Audition

This disturbing Japanese thriller follows Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), a widower who decides to start dating again. Aided by a film-producer friend (Jun Kunimura), Aoyama uses auditions for a fake production to function as a dating service. When Aoyama becomes intrigued by the withdrawn, gorgeous Asami (Eihi Shiina), they begin a relationship. However, he begins to realize that Asami isn't as reserved as she appears to be, leading to gradually increased tension and a harrowing climax.

Release date: 16 March 2001 (United Kingdom)
Director: Takashi Miike
Adapted from: Audition
Box office: $131,296 (United States)
Music by: Kōji Endō
Language: Japanese​

A Film Gutter Review from Alex Davis 

Over the better part of six years of reviewing here at Film Gutter, we’ve covered an awful lot, taking in some of the best known in extreme horror as well as more obscure and cult favourites. But remarkably – and this was something that only occurred to me very recently – we have yet to cover anything from a filmmaker I love in the form of Takashi Miike. How could this be? I just don’t have any explanation for why this should be the case, but I thought this Hallowe’en season would be a fine moment to make up for it with a series of reviews bringing focus to the director’s darker work. I should say before we begin that I am of course aware that Miike has a long and extensive body of work which cuts across many genres, but for our purposes we’re going to be diving head-first into the stranger end of things – kicking off with one of his most acclaimed movies, Audition.

And I will kick off by saying this – if you haven’t seen Audition yet, go and watch it first and read this review later on. This is one of those movies that is very much best watched knowing little to nothing about it. If you’ve seen it already, or are happy and willing to have this one spoiled for you, then feel free to press on…

So, Audition begins with Shigeharu Aoyama, who works as a senior part of a movie company and is growing increasingly lonely after the death of his wife some years before. With an associate, he cooks up the idea of ‘auditioning’ a series of women for a movie that’s very unlikely to get made, but with an ulterior motive – he is in effect ‘auditioning’ for a new life partner. There, he falls for shy, quiet Asami Yamazaki, and calls her after the audition to set up some drinks. Things seem to go well from there – despite some misgivings on the vagueness of her past from his friend and colleague – until Asami seemingly disappears from the face of the earth. Aoyama goes looking for her only to find that a trail of darkness and tragedy has seemingly followed her around, and that some of what she gave as her background isn’t quite true. But when the two do meet up and take things to the next level, things are about to get seriously twisted…

This is a movie with a fine reputation, and the last time I saw it was about twenty years ago, so this was an interesting one to revisit. Those few detractors of the movie would claim that the finale makes little sense, or comes out of nowhere – perhaps it does to an extent, but this is absolutely by design. The shadows surrounding Asami are always there, but only truly become clear in the last quarter of an hour. Much of the movie is on the surface a romantic drama – a well-made one, but not the sort of thing I would usually seek out. The change of gear as we conclude this piece is pretty legendary, and Miike shows off that dark imagination to great effect as we draw the film to a close. It’s wild, disturbing and unsettling, and that’s probably why it’s best seen with no foreknowledge – I was lucky enough to know nothing about it before that initial watch, and it was a real treat being absolutely blindsided as I was.

There is a huge amount to like here – the acting performances are strong, particularly from Eihi Shiina as Asami, who treads the line wonderfully of quiet and innocent before turning utterly psychopathic in the finale. Both sides of her character are utterly believable to boot. The visuals are spot on, particularly in the unforgettable finale, where things hit one after the other like a dream or a fantasy, taking some time to piece together. Patience is important here – the movie is a real slow-burn, but when it clicks into gear it goes from 0-100 in no time. The pacing is very much a conscious decision, and asks the viewer to come on board with it – and if you can it’s almost certain you’ll be rewarded. For me this is distinctly one of Miike’s best horror movies, and probably one of the best Japanese horror movies ever made full stop – and you can rest assured that’s some serious competition.

RATING: 10/10. What else is there to say? Audition is surely the masterwork from one of Japan’s most acclaimed directors, simultaneously a slow-paced rumination on love and gender relations in the country with a brutal story bubbling underneath the whole time that explodes in an ending to fit in with some of Japan’s most extreme offerings. Even on a second watch I was transfixed, left shell-shocked in my seat when the credits rolled. It’s no revelation to say this is an extremely good film, and if you’ve not made time to watch it yet you should do so – it’s up to watch on both Shudder and BFIPlayer, so go seek it out!

On the day they move into a new house, a Madrid couple and their daughter become the targets of a brutal home invasion by a trio of masked criminals.

Release date: 13 November 2010 (United Kingdom)
Director: Miguel Ángel Vivas
Music by: Sergio Moure
Language: Spanish

Before I get into this relatively little-known Spanish movie, I have to say a few words about how I came about it – this one is up on Shudder listed as Kidnapped, and you’d better believe I had a bloody hard time tracking down the details on IMDB. There are plenty of movies by this title, and it took a while to realise this was originally a Spanish-language film that was presented here with an English title and an English dub – there’s no option to even have the subtitles and the original dialogue. I don’t know why this bothered me so much – it just seemed an unusual thing to do to try and disguise this movie was Spanish, especially when Shudder and Amazon Prime alike have plenty of international movies out there. There’s only the odd flourish here that might make you think it isn’t American, which is maybe why this approach was taken, but I just had to say a few words about it here. And rest assured I won’t hold it against Kidnapped/Secuestrados itself!

I took a few days to try and digest this movie, as my initial reaction was pretty mixed – the story is more a home invasion tale than an actual kidnapping, with mother and father Jaime and Marta and their daughter Isa held captive by three masked individuals. The father is taken out to town by one of them to draw out all the cash they have in their accounts, while mother and daughter are held in the house by the remaining invaders. Of course, there are various attempts to escape and reach out for help, as well as an unfortunate number of visitors arriving into this nightmarish situation. This all leads to a shocking and explosive finale that certainly left an impression on me, but I won’t say any further than that for risk of spoiling the experience.

Kidnapped had plenty of strong moments, and the acting performances generally capture the fear and the harrowing nature of the situation, particularly from Manuela Velles as Isa. The tension does ratchet up throughout, although at times it was a bit too loud and in your face for my personal liking. However, there was something just slightly missing here – for me, the setup wasn’t quite as strong as it might have been, which left me feeling a bit unconnected to the characters. In this sort of movie empathy and sympathy are pivotal, and I didn’t really have that for the characters here. The bad guys themselves are weakly characterised – again, some of you might not feel that’s all that important, but it’s a worthy consideration in my eyes. Visually it’s pretty grim and dark, although one thing that really drove me to distraction was the propensity to go split screen – I know the filmmaker was trying to draw a comparison between scenes and situations, but sadly I just felt like I couldn’t concentrate on anything properly while that was going on and as such large chunks of the plot were just whistling past me. As a visual device it just felt showy and obnoxious, and it wasn’t the only instance here either.

If you like a home invasion movie, this is probably worth checking out and ticks several boxes just fine, but there are some missteps for me that do hold the rating back and stop it being a genuinely great example of the subgenre.

RATING: 6.5/10. Uneasy? Tense? Yes, both of those in spades. Well-acted? At large, yes. Bound to stick with you? Probably – I haven’t been able to properly shake it from my mind in the time since I watched it. You might think all that would ultimately lead to a stonkingly high rating, but it just doesn’t quite hit home as well as it might, with its slightly thin characterisation and some over-the-top and frustrating visual touches that it would have been better off without – less is more, as the saying so often goes. It’s not liable to brighten your day in the least, but there’s enough to like here to make it worth a watch even with the problems it has in mind – go take a look on Shudder if you fancy it.

It’s only as I come to review certain movies that certain facts about Film Gutter hit me, and in coming to look at 2002’s Dahmer it occurred to me just how few ‘serial killer’ flicks we have covered here. I suppose there’s been a handful, but that’s out of literally hundreds of reviews, and even less of those have taken in those many biopics (which of course vary immensely in how close they are to the reality) about the notorious serial killers of our time. I know they’re out there, but I’m not wildly keen on the concept in some cases and they can conjure up some complex, mixed feelings for me. What drew me to Dahmer in particular was the presence of Jeremy Renner in the lead role – a very fine actor without a doubt, and I was ultra-curious what he would bring to the role. I’m no expert in Dahmer’s crimes and transgressions, so I couldn’t talk as per the veracity of this one’s portrayal, but as a movie this one went on to be a pleasant surprise.

The story of Jeffrey Dahmer here is told in two storylines, one of him as a younger man and one of him in his twenties and cruising the club scene, selecting his victims one by one and seducing them back to his apartment. What proved a revelation was just how gory and bloody this movie wasn’t – I went in with expectations of something pretty confronting and lurid, but instead what I got was a fascinating psychological portrayal of a serial killer’s private life, taking in several telling scenes of Dahmer with his family, heading to church and spending time meeting men in gay clubs. There are some powerful scenes there without a doubt, and even more so in some of the conversations with his soon-to-be victims, many of which provide remarkable insight into his feelings and character, not just drawing him as a boogeymen. It’s not sympathetic but equally it’s not a grotesque, overblown parody – here is a serial killer as a human being rather than a monstrous other as you might see depicted elsewhere.

Many reviews have looked on this one and described it as boring, but I don’t think I could disagree more. Sure, it’s a slow burner, and if you go in expecting plenty of gruesomeness you are barking up the wrong tree – this one is liable to leave any hardcore gorehounds out there disappointed on that front. But it drew me in gradually, bit by bit, until I was absolutely riveted by what was a really striking yet simple finale. Jeremy Renner’s presence and portrayal are excellent – this was one of his first very significant film roles, and he captures the dark charisma that so many serial killers are described as having.

I’d ultimately say this might be one of the least bloody movies I’ve reviewed here, but I figure that its ballpark content and context still made this one worthy of the Film Gutter treatment – and I suppose on top of that I wanted to recommend it! If I had a criticism it would be that some of the time cuts are a bit confusing, but it didn’t detract from the experience massively, and in places those rapid switches in fact enhanced the experience. This one is free to watch on Amazon Prime, and if you’re looking for a slightly different, dare I say ‘softer’, serial killer movie then this could well be for you.

RATING: 9/10. This movie was not what I expected at all, but that turned out to be a positive here. Quiet, thoughtful and compelling, this feels a very different stripe to many movies in the subgenre and benefits from it. If you really want to see the claret flowing there will be plenty better for you, but for those of you seeking out a very dark psychological study, then you’re absolutely bound to get something out of this one. Everything felt well considered and by the time this movie had me hooked in, those hooks were in deep and I was blown away by the closing stages of this one. Well worth your time!

CHOOSE (2011)

When a scarred murderer begins posing his victims terrible choices before killing them, a journalism student is dragged into the race to prevent him striking again.
Release date: 16 March 2011 (USA)
Director: Marcus Graves

I’m sure this sort of thing existed before it, but it’s fair to say that the success of the Saw series spawned no small number of imitators. Like it, love it or hate it, across 8 movies Saw and its sequels have made all but a billion dollars at the box office, making it numerically the most successful horror franchise of all time, beating well-loved series the likes of The Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Hallowe’en silly. And invariably that sort of success draws people to making similar sorts of movies, opening the door for the good, bad and indifferent that goes along with that. And thus, we have 2011’s Choose, a relatively early outing for the now much better-known Katheryn Winnick (who might be familiar to you as Lagertha in Vikings) and another story of a serial killer offering disturbing and seemingly impossible choices to his victims.

So, Choose is the story of young Fiona Wagner and her father, Sheriff Tom Wagner, who find themselves caught up in a gruesome web of crime. Our perpetrator isolates his victims and then gives them sixty seconds to make a horrific decision – we open with a young girl having to choose whether to kill her mother or her father, which is probably one of the most harrowing scenes in the movie all told. Some don’t strictly involve death, but in some cases you could take them as worse fates than even that. Tom is hunting after the killer when Fiona is contacted by the perpetrator, and finds herself inexorably drawn into the investigation, which – as she will come to discover – has a very personal connection indeed for her…

I’m never quite sure what to make of these sorts of movies – I don’t want to inherently write them all off, because there are some very good examples beyond Saw, which is a series that hangs together surprisingly well, especially considering the number of horror franchises that descend into nonsense. Waz leaps out as an obvious one strong example, and there have been a few other fun and interesting ones like Vile and 13 Sins. But this sort of ‘playful serial killer’ setting up a game for their victims has rather been done to death now. It’d be unfair to say I was bored by Choose – the film is short and taut, and moves at a decent pace – but equally I can’t ever say I was highly invested in the characters or really that shocked by any of the twists in the movie. There is one, but if feels so rushed and half-arsed that it’s hard to really connect with it.

In some ways these are the hardest films to review – even if I hated it that would be a stronger opinion for me to get over here, but I just can’t muster up the strength of feeling one way or the other. Choose didn’t really make much impression on the scene or at the box office, and frankly it didn’t make much of an impression on me. There are a fair few cliches in here, which holds things back a bit, and some of the side performances aren’t all that great either.  It was only about half an hour in that I realised I had actually watched this before, and that’s probably the best summation I can possibly give to this one…

RATING: 4.5/10. It won’t frustrate you, or annoy you, nor will it leave you cowering on the floor in fear of gasping in shock. To most horror fans, Choose is probably a fairly innocuous horror film that focuses more on suggestion than flat-out gore, and might appeal to some of the more squeamish readers around these parts. Although, with that said, if you’re squeamish then you probably haven’t found any great number of films you’ve wanted to check out in the whole history of Film Gutter. I’m sure you can probably choose a better horror movie than this one, though there are probably plenty worse out there – I was just left feeling distinctly meh here, which is probably one of the worst sensations to come away from a film with…

Wait, wait, let me get this straight… there’s a Frank Henenlotter movie I’ve never seen? How can this be! Thankfully, Brain Damage will complete the set of features from this particular director – barring some latter documentary work – who would surely be one my all-time favourites. While many people do try and deliver the mix of creature feature and horror-comedy that Henenlotter has delivered so well since 1982’s Basket Case, few have ultimately achieved it with this success in my opinion. I’m a hard man to please where it comes to this sort of thing – it can really leave me cold at times, so to have produced this many entertaining films that I’ve consistently enjoyed is no small feat. So, let’s complete the sextet with our look at Brain Damage, shall we…

Brain Damage is the story of Brian (Brian Damage, perhaps?), a young man who one night finds himself visited by a strange little creature called Elmer, or officially Aylmer as we come to discover later. Elmer is best described as a sort of intergalactic worm creature, and while he might not be much to look at, he does have one special skill – attaching himself to a host and giving them incredible, euphoric visions of the world with enhanced sensations of pleasure. Of course, there has to be a catch, and sadly it’s that Elmer requires plenty of human brains to feast upon – which he can happily get while living symbiotically off Brian…

It’s fair to say that Henenlotter has always had a certain style, a definitive approach to his movies, and Brain Damage follows much of the same. There’s plenty of scenes that are pretty shocking and surprising, and our lead character is very much led around by his addiction to the ‘juice’ that Elmer can provide. There’s even a phase where he tries to go without, but sadly the addiction is just too much for him to handle. The lead performance from Rick Hearst is really likeable, and the over-the-top voice acting for Elmer is often a stitch. The visions of an overbright world presented are fun to look at, and there’s enough of a subplot with Brian’s relationship with Barbara to keep it sufficiently grounded to enjoy. The ending was… weird, in a word, and I’m still not totally sure what to make of it. But it didn’t jar or really put a dent in my enjoyment, so I guess weird is OK in this instance.

Henenlotter is a director who probably never set out to expand your mind or see the world in a different light (although out lead character certainly does here). But I’d certainly suggest any avid horror fan – especially those who like things a touch silly and a little excessive – should go and check his work out. To my mind he’s an underrated figure in the genre – many directors have a hit or two and fade away, or have a distinctly hit and miss career, but every film of the six from these quarters has made me laugh, made me smile and kept my attention all the way through despite me sometimes having a natural aversion to this approach to horror. Honestly, this might not be a bad place to start with Henenlotter – it’s a nice little standalone, and if you’re into this one then the other five will be worth your time. If this isn’t your bag, then odds are the remainder won’t be either – it’s about as simple as that.

RATING: 8/10. Well, there’s no more Henenlotters after this one, which makes it a sad day. Brain Damage shares much in common with the director’s other work, in that I had a blast watching it and feel like I’ll always have a positive feeling towards it. I can see this (and some of the others) being rewatched in time as they were just a lot of fun, and a bit of familiarity with them won’t do anything to hinder that at all. This one has some solid special effects, a share of funny moments and just about enough of a plot to keep the whole things sustained for its 84 minute runtime. And it’s available to watch on Shudder if you fancied checking it out for yourself!

Blimey, what is it with big-time actors appearing in these pages lately? After two appearances from none other than Reese Witherspoon, as well as films with Christian Bale and Kiefer Sutherland, the dark thriller Anamorph sees a second visit from the legendary Willem Dafoe this month alone (after his relatively small role in that adaptation of American Psycho). This was a movie I watched some time ago, and had fairly fond memories of, so I was looking forward to getting stuck into a revisit. It’s not a terribly well-known movie, but if you fancied a watch this is currently free to view on Amazon Prime…

Dafoe plays semi-retired detective Stan Aubray, whom we first encounter teaching, but it’s not long before he’s called back to the force when a killer appears that seems to follow the same methodology as Uncle Eddie, a case Aubray worked on many years before. The murderer’s technique is anamorphosis, and he elaborately breaks his victims’ bodies down into spectacular pieces of art that appear to be one thing from one angle but something entirely different from another. And in this tangled web of clues, Aubray finds himself deep into the manhunt once again…

That may not quite do Anamorph justice, as I have to give this movie credit for being a unique idea I’ve never seen the likes of before. On top of that, some of the visuals are incredible, and must have really exercised the imaginations of the team involved and indeed the skills of the cinematographer. Much as it is grim and dark and grimy, but it’s hard not to admire some of the artistry on display.  With that said, this one is ultimately kind of slow and plodding, and it’s hard to say that Dafoe is an absolute top form here – he’s good as always, but the whole role is a bit buttoned down and maybe doesn’t show him off to his best capacity. Apparently, he took a bit of talking into the role, and as such maybe he’s not absolutely committed to this one. The side cast are generally solid, and there are some fun cameos, including Mick Foley and Debbie Harry both popping up at pretty random moments.

But with all that said, the whole thing is just dry and slow – it’s a movie that probably would have benefitted from a shorter runtime, and while the central conceit is certainly an interesting one it feels stretched pretty thin here. It lacks the tautness of similar sorts of movies, and you couldn’t really call it a classic horror-thriller despite some good elements. I didn’t feel the sort of emotional connection that I would have liked to either, which made things feel hollow for me. The overall colour scheme is generally unappealing, which I assume is to make the artistry of our killer stand out, but it does make the whole thing feel drab. This one did some to come and go with very little notice, and it’s not utterly surprising. I feel as though a movie like Waz would probably be a better bet if this sort of thing is your bag, or maybe even a revisit to something like Saw. In fact, I keep thinking to myself that feels like something I should revisit myself but bearing in mind there are eight of those that could wind up being a big job…

RATING: 5.5/10. It’d be unfair to say there’s anything egregiously wrong with Anamorph, but equally there’s no great amount to really make it stand out from the crowd – and it didn’t hold up well on a second viewing, withering under the lights somewhat. Despite a potentially interesting premise which did send me scurrying to the internet to find out more about it, this one never really captures the imagination and I found myself a little bored at certain junctures throughout. Cutting fifteen to twenty minutes off would have been a help, and maybe you could have made things a little bit livelier, both visually and in terms of the acting performances. It’s very cerebral, but sadly doesn’t really hit all its marks. I’m happy to go just a scooch above average at 5.5/10.

Anyone out there seen Turbo Kid? Or indeed Summer of 84? Maybe those films are not what you’d call vastly well-known, but each made a reasonable impact on the cult movie scene and are out there to stream without any great difficulty (Summer of 84 is on my personal watchlist on Shudder as we speak). The reason I ask is because this particular short film is one of the very first offerings from the team behind those movies, and indeed sees them all playing a role in front of the camera as well as behind. Total Fury perhaps didn’t make a huge impression, and didn’t go down as a classic horror short, but personally I thought this one was a lot of fun – and that is not a phrase too well-used around these parts.

The story begins with an apparently romantic liaison between an unnamed man and woman, but this tone doesn’t last long at all our ‘boyfriend’ punches her in the face and knocks her unconscious. She wakes up tied to a chair and surrounded by a gang of masked men, holding various weapons and clearly out to hurt her. It’s all very stylised and overblown, and I don’t think even in this moment is meant to be taken terribly seriously. However, as our intrepid female protagonist looks for the strength to escape, she calls up a remarkable source of courage – the movies of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I suppose that’s the point where things get distinctly silly, including an (ahem) ‘cameo’ from Arnie himself, or at least it looks like him from the neck down. In the second half of the movie, she escapes her captors and takes them down one by one with the awesome power of 80s action movies behind her, with more blood and guts than you could possibly shake a stick at.

While there’s enough of the claret here to keep most gorehounds satisfied, this one is more horror-comedy than it is flat-out horror, and it generally does a good job in that field. It made me smile more than laugh out loud, but it had plenty of energy and some great shots that capture the carnage in the finale. The practical effects are generally decent, and the whole thing just feels like everyone on board was having a blast – something I’ve often found translates to an entertaining viewer experience as well. It’s one of those movies that’s not liable to change your worldview on anything, or leave you with any long-lasting feelings of shock or disgust (often our speed at Film Gutter), it’s just something to enjoy and forget about before too long.

The team behind this one would go on to make a number of further short films before moving onto the aforementioned features, and with titles like Ninja Eliminator 3: Guardian of the Dragon Medallion and Demonitron: The Sixth Dimension, further silliness seems sure to ensue in those. Based on my experience of Total Fury alone, I could be drawn into checking those out in the future, if I can find them of course…

RATING: 7/10. I don’t want to go completely overboard on this one, but this one put a grin on my face a few times and was generally an entertaining enough bit of gory horror absurdity. There’s plenty of blood here, and some brutal and imaginative kills to boot, so if that sounds like your cup of tea then this one could be a perfectly fine way for you to spend a quarter of an hour. Mind you, it’d sure be interesting to know how a true Arnold Schwarzenegger fan would feel about this one…

REVENGE (2017: A Film Gutter Review by Alex Davis 
​Dir. Coralie Fargeat, 108 mins

Revenge is a movie that hit a few years back and made a fair noise on the festival circuit – on its emergence it seems to receive extremely positive reviews, and it’s one of those that has been on the ‘back burner’ of my list of movies to watch for some time. And with this one being live on Shudder, I figured that it was about time I got round to it. It’s hard to know exactly what put me off, although I do have mixed feelings about the rape-revenge milieu on the whole – it can feel very exploitative, but then again there have been a few good ones in recent years, including the likes of American Mary and Julia. So, would this one fall on the good side or the bad side of the subgenre?

It was interesting looking into the reviews of this movie after the fact, because nobody seemed to fall in the middle – some really liked it as a savage, action-packed revenge thriller, while others found the whole premise and concept awfully hard to believe. Sadly, I fell into that second camp…

So, Revenge follows Jen and her already-married douchebag boyfriend Richard. They’re in a fancy house in the middle of the desert when his two friends arrive for an annual hunting trip, and the part of them take an immediate interest in Jen, leading to an unpleasant rape scene. It’s not as graphic as some, but certainly does make an impact in the way it’s presented. The visuals were one of the strong points of this movie on the whole, in fact, and worthy of note here. When Jen tries to run away she gets shoved off a cliff and impaled on a low tree, only to free herself from that and set out to get revenge on her abusers.

The issue for me is that I simply couldn’t suspend my disbelief sufficiently to enjoy this one – there were numerous moments where the whole thing just felt preposterous, and even if you’re willing to accept that Jen didn’t really feel the pain of the fall or being literally run through by a sharp branch because she’s had some peyote, how she could possibly lose so much blood and continue to live in an unforgiving desert with no medical attention at all? There must be a hole in her stomach at least a couple of inches wide, which seems to be presented as little more than a flesh wound. It was maddening, and honestly as a viewer I checked out from that point – there’s just no way I could take it seriously from then on, which obviously for a movie in this subgenre is a real problem. I should be invested in the quest for vengeance and some form of justice being served, but personally that just wasn’t the case. It really did degenerate into complete nonsense for more that half the runtime, which is a shame as the lead actress is clearly giving it everything. Unfortunately, she just doesn’t have the strong material to back her up, and this one goes down as one of the worse rape-revenge movies of recent times…

RATING: 3/10. I really don’t want to put any of this rating at the feet of its star Matilda Lutz (although the guys in the movie don’t really excel at all), and there are without a doubt some strong visuals. But the whole thing just comes across as so hard to believe, which is a serious problem for a film like this. Some horror can stretch credibility if it is down the road of the monstrous or the supernatural, but a sense of realism is central to the rape-revenge movie, and the minute you stop feeling it could potentially be real it’s gone. This one was basically gone for me at about the halfway mark, and there’s nothing you can do to recover once you tell me so clearly this one it just a film and couldn’t possibly be something that could happen in real life. There might have been something good here without a few extremely poor decisions in the storyline and script, but unfortunately I can’t go any higher than 3/10 with what is presented here.

Well, here we go again… A couple of months ago I had the pleasure of reviewing the very strange Freeway, a chaotic, riotous movie that ultimately I didn’t quite know how to take in the end. I can’t say I hated it – I gave it 4.5/10 after all, so only just below average – but few movies have left me with quite such confused feelings. And, three years later, we were treated to a sequel – a sequel of sorts, at least. I say that because it has none of the same characters, none of the same locations and is an entirely unconnected story to the first. What it does have in common is firstly its style, which would immediately make you put the two movies together whether you know they were connected or not, and secondly the idea of a grubby, modernised fairy tale – while the initial offering was a take on Little Red Riding Hood, here we have a grimy take on Hansel and Gretel. So that’s about as much as the two have in common.

The story itself follows a similarly delinquent teenager, who goes by ‘White Girl’, and her friend and soon-to-be-lover Cyclona. The two are put into a juvenile detention centre together and decide to make their escape before they are sent to a maximum-security prison, achieving freedom and heading to Mexico to find Sister Gomez, a nun that Cyclona believes can fix the ‘demons’ inside both of them. On the way there’s plenty of murder, bloodshed, robbery and the sort of unpleasantness you probably would be prepared for it you watch the ‘predecessor’ to this film. Nothing here is outrageously graphic, but there’s plenty suggested and intimated that is liable to leave an unpleasant taste in your mouth. Of course, when they get there, Sister Gomez isn’t quite what she’s cracked up to be, and things take an even darker turn…

I can probably best sum up this one by saying if you liked Freeway, then odds are you’ll like this one. The same bad taste, shock value style of filmmaking runs throughout here, and things happen not exactly at random but obviously just to try and discombobulate or upset you as a viewer. Everyone is obviously trying their best, and I commend the actors and actresses involved for clearly putting it all in to try and make this work.  Let’s be honest – I’ve been reviewing extreme horror for six years, and it takes something pretty rough to really disturb me, but a bugbear remains shock for the value of shock. Sadly, that’s mostly what’s on display here – little follows on from the previous in a way that makes sense, and the dialogue especially is clearly designed just to cause offence. For me you can do about anything in context – I’ve given high rating to the likes of American Guinea Pig: Bloodshock and even some of the Vomit Gore movies from Lucifer Valentine – but everything here feels gratuitous and overblown. I know these movies do have a bit of a cult following, but they are simply not for me I’m afraid. I felt more ready for what to expect this time, but that ultimately didn’t improve the experience much.

RATING: 4/10. If you love these films, good on you, and I’d never knowingly denigrate something that someone else got enjoyment out of. I suppose you could argue as absolute and utter schlock trash you could have fun with this one, but even that side of things has been done better elsewhere for me. Everyone here is obviously trying hard with the material they’ve been given, but sadly I don’t feel as though the plot or the script could really have been made any better than this. Director Matthew Bright only directed a couple more films after this before disappearing off the scene in the mid-2000s, and maybe the world just wasn’t quite ready and willing to accept his particular vision of cinema – though a few notable actors were obviously more than willing to get involved. This pair of movies are certainly interesting 90s curios, but they don’t feel satisfying or complete to me and as such don’t reach too high on the scale…

This is a review I’ve been putting off for some time, but when I saw this one pop up on Amazon Prime, I thought it was time to bite the bullet and get stuck in. To provide a little context, this is a book that I’ve always loved – I wrote an essay about this every year without fail at University, and it remains probably the most reread and dogeared book on my shelves. Bret Easton Ellis’s novel was a controversial topic even before it came out and retains a notorious reputation even many years on. For me it’s often misunderstood though – American Psycho is a biting satire on the yuppie culture of the 80s and a look at the cultural emptiness and desensitisation of a broken central character. The whole thing – despite its more disturbing scenes – is blackly funny, and sometimes laugh out loud. The movie is not one I have fond memories of, but not in any specific way – as I came back to it there was just this deep sense of being rather let down on first watch. Maybe my expectations were just too high, so I thought that in the spirit of fairness I should give this one another whirl.

American Psycho follows the story of Patrick Bateman, a wealthy businessman (it’s never eminently clear exactly what he does) who seemingly has everything – a huge, expensive apartment, fancy meals in restaurants every night, a beautiful girlfriend (played by Reese Witherspoon, whom we only occasionally see), a host of lavish clothes and a party lifestyle to boot. But beneath the slick veneer lies a murderer and a sexual deviant, a man looking for more and more twisted thrills in an effort to puncture through the perceived tedium of his life. Surrounded by people as empty and boring as himself, the excitement he seeks takes him down ever more vicious, disturbing and dangerous avenues.

The movie is a strange watch, because for the first hour it was almost pitch perfect – it captured the heart of Bateman’s vacuous lifestyle, including his idolisation of artists like Genesis (although apparently Phil Collins was too artistic?), Huey Lewis and the News and Whitney Houston, the obsession with having the greatest business card among his group of friends and the obsession with elaborate restaurants and a never-ending quest to get a reservation for Dorsia. The grim humour is there, and Christian Bale makes a really good Bateman – he has the look and the fake bravado, the machismo and charisma ultimately backed up by nothing. He even describes himself as ‘the shape of a person’ rather than a person, which says a great deal.

I was actually thinking at that stage – why did I dislike this movie so much initially? Then the last half hour hit, and it was there where it all fell apart. The finale turns into an absolute mess, giving in to a sensationalism that didn’t exist in quite the same way in the book. It also takes the element of doubt that was key to the original conclusion and removes it entirely, for me removing something from its quality. Honestly less would have been more here – it’s the only time the tone really goes awry, and we were ultimately only about thirty minutes from a great adaptation. It maybe pulls punches comparative to the text, but them a full, unflinching version would be a very different thing and I doubt would get any sort of mainstream release.

There’s a lot good in here, including several of the central performances delivered by a fine cast. The dark comedy is largely intact, including some of the interior monologue from Bateman, and the look and feel and soundtrack are all great. But it doesn’t quite land the same message as the original, which is a shame for such excellent source material.

RATING: 5.5/10. I was certainly going to give this some high marks after 60 minutes or so, but it does drop numerous points for a finale that goes pretty quickly off the rails – and not in the way you might have wanted. This one was certainly a troubled production, and maybe some of that shows up in the final piece. The movie adaptation here feels like a missed opportunity, and as much as I’m not a huge fan of remakes this one could maybe do with a retry – it was almost there, and I’d rather see something remade that didn’t quite hit the mark than being a huge success. There probably is a superb adaptation to be made, but this one ultimately isn’t it.