Sunday, September 12, 2010

Pandorum (2009)



Director: Christian Alvart
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Norman Reedus, Niels Bruno Schmidt

SYNOPSIS

A man awakes from hypersleep on board a massive intergalactic spacecraft. He can't remember who he is or why he's there, but he knows there's something wrong - there are no lights, the door to the bridge is stuck closed and all data suggests he's been there a lot longer than he should have been.

Another man wakes up soon after, and they have to work together to work out how to rescue the ship - and what the human-like creature roaming the corridors are. Did they kill the crew, or is the related to a form of space madness known as Pandorum?

REVIEW

Pandorum is one of those strange movies that simultaneously seems both highly original and utterly derivative. The basic plot is nothing particularly original - survivors trapped with a massing force of merciless killers - but here it seems almost fresh.

Testament to this is the opening, where we see a couple of hoary old clichés - the Alien-style waking of the astronauts, combined with amnesia. The latter is a plot device that usually tends to annoy the hell out of me and stinks of lazy writing (I nearly threw large objects at my TV when the amnesia plotline suddenly appeared in the first season of 24, for example!). Here, however, it's well handled and seems organic to the plot.

Similarly, the mutated creatures on board the ship are essentially little more than a variation of Firefly/Serenity's Reapers, themselves fairly derivative, yet here they seem fine. In fact, while virtually every frame of the film can be traced back to a previous sci-fi or horror movie, I enjoyed the hell out of this.

Part of this might be the cast - Quaid is always great, Forster makes a decent hero, and the supporting cast are equally fine. In the same way, Alvart's direction is top notch, making the most of what was clearly a very low budget for this kind of movie. While some of the plot twists are a little convoluted, and some of them visible from a mile away, this is definitely worth your time.

7 / 10

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Mortuary (2005)



Director: Tobe Hooper
Starring: Dan Byrd, Denise Crosby, Rocky Marquette, Stephanie Patton, Adam Gierasch

SYNOPSIS

A divorced mother moves her children to a small town, intending to make a new start running the town's mortuary. The building has been closed for some time

REVIEW

Back in the 1970s, a new master of the horror genre emerged with a blackly comic, masterfully written and subtly directed movie named The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. His name was Tobe Hooper, a man who has gone on to be one of the more unfortunate names in horror history. He has directed one other seminal masterpiece - Poltergeist - but this has been plagued by constant rumours that producer Steven Spielberg and not Hooper himself was actually behind the camera.

Other than that, he has walked a painful line between innovative independent movies and bigger budget studio fare, all of which have had varying degrees of success. Some films - Spontaneous Combusion, Invaders From Mars, Night Terrors - were all-out disasters while others - Death Trap/Eaten Alive, Lifeforce - were noble failures that are decent enough films but just didn't click with audiences.

In the latter category, I'd place Hooper's 2004 slasher remake The Toolbox Murders. It's a decent enough film, though a little uneven and with a rather silly supernatural/witchcraft angle that didn't really belong. But, the direction was solid and it seemed to promise much for the future. Unfortunately, word was that despite this movie being based on a script by Toolbox writers Adam Gierasch and Jace Anderson (with a cameo, if highly disguised, acting performance by Gierasch), it was a dismal failure.

So, having just caught up with it, what's the verdict? Not good, I'm afraid. The direction is fairly flat, with a TV movie feel that makes it seem more like an extended episode of Masters Of Horror than anything that belonged on a movie screen. There's a few characters who are inserted for no other reason than the be annoying and/or "quirky", and the central motivation of the characters to be in the mortuary in the first place is pretty unconvincing to me. The movie also dragged so that by the time the inevitable undead action happens, it doesn't really have any effect.

There are a couple of nice touches, however. I liked the way that the central teenaged characters were drawn - though the annoying bullies that the son comes across are exactly that. The image of lines of fungus growning and feeding from human blood is kind of nice, and there's a couple of nice touches when we finally meet the enemy. But, it really is too little too late.

With Hooper's career having basically stalled yet again (only 2 episodes of Masters Of Horror since this, and a long-gestating adaptation of Stephen King's From A Buick 8 that may or may not be completed), this is a sad testament to a great talent who has been too often completely wasted. Let's hope he returns to form before he retires - but I keep saying that about Carpenter, Argento and Romero as well...

4 / 10

Friday, September 10, 2010

Back from a break...

Well, I had expected to keep the daily reports running here but I didn't get a chance - not only was I away at Frightfest in London (full reviews coming shortly at my other blog 80sfear, over 20 movies in 5 days!) but Telefonica have apparently decided that they won't accept my ADSL payment unless I use a standard bill - and they haven't sent me one for months...

Anyway, a few reviews coming up for you shortly and the daily comments are queueing up from me as I speak! Expect revisits to the fall of a former horror icon, verbally transmitted zombies, fantasy acrobatics, amnesiac astronauts, quirky indie families, surrealist animation and Vegas cheaters.