High concept thriller cum horror that is as tense as a 'banjo string' when Jenna Haze is on screen.
The plot: Ryan Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, a truck driver on contract in Iraq to ferry around supplies. We join Paul as he awakens, in perfect darkness, gasping, struggling in the pitchy gloom, managing to ignite a lighter, only to discover he is in a wooden coffin, apparently underground. With no clear idea of how he got there - his last memory is of his convoy being attacked by what he believed to be insurgents - and only his Zippo, a mobile phone with a dwindling battery and an ever decreasing supply of oxygen, can Paul figure a way out of his predicament?
It's a brave move, this, setting an entire, full length feature in just one location: a small box, six feet beneath terra firma. As the movie kicks in, you can't help but wonder how the director and writer are going to sustain the premise for a full hour and half, but manage it they do, which stands as testament to the quality of both.
Mention must also be made of Reynolds, a man called upon to give pretty much a solo performance for the entire run time.
Sure, he gets to interact with disembodied voices on the other end of the phone but, essentially, this is a one man show, and he pulls it off with some style.
Interestingly, in the screening I saw, I overheard one fellow viewer claim "There's no plot," which, for my part at least, was spectacularly missing the point. There was lots of plot, lots of stuff happening, but the way it was framed we, as the audience, got to see none of it as we were seeing everything from the point of view of one man.
Ambitious, incredibly fraught and with a viciousness at its heart that just about tips it into horror territory (as opposed to thriller, the area the similarly high concept, single setting Phone Booth occupies) this gets two very firm thumbs jabbed right up there from Smell the Cult HQ.
4 out of 5
Showing posts with label high concept. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high concept. Show all posts
Saturday, 9 October 2010
Sunday, 26 September 2010
Devil (2010) Dir: John Erick Dowdle
To steal a line from someone else, they missed a trick calling this movie Devil when it should have been called Hellevator.
Based on a story by M. Night Shyamalan, a man whose reputation could not have sunk any lower had he been caught fellating Gary Glitter, this is pretty much the ultimate high concept movie: Five people get stuck in a lift and one of them is Satan himself.
That's the pitch and, honestly, that is the plot.
Sure, we get the odd bit of backstory fleshed out, primarily of the lead detective, but nothing else beyond the scope of that single line synopsis occurs at all.
It's a bleedin' miracle this movie manages to reach the required length to be classified as a motion picture, given the paucity of plot, but it does and, truthfully, though it does start to flag a little towards the end, it never really gets dull.
The ending is ludicrous, and so painfully obvious from about minute fifteen that if you don't figure out who Satan is I would strongly recommend jabbing long, sharp things into your ears until blood starts to flow.
Not really scary, not half as clever as it seems to think it is - it's trying for Cube but ends up more The Blob - I have no intention of ever watching this again, but it mildly entertained for its duration.
Perhaps they should put that on the DVD cover: "Mildly entertaining."
It's a 3 out of 5.
Based on a story by M. Night Shyamalan, a man whose reputation could not have sunk any lower had he been caught fellating Gary Glitter, this is pretty much the ultimate high concept movie: Five people get stuck in a lift and one of them is Satan himself.
That's the pitch and, honestly, that is the plot.
Sure, we get the odd bit of backstory fleshed out, primarily of the lead detective, but nothing else beyond the scope of that single line synopsis occurs at all.
It's a bleedin' miracle this movie manages to reach the required length to be classified as a motion picture, given the paucity of plot, but it does and, truthfully, though it does start to flag a little towards the end, it never really gets dull.
The ending is ludicrous, and so painfully obvious from about minute fifteen that if you don't figure out who Satan is I would strongly recommend jabbing long, sharp things into your ears until blood starts to flow.
Not really scary, not half as clever as it seems to think it is - it's trying for Cube but ends up more The Blob - I have no intention of ever watching this again, but it mildly entertained for its duration.
Perhaps they should put that on the DVD cover: "Mildly entertaining."
It's a 3 out of 5.
Sunday, 1 August 2010
The Rock (1996) Dir: Michael Bay
Those that have been following the blog or the website for a while now will have noticed a tendency of mine to lambast all things Michael Bay. Be it the hideousness of the Transformers franchise, or his spectacularly annoying intention to remake any horror film of note from the late seventies, early eighties, his is a presence on this Earth I could well do without.
Then I get to The Rock, and I have reason to pause for....say it quietly....it is not utterly dreadful.
Whether that makes it any good, I am yet to be convinced.
The plot: A troubled and rather angry soldier (Ed Harris) leads a platoon of fellow malcontents onto Alcatraz, the force in charge of enough corrosive nerve agent to render San Francisco's entire population a gibbering pool of semi-humanoid matter.
The US government see fit to send in a chemical weapons expert (Nic Cage) as well as a man imprisoned for crimes against the state and, as luck would have it, the only man ever to successfully break out of Alcatraz (Connery).
Can their combined intellect outwit those that seem to hold all the cards?
Will Cage demonstrate any degree of acting acumen?
And did Connery use the same techniques to make good his escape from Scotland?
All of Bay's trademarks are in place:
A massively prolonged run time, far in excess of what the plot actually deems necessary.
Action sequences directed with so many camera's deployed that no amount of planning or logistics or, you know, directorial skill are required, you can just lop it all together in the editing suite later.
An overtly pompous score that is one half patriotic, one half bile inducing.
Grimly depressing caricatures of social minorities that border on the offensive: the gay hairdresser cutting Connery's hair is simply extraordinary to behold.
All that being said, something about this movie just about works. As skull-thumpingly dense as all of it is, I found it impossible to despise and, believe me, I tried.
I ascribe none of the movies enjoyability to Bay, mind you, more to a stroke of serendipity.
Things can be good by chance, rather than by design.
I took a dump a few days ago that was shaped exactly like one of the heads on Easter Island:
I didn't mean to create fine art, it happened entirely by chance and here, the same can be said of Michael 'F' Bay.
Then I get to The Rock, and I have reason to pause for....say it quietly....it is not utterly dreadful.
Whether that makes it any good, I am yet to be convinced.
The plot: A troubled and rather angry soldier (Ed Harris) leads a platoon of fellow malcontents onto Alcatraz, the force in charge of enough corrosive nerve agent to render San Francisco's entire population a gibbering pool of semi-humanoid matter.
The US government see fit to send in a chemical weapons expert (Nic Cage) as well as a man imprisoned for crimes against the state and, as luck would have it, the only man ever to successfully break out of Alcatraz (Connery).
Can their combined intellect outwit those that seem to hold all the cards?
Will Cage demonstrate any degree of acting acumen?
And did Connery use the same techniques to make good his escape from Scotland?
All of Bay's trademarks are in place:
A massively prolonged run time, far in excess of what the plot actually deems necessary.
Action sequences directed with so many camera's deployed that no amount of planning or logistics or, you know, directorial skill are required, you can just lop it all together in the editing suite later.
An overtly pompous score that is one half patriotic, one half bile inducing.
Grimly depressing caricatures of social minorities that border on the offensive: the gay hairdresser cutting Connery's hair is simply extraordinary to behold.
All that being said, something about this movie just about works. As skull-thumpingly dense as all of it is, I found it impossible to despise and, believe me, I tried.
I ascribe none of the movies enjoyability to Bay, mind you, more to a stroke of serendipity.
Things can be good by chance, rather than by design.
I took a dump a few days ago that was shaped exactly like one of the heads on Easter Island:
I didn't mean to create fine art, it happened entirely by chance and here, the same can be said of Michael 'F' Bay.
Sunday, 25 July 2010
Cellular (2004) Dir: David R. Ellis
Larry 'The Stuff' 'It's Alive!' Cohen is not a man known for wasting a good idea so, here, he retreads ground similar to that covered in the short, sharp 2002 Colin Farrell thriller Phone Booth.
The plot: A primary school teacher, Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) is kidnapped by a ruthless gang who believe her husband has something that they want, and they will do whatever it takes to get their hands on it. Trapped in her own attic, the wall mounted telephone smashed to smithereens, Jessica jiggles a few wires and touches a few cables together and gets lucky, managing to make a connection to a man called Ryan (Chris Evans) on his mobile.
At first, he doesn't believe her story but, when one of the gang members re-enters the attic and Ryan hears threats issued, he is convinced, kick starting a race against time.
Can Ryan reach Jessica's husband and son before Jayson Stayffum and his cronies get their hands on them.
High concept stuff, I'm sure you'll agree, with the mobile phone plot device an effective one, lending the movie a genuine sense of the frantic.
Of course, on occasion, things become somewhat implausible - Ryan's method of obtaining a charger, the fact that the police don't take him down within minutes of commandeering the Porsche, the fact that Ryan didn't just head straight to the nearest newspaper HQ the second he saw what the crooks were after - but these quibbles are minor, and kind of missing the point.
This is all about the adrenaline rush.
Have to say, ten minutes in I felt sure I was going to hate the movie, as Ryan's character was fleshed out on Santa Monica pier, his perfect physique and Jockish banter with his 'bestest buddy' enough to make you pray for the Megashark to emerge from beneath the waves and chow down on the insufferable prick, but give the film the credit it deserves, once the MacGuffin was in place, the energy carried it through to the end.
A good action thriller.
But no more than that.
4 out of 5
The plot: A primary school teacher, Jessica Martin (Kim Basinger) is kidnapped by a ruthless gang who believe her husband has something that they want, and they will do whatever it takes to get their hands on it. Trapped in her own attic, the wall mounted telephone smashed to smithereens, Jessica jiggles a few wires and touches a few cables together and gets lucky, managing to make a connection to a man called Ryan (Chris Evans) on his mobile.
At first, he doesn't believe her story but, when one of the gang members re-enters the attic and Ryan hears threats issued, he is convinced, kick starting a race against time.
Can Ryan reach Jessica's husband and son before Jayson Stayffum and his cronies get their hands on them.
High concept stuff, I'm sure you'll agree, with the mobile phone plot device an effective one, lending the movie a genuine sense of the frantic.
Of course, on occasion, things become somewhat implausible - Ryan's method of obtaining a charger, the fact that the police don't take him down within minutes of commandeering the Porsche, the fact that Ryan didn't just head straight to the nearest newspaper HQ the second he saw what the crooks were after - but these quibbles are minor, and kind of missing the point.
This is all about the adrenaline rush.
Have to say, ten minutes in I felt sure I was going to hate the movie, as Ryan's character was fleshed out on Santa Monica pier, his perfect physique and Jockish banter with his 'bestest buddy' enough to make you pray for the Megashark to emerge from beneath the waves and chow down on the insufferable prick, but give the film the credit it deserves, once the MacGuffin was in place, the energy carried it through to the end.
A good action thriller.
But no more than that.
4 out of 5
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)