11/21/15 (Part Two): The Abyss Stares Back

Tags

Amy Jump, auteur theory, Ben Wheatley, best friends, British films, cinema, co-writers, contract killers, disturbing films, Emma Fryer, fate, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Harry Simpson, hitmen, husband-wife relationship, Kill List, Laurie Rose, Michael Smiley, Movies, MyAnna Buring, Neil Maskell, psychological horror, secret societies, strange ceremonies, Struan Rodger, twist ending, writer-director-editor

When one is standing at the bottom of a very deep hole, looking up at a tiny patch of daylight, it’s tempting to say that it can only get better from there: the only way is up, after all. This, of course, is a very comforting lie, the kind of fairy tale that helps us all sleep better at night. The plain and simple truth of the matter is that things can always get worse: regardless of far down you’ve already dug your hole, there’s always new depths to aspire to. As humans, the very bravest (and foolhardy) thing we can do is stare fate right in the face and dare it to blink. We’ll lose, every time, but that doesn’t stop us from trying.

Nowhere is this notion made more explicit than in British auteur Ben Wheatley’s sophomore film, Kill List (2011). When we first meet Jay (Neil Maskell), the poor bastard seems to have dug a hole as far into the earth as humanly possible. Out of work for eight months, after botching some sort of undisclosed job that appears to have left him with a potent case of PTSD, Jay’s doing everything he can to hold his life together, even if he’s doing a piss-poor job of it. Jay and his wife, Shel (MyAnna Buring), are at each others’ throats constantly, to the point where they routinely hurl bottles against walls and scream in each others’ faces until they’re out-of-breath. To make a bad situation even better, their young son, Sam (Harry Simpson), is a silent, aching witness to the whole massive shit show, wanting nothing more than some semblance of peace in his shattered home.

Things start to look up a bit, however, when Jay’s partner, Gal (Michael Smiley), shows up for a night of drinking, merriment and reminiscing. As the night progresses, complete with a number of potent meltdowns between the feuding spouses, Gal takes Michael aside and offers him an opportunity to “get back up on the horse” and bring a much-needed sense of financial security back to his domestic war-zone. Caught between a rock and an even sharper rock, Jay’s only too eager to get back to earning and takes Gal up on his offer.

Just what, exactly, did Jay and Gal do before whatever happened eight months prior? Well, as it turns out, they were hitmen, a revelation that Wheatley gets out of the way fairly quickly. Gal has just received a job offer that promises maximum money for minimum effort: all they have to do are exterminate three separate targets and they’ll get enough money to make any number of problems permanently disappear. After the pair meet with their strange “client” (a suitably sinister Struan Rodger), a meeting that ends with an impromptu blood oath, they set off on their fated path, uneasy but determined to get the job(s) done. It doesn’t take a psychic to know that this ends up being a very, very bad idea, the kind of bad idea that proves, once and for all, that life can always get worse. Much, much worse.

From his humble beginnings with the caustically comic “kitchen-sink-and-gangsters” flick Down Terrace (2009) all the way to his upcoming, much ballyhooed adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s High Rise (2016), writer-director Ben Wheatley has made a sort-of cottage industry out of the intersection between “polite” British society and the howling insanity of a world gone very, very wrong. By mashing character dramas up with more traditional (“traditional” being a relative term, here) genre films, Wheatley gives extra heft to his narratives, providing intricate insight into characters that, in lesser hands, might across as either vilely unredeemable or completely sociopathic. In Wheatley films, there are never traditional “heroes” or “villains,” nor is there, necessarily, a “right” or “wrong.” There just is, for better or worse…often, of course, for the worse.

Like all of Wheatley’s films, Kill List takes so many sudden turns and reveals so many surprises that to reveal much beyond a basic synopsis is to rob new viewers of a singularly unique experience. As far as plot and story goes, suffice to say that you will call some of the twists (or, at the very least, suspect them) but you will never call all of them, least of all the harrowing, soul-shattering climax. You may think that you know what Wheatley’s doing and, for a time, you might be right. Hell: even after seeing the film a half dozen times, I still find myself second-guessing earlier viewings and readjusting my understanding of the proceedings.

This, of course, is one of the hallmarks of any indispensable film: that ability to return, time and time again and discover new thrills with each subsequent viewing. There are plenty of exquisitely made films that have always been “one-and-dones” for me: it’s to Kill List’s great credit that, despite the film’s many unpleasantries, I keep returning to it, time after time. Chalk this up to the exceptional filmcraft, the airtight writing or the stellar performances (there, literally, isn’t a bad performance from the entire cast, whether in lead or walk-on parts) but Wheatley’s Kill List is the very definition of a modern classic.

Despite all of this, however, I find myself offering the same caveat that I do with many of my favorite films: Kill List, despite its overriding quality, is not a film for everyone. This is a film that delves into the very heart of darkness that so many genre and horror films only hint at, a film that derives its hideous power not from a collection of gory onscreen effects (although there’s plenty of those) but from the deeper horror of shattered humanity. The finale is impossibly, almost oppressively horrifying, make no bones about it, but it’s also deeply and fundamentally sad and hopeless, the kind of revelation that sucks the wind out of your sails, leaving you defeated and broken.

Kill List is many things: a tale of friendship and duty; a heartbreaking look into the dissolution of a marriage; an examination of the destructive power of anger and the redemptive nature of martyrdom; a mystery; a grotesque; a cautionary tale. Kill List is all of these things and so many more. Above and beyond all else, however, Wheatley’s Kill List is a dark, savage, merciless abyss: stare into it, by all means, but don’t be surprised if you find that the abyss also stares back at you.

4/12/15 (Part Two): Framed to Fit Your Screen

Tags

auteur theory, Bernat Vilaplana, cinema, cyber-terrorism, Elijah Wood, fame, fans, Film auteurs, films, films reviews, hackers, Jon D. Dominguez, Jorge Magaz, modern technology, Movies, Nacho Vigalondo, Neil Maskell, Open Windows, Sasha Grey, stalkers, stylish films, suspense, techno-thrillers, thrillers, Timecrimes, writer-director

As technology advances, so, too, has the way that we consume films. Gone are the days when “going to the movies” meant, literally, going out to see a movie: these days, audiences are just as likely to head into the living room and fire up the Roku as they are to drive to the multiplex when it comes to seeing new, first-run films. With video-on-demand offerings now equaling (and sometimes exceeding) what’s available in the theaters, to paraphrase the Bard, all the world’s on our computer screens and our Playstations are no longer merely players.

Few films have embraced this new era quite as ably, enthusiastically and downright entertainingly as Spanish auteur Nacho Vigalondo’s Open Windows (2014). Combining a complex, Hitchcockian plot with an appropriately glossy, techno-babble sheen, Vigalondo’s film takes place entirely within a series of on-screen computer windows. The result? One of the few films tailor-made for the way that many people will probably wind up watching it: an open window on their computer screen.

Wasting no time, we meet our erstwhile protagonist, Nick Chambers (Elijah Wood). He’s the earnest, clean-cut and rather nerdy webmaster of a fan site devoted to hot, young Hollywood “it-girl” Jill Goddard (Sasha Grey). Jill’s in the middle of a press junket for her newest soon-to-be-blockbuster, Dark Sky, a glowing-eyed-mutant epic that probably wouldn’t be out-of-place on a real-life multiplex marquee. Nick is pleased as punch because he’s just won a dinner date with Jill, a bit of happenstance that pretty much validates the entirety of his life.

Sweet turns to shit, however, when Nick gets a phone call from Chord (Neil Maskell), an employee with the company sponsoring Nick’s contest. Turns out that Jill has unceremoniously cancelled the event at the last minute, giving no reason and leaving Nick stranded without so much as a “how do ya do.” Nick is crushed but Chord offers him a bit of a band-aid: he hacks Nick into Jill’s personal electronic devices, giving the super-fan unprecedented access to entire life.

Declining to give in to Chord’s baser urging, Nick soon finds himself embroiled in a complex plan that seems to be spiraling ever faster and faster out of control. As Chord reveals himself to be less of a helpful perv and more of an evil genius, Nick must do everything he can to clear his own name, protect his beloved Jill and get to the bottom of the intricate game. He’ll have to be smart, however: Chord is brutal, ruthless and five steps ahead of him…one wrong move and it’s game over.

Despite coming off the rails in the final half hour, Open Windows is one of the most exhilarating, ingenious and flat-out fun films to come down the pike in quite some time. When the film is really firing on all cylinders, which is quite often, there’s a relentless sense of forward momentum that makes it all but impossible to blink, lest you miss some sort of background detail or bit of action. At times, the action is split between as many as 16 separate windows, making for the kind of dizzying “split-screen” action that ’60s cop shows could only dream about. It all works spectacularly well, maintaining a sense of cohesion that tiptoes the line between chaos and order but never slips into the abyss.

As someone who absolutely loved Vigalondo’s brilliant feature debut, Timecrimes (2007), I’ve eagerly awaited each new film with the kind of zeal normally reserved for children and cake. For my money, the writer-director is one of the smartest, freshest talents currently operating, a filmmaker who’s just one, big break away from becoming the next del Toro. While Open Windows isn’t quite that film, it is the kind of break-neck thriller that should move Nacho closer to that ever-present world domination.

Open Windows is a tricky film: similar to the way in which one might be rushed through a haunted house attraction, the audience is rushed through Vigalondo’s film, jerking to a halt only long enough to give the carriage a change to climb the rise and plummet down the next heart-stopping fall. It’s a setpiece-based film in that we are, essentially, watching bite-sized chunks of narrative played out before us in a multitude of various formats, each segment the equivalent of a video vignette we might peruse on Youtube. That the whole thing manages to come together into a complete whole (final thirty notwithstanding) is nothing short of a minor miracle. By its very nature, Open Windows is a film that should have been way too chaotic, disjointed, contrived and gimmicky to ever work: Vigalondo spins the various elements into pure gold.

While the film’s technical prowess and editing is duly impressive (cinematographer Jon D. Dominguez and editor Bernat Vilaplana deserve special mention for keeping everything as clear as they do), none of it would work without a sympathetic lead and Elijah Wood is more than up for the task. In the same way that Hitchcock had Stewart, Vigalondo uses Wood’s natural charisma and boyish Everymanism to keep our interest and sympathy fully on his side, even as the film twists and turns into some suitably dark places. Over the last few years, Wood has quietly become one of my very favorite actors, the kind of chameleonic performer who’s equally at home with the monstrosity of Maniac (2012) and the traditional heroism of Grand Piano. He’s the kind of performer who can draw me to a production on name alone and his work, here, is easily on par with his best. Between his work in genre films (I eagerly await his upcoming killer-kids film Cooties (2015)) and his production company, Elijah Wood is a bit of a modern genre hero and I, for one, salute him.

While Neil Maskell (incredibly fun as Banksy in Doghouse (2009)) makes a suitably sleazy villain, the real surprise is porn star-turned actress Grey. After making her “legitimate” film debut in Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience (2009), Grey would pop up in other film, from time to time, although Open Windows marks her biggest role since her debut. She’s quite good here: her fiery interview segment is an easy highlight and she manages to imbue Jill with the perfect mixture of aloof and vulnerable, an impossibly famous person who just wants to be invisible. While the majority of the film’s heavy lifting falls on Wood’s shoulders, Grey proves that she deserves more chances to show her dramatic chops.

For all of its numerous charms and positives, Open Windows is certainly not a perfect film: to be honest, it’s not even a better film than Vigalondo’s debut. Due to the necessary complexity of the storyline, credibility is eventually strained to the point where plot-holes became to rip through the surface with alarming frequency. There’s one point where Chord guides Nick from a hotel room into a car and onto the open road: it’s decidedly kickass but think about any one bit of it too long and the whole thing falls like bad souffle. The film also picks up speed to the point where plot elements blow by in the rearview mirror faster than one can register them.

When all is said and done, however, Open Windows is an undeniably good film. With astute observations on everything from the nature of modern fandom to the vagaries of internet fame to the difficulties of going “off the grid” in a world that’s perpetually connected, Vigalondo has plenty to say and this ends up being the perfect platform for him to say it. While I doubt that I’ll see another take quite as good as Vigalondo’s anytime soon (done poorly, I can only imagine that Open Windows would have been a kitschy, glitchy, head-inducing nightmare), this has definitely made me more receptive to this kind of thing in the future. While I’ll always be a fan of huge, sweeping cinema, Open Windows is proof that, sometimes, it’s just fine to watch something sized to fit your screen.

3/14/14: Men Are For Lunch, Women Are From Moodley

Tags

auteur theory, battle of the sexes, British comedies, British horror, Christina Cole, cinema, Daniel Schaffer, Danny Dyer, Doghouse, Dogwitch, Evil Aliens, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, graphic novels, guys' weekend, horror films, horror-comedies, isolated communities, Jake West, killer women, misogyny, Moodley, Movies, Neil Maskell, Noel Clarke, remote village, Stephen Graham, Terry Stone, the battle of the sexes, violence against women, zombies

Ah, the battle of the sexes: that (presumably) eternal struggle between men and women for understanding, equality and empathy. As with most cultural/societal issues, the battle of the sexes has been fodder for popular entertainment since practically the time that men and women could walk upright…and probably before that, to be honest. In all of this time, we’re not in sight of a resolution yet, although there have obviously been numerous individual victories along the way. From George Cukor’s classic Hepburn/Tracy vehicle Adam’s Rib (1949) to Mamet’s misogyny (In the Company of Men (1997), Oleana (1994)) to the world of horror (Season of the Witch (1972), Donkey Punch (2007), Witching and Bitching (2013), the battle of the sexes continues to rage on in movie theaters and on the small screen.

Any film (or book, for that matter) that attempts to take on the battle of the sexes has quite the tightrope to walk. On the one hand, battle of the sexes stories are essentially universal (I’m willing to wager that in societies where it’s not part of the context, it’s an inherent part of the subtext of daily life) and can (theoretically) appeal to just about anyone. In reality, of course, battle of the sexes films (or other forms of media/entertainment) are just as beholden to the realities of a largely patriarchal society as any other forms of entertainment. One need only reflect on Shakespeare’s far from “enlightened” Taming of the Shrew or classic romance/comedies like Adam’s Rib and Pillow Talk to see just how much of the humor/entertainment is filtered through a decidedly male-oriented point-of-view.

The notion of the battle of the sexes gets even iffier, however, when one grafts it onto horror films, which have tended to be even more male-oriented/patriarchal than other genres (with the possible exception of the glut of late-’70s/’80s sword-and-sandal barbarian flicks). In slasher films, for example, the concept of the “male gaze” is so inherent to deeper readings of these works that it’s inseparable: there’s a reason that you can’t intelligently discuss either Friday the 13th or Halloween without going into a detailed discussion of the concept of the “final girl.” Horror films that explicitly take on the battle of the sexes, such as the aforementioned Donkey Punch, Witching and Bitching or I Spit on Your Grave can be rather tricky: while the films may attempt discussion on weighty issues like violence against women, the role of women in a predominantly patriarchal world and the unfortunate prominence of “rape culture” in our modern world, this all comes filtered through sensibilities that are targeted at primarily male viewers. The end result, in many cases, are films that combine serious issues with old-fashioned, stereotypical and, in some cases, outright misogynistic attitudes.

Into this existing goulash of existing “battle of the sexes” films comes Jake West’s Doghouse, a film that posits the battle of the sexes as a real, honest-to-god, knock-down-drag-out fight. While the film operates from the same starting point as Louis Malle’s experimental Black Moon (men and women are actually fighting each other in open, armed conflict), it’s intent is actually much simpler and more “laddish,” as it were: take a bunch of guys, drop them into an isolated village full of blood-thirsty zombie women and see what happens. As can be expected, the results are bloody, comic and just un-PC enough to appeal to the genre fans that flocked to West’s outrageously over-the-top debut Evil Aliens, although it’s doubtful that the film will have anything of value to add to the actual battle of the sexes. As 90 minutes of mildly offensive, early-Peter-Jackson-esque gore, however, Doghouse quite ably fits the bill.

In short order, the film introduces us to our core group of “blokes,” with just enough individual characterization to prevent them from being distinguished solely by descriptors like “the bad boy” or “the nice guy”: We have our hero, Vince (Stephen Graham), the newly divorced one. We’ve got the “bad boy,” of course (Danny Dyer); the “nerd” (Lee Ingleby); the “token gay friend” (Emil Marwa); the “consistently late friend” (Neil Maskell); the “married friend” (Noel Clarke) and the “self-improvement-obsessed-friend” (Keith-Lee Castle). We’ll also get introduced to a stereotypical “aggressive, meat-head, military” guy later on, for a little variety. The friends have all come together to help Vince get over his recent (and painful) divorce with a “guys-only” weekend at the isolated, female-dominated town of Moodley. Enlisting the aid of bus-driver Ruth (Christina Cole), the lads make it to Moodley but discover something sure to give them that ol’ sinking feeling: all of the women in the town have become murderous “zom-birds,” weapon-wielding, rage-possessed, man-hating (and eating) creatures with only one coherent thought in their heads: if it has a penis, kill it.

Soon, the guys must pool their resources and attempt to make a desperate stand against the legions of possessed women, a situation made worse by the discovery that the infected women are still changing, evolving into bigger, faster, more lethal and infinitely more monstrous versions of themselves. When Ruth becomes infected and turns their bus into her lair, the guys seem to be trapped and doomed. Will they survive the worst stag party in history? Will Vince keep his sweet disposition, despite the long odds? Will Neil ever treat women like human beings? And what, exactly, does the military guy have to do with everything? The answers won’t surprise but they will entertain.

Overall, Doghouse is an extremely well-made, energetic, fast-paced and clever film, with a genuinely funny script and some unique little additions to the well-trod zombie genre. The acting is uniformly good, especially from Danny Dyer and Stephen Graham. Dyer, in particular, is perfect: he plays the part of the womanizing, smarmy bastard to a t. Dyer’s been one of my favorite British genre actors for some time now, possessing the quick-witted delivery and roguish good looks of a more tolerable Colin Farrell, and Doghouse is my favorite performance of his with the exception of Severance, which bears the distinction of being one of my favorite modern horror films. Graham, as usual, is incredibly likable and, for most of the film, comes across as the distinct voice of reason, particularly when paralleled with Dyer’s unrepentant misogyny. It’s doubly unfortunate, then, that the films makes its only real missteps with the transition of his character from “reasonable, normal guy” to “kind-of/sort-of misogynist” by the film’s end. That his “attitude adjustment” is viewed as necessary to his survival is, in the end, quite troubling: the film seems to be saying that any male attitude short of misogyny is not only passe but hazardous to one’s health.

Let me be clear: I don’t find Doghouse to be a sexist film, although I do think it unnecessarily muddies its intent with a bit too much sexist humor and that aforementioned need for male characters to become misogynist in order to ensure their survival. As Graham, the film’s sole gay character tells Neil, at one point: “Now is not the time to stop objectifying women!” In fact, Neil’s softening of his initial stance on women almost gets him killed several times, while Vince’s eventual adoption of Neil’s earlier misogyny ends up saving his life…talk about a conflicted sense of equality. Furthering the issue, there really aren’t any women in the film that aren’t (or later become) zombies, leaving the guys as our only actual points of entry into the film. At first glance, it seems that Ruth may end up as a tonic for the “boys-only” attitude but her quick transformation into a zombie effectively takes her out of the game: at the end, the only “humans” in the film end up being the guys, which seems a bit reductive.

Ultimately, however, I didn’t find the film’s male perspective to be any more offensive than Zach Snyder’s Sucker Punch, another genre film that purported to be about female empowerment, yet saw fit to dress its female leads up like fetish models. At least Doghouse doesn’t claim to be more than it is, whereas Sucker Punch’s disingenuous male-gaze seems distinctly more obnoxious thanks to its supposed intent. At the very least, Doghouse doesn’t end up being radically more offensive or unenlightened than any number of similar genre offerings and is worlds away from the rape-revenge fantasies of films like I Spit on Your Grave or Mother’s Day. At its heart, this is a silly, splattery horror-comedy and doesn’t seem to have pretensions to more. The dialogue is quick and funny, the acting is excellent, the effects are really quite good (and very, very gory) and the whole thing has a shaggy-dog-esque likability that goes a long way towards out smoothing over some of the more potentially misogynist material. While Doghouse doesn’t break any new ground, it stands the very real chance of making you break out in a big smile. Sometimes, that’s all you can ask for.