resort that's supposed to be haunted.

Nothing wrong with the premise, but no sooner have we been introduced to our quartet do we get a flashback of the main girl in a hospital bed after the visit to the island.  There, she tells a detective that all her friends were killed, so that kind of removes all tension with the other three as to whether they'll live or not.

The four main characters aren't that memorable; besides the 'young' woman who's the lead, you have a generic blonde as her friend, plus a guy who looks like Thor when he was fat, plus another man who only talks about s3x.  Seriously, that's his whole 'character' - he just talks constantly about s3x.  

The film isn't long - one hour and fifteen minutes - which is probably a bonus, but I stuck with it until the final act.  I've seen a fair few horror films that were pretty generic all the way through, but at least had a decent finale.  Not here.  The evil spirit looks like a cheaper version of the girl from 'The Ring,' the audio seems to get muffled and you can't really hear what people are saying and the characters start running around like headless chickens.

Like I say, it's not the worst film I've ever seen, but there are a million of the same genre that are much better and without the numerous cliches which make it seem like it's been written by someone who's never seen a horror film in their life.

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back

Captive (2023) - Generic, but fun

There are some film that I just can't work out.  Sometimes they included all the elements of a genre that I should like - and yet I end up hating the finished product.  Other times (like now) this one has a lot of negatives, yet I came away feeling like I hadn't wasted an hour and a half of my life.

I'm not sure whether it's a 'spoiler' to talk about the promotional front cover/poster, as it's kind of in your face already whenever you see the cover art of image on a streaming service.  It does kind of give the game away as to what the film's about.  The blurb reads something like 'a group of stoners break into a house to get high, but get more than they bargained for.' That could leave you wondering what they come up against and what the threat is they face.  But if you've seen the poster then you'll have immediately seen the fangs, indicating that this is a vampire movie.

It's sort of like an extended episode of 'Buffy' but aimed more at adults.  The teenagers get stalked in one large house while the plot if peppered with some vague 'love story' elements that any good (or terrible!) teen drama is littered with.

The dialogue is average at best.  The acting is passable, but, to be fair, the actors aren't given a lot to work with!  The plot is kind of predictable and you'll know who's going to get their pretty little teenage throat chomped on and any bloodsplatter is blatantly computer-generated.

In other words... this film has more than its fair share of faults.  And I actually quite enjoyed it.  Yes, it's no masterpiece and I may not remember it this time next year, but it was serviceable enough for what it was.  I was clearly in the mood for something that wasn't particularly taxing and possibly in a very forgiving mood.  There's certainly a hundred better vampire movies and TV shows out there, but there are certainly some worse ones, too - at least the vamps didn't even come close to 'sparkling' in sunlight here.  

6/10 Should probably keep you awake if Freddy Krueger was haunting your nights

Hardware (1990) - I still don't get it

I'm a huge 'Terminator' fan and I remember seeing this video in the store back in the early nineties.  The front cover features - what might well as be - the skull of a T-800's endoskeleton and that was it, I handed over my money and took the movie home for the weekend.

I only watched about half of it.

Weirdly, the basic premise has always stuck by me over the years.  It's set in another post apocalyptic wasteland of America, but this time it's more sandy than filled with lasers and killer cyborgs.  A drifter finds what looks like the basic torso and head of a robot (yes, again, think a T-800 endoskeleton) and brings it back to what's left of civilisation.  There, a space marine who's home for shore leave buys it as a present for his artist-girlfriend.  

However, he probably should have just stuck with flowers as the robot starts rebuilding itself until it's a full-size metal monster with two pokey little needles on one hand that he quite likes injecting people with (his favoured method of despatching victims).

This basically is how the second half of the film transpires... the machine stalks the lead girl in her flat.  Yes, just the flat.  She gets away.  Rinse and repeat.  Now, if you asked the question: how does a machine built to kill humans manage to keep losing the only target in a pretty small hunting ground?  Then you'll have asked the question that made me turn it off all those years ago. 

However, it's possibly just me.  I watch a lot of B-movies and YouTube top ten videos where we hear about all these 'cult classics.' And, sure enough, 'Hardware' is among them.

So I gave it a watch all the way through this time.  Okay, so the pace does pick up in the final act, but it's still all just set in the one location.  I guess the older me can now pick up on how good the set design was and overall world-building looked.  It's just all set in a flat.  I always figured is something similar happened to me I could always just walk out of my house and just run off before I got poked with the robot's two needles.

A lot of people like it, so maybe check some high-rated reviews out before you decide to invest an hour and a half of your life into watching this.

4/10 You can watch this film while you're doing the ironing (you'll still get the general gist of it)

Primal (2016) aka ‘Well’ - The jury's still out on this one

The credits have finally rolled and I can't make my mind up about whether I liked 'Well' or not.  I must confess that I have been getting more than a little tired about the 'formula' where hero gets powers and saves the world after defeating a villain with similar superpowers.

Lately, I've been crying out for a story have isn't a remake of something - meaning I know where it's going to go because I read the comic back in the nineties.  And this is it.  I didn't know what to expect and the fact that it was in among the 'horror' films, I thought there might even be an evil beastie hunting the protagnonists, but the story featured nothing like that.

It's about a mother who drops her deadbeat adult son off at his father's gas station in the middle of Eastern Europe,  The son hasn't seen his dad since he was little and he gets hardly any time to get to know him because gangsters and prostitutes soon gate crash and demand him hand over something he'd clearly stolen from them.

So there's plenty of tension between the various parties, as the van the thugs arrive in breaks down there and they have to stay at the gas station for a few nights.

Ultimately, what you have here is the simple definition of a 'slow burn,' Boy, is it slow.  Not to say that things are always hard to see, or even that nothing happens.  People come and go and as the scenes go by we do get a better idea as to what our characters are all about.  But you may be crying out for some sort of action.  I hate to disappoint, but you don't get any.  There are no stylised action scenes, hordes of computer-generated monsters or high octane car chases in sports cars.  There's a bit of gun play near the end if you've stuck it out that long, but that's about all you'll get.

The violence and decisions the characters make are actually quite toned down and sensible.  No one tales a hundred punches and keeps fighting.  Once someone is hurt, they're hurt and better pray no one goes for them white they're weak.

If you're looking for anything vaguely fast-paced, or the snappy banter of a Guy Ritchie/Tarrantino movie then you won't find what you're looking for here.  But if you're ready for something a lot more slow paced and just a little more thoughtful, this could be worth a watch.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that

Sea Beast aka ‘Troglodyte’ (2008) – It gets better!

I didn’t expect an awful lot from a film entitled ‘Sea Beast,’ but I do confess to enjoying a good monster-munching B-movie and I thought this one might fit the bill.  However, at about the twenty minute mark I was seriously considering turning it off – I know it’s hardly a ‘mega budget’ blockbuster type film, but I thought the special effects might be a little better than when you first see the titular creatures.  In short… have you seen a Playstation ONE cut scene?  If so, then that’s kind of what the beast looked like.

However, I persevered and, believe it or not, I was glad I did.  Either my eyes got used to just how badly designed/animated the monsters were, or the film-makers used the worst take on the initial sighting of the antagonists, as the creatures seemed to look a little less CGI-ed onto the film.

No, ‘Sea Beast’ still wasn’t an Oscar-worthy affair.  You won’t really recall any of the cast once the credits have rolled.  I can’t even remember any of their names.  They’re there purely to die – and die they promptly do.  You’ll probably guess at least a handful of those who are destined to survive, but that’s not to say their characters are ever defined any deeper than ‘the guy with long hair’ or ‘the main girl.’

Perhaps what makes the monsters a little better is that the film-makes use the tried and tested trick (that they’ve obviously gleamed from the ever awesome ‘Predator’) of making the monsters sort of invisible, which cuts down the need for special effects.  In fact, there is some dialogue here and there that does sort of sound like it was almost copied and pasted from Arnie’s jungle outing against a certain head-hunting alien.

Ultimately, ‘Sea Beast’ is what I had thought it would be – an hour and a half of utter trash, purely designed to fill a small gap in my life where I had nothing better to watch and fancied something that I didn’t have to think about.  It’s no masterpiece and there are a million better movies (did I mention the 1987 film ‘Predator?’) but this one is watchable enough to only make me want to check my phone every few minutes during its runtime.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that

Free Guy (2021) – A mash-up that works

Okay, so take ‘The Truman Show,’ sprinkle in some ‘Groundhog Day,’ then add a bit of ‘Ready Player One’ and ‘The Matrix.’ Finally, stick Ryan Reynold’s face on it and let him go to work with his charmingly laid back kind of humour and you have ‘Free Guy’ – a film that probably shouldn’t work quite as well as it does.

Maybe I’m overthinking it, but I’d almost like to see the film done differently.  Normally, I would say that admitting that Ryan Reynolds’ character (‘Guy’) is an ‘NPC’ (or ‘non playable character’) in a state of the art open-world video game may be classed as a ‘spoiler.’ However, I think I can get away with mentioning that because the film pretty much tells you this within a few minutes, plus this point was heavily emphasised in the marketing.

But, like I say, I kind of wish they’d have kept it more of a secret for longer.  I think there would have been mileage in letting Guy wander around this crazy world while we – the audience – wonder just what the hell is going on.  I guess if the film-makers did this then the movie would probably have been a ten part series on Netflix.

Instead, it’s all thrown at us pretty quickly as to what’s going on.  Guy is one of the millions of NPCs who are there just to make the game zone (or ‘Free City’) appear like a real world to the players in the game.  Yet, one day he develops a consciousness and therefore a desire to be more than just cannon fodder for trigger happy teens all over the world.

I suppose what elevates this to more than many similar stories is it’s the first (to my knowledge) to use a computer game world to let someone come ‘alive’ in (okay, so ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ was kind of in the same ball park, but that was more of a kids’ movie). ‘Free Guy’ spreads itself over so many genres it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is.  I guess you could also call it a sci-fi, comedy, love story, but it’s the overriding sense of social satire that anyone who has a relatively good knowledge of videogames will appreciate. 

And did I mention it has Ryan Reynolds in it?  He’s almost always worth the price of a cinema ticket so fans of his will get what they came for, not to mention general film buffs and pop culture enthusiasts who can enjoy the many references to other IPs (yes, ‘Deadpool’ is obviously in there).

Overall, I think most people who have, or know about, open world computer games should enjoy this one.  Although, I have a weird image of sitting my mum down to watch this and having almost every joke and reference fly over her head, leaving her with a nonplussed look on her face.  Guess it’s probably for the ‘gamer generation’ primarily.

8/10 The Force is definitely strong with this one

 Like Dogs – Different enough to make it worthwhile

I didn’t really know what to expect when I saw down to watch ‘Like Dogs,’ – the blurb didn’t really give much away, other than two people had been captured and were being treated like – you guessed it – canines.  And that’s actually a pretty good summary.

When the film opens we meet the protagonist – a woman who has been abducted against her will, chained to a wall in a seemingly nondescript building and is being fed some sort of dubious meat-stuff in a bowl off the floor.  Naturally, she’s not too pleased with her masked captors and does her best to escape – but, seeing as she’s chained to a wall, she obviously doesn’t get very far.  Soon she realises she’s not alone in there, as there’s also a man in an equally degrading position a few bays down from her.  They strike up a bond and, more importantly, ideas on how to break free.

I’ll leave it there in terms of plot as there are some elements that you might not see coming (I didn’t, but then I’m notoriously bad at predicting ‘twists!’).  I expected what was probably going to be ‘torture p0rn’ and, I guess there are some elements, but there’s also a lot more to the mystery than first meets the eye.

As it got into the final act the dynamics of the movie shifted a bit over the way it appeared to be heading and, for a moment, I thought it was going to do a 180 degrees and effectively undo all the dark undertones that had been building.  However, I was pleasantly surprised when this was merely an attempt to lull the audience into thinking it may actually be going in a different direction, before making sure it course-corrected and stuck true to the elements it was building on.

‘Like Dogs’ certainly won’t be for everyone.  There’s no special effects, epic battles, big name stars or flashy direction, but what is there instead is a disturbingly dark tale of an insight into the deranged human mind.  Few films get much darker than this, but if you’re in the mood, this one might fit the bill.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that