7/14/15: This Little Light of Mine

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cinema, Conor McMahon, couples in peril, couples on vacation, creature feature, film reviews, films, foreign films, From the Dark, Ged Murray, Gerry O'Brien, horror, horror movies, independent film, Irish films, isolation, low-budget films, Michael Lavelle, Monsters, Movies, Niamh Algar, night-vision, peat bog, Pitch Black, set in Ireland, Stephen Cromwell, Stitches, The Descent, weekend in the country, writer-director

Several years ago, a horror film emerged from the ether (so to speak) and gave me a righteous thumping upside my head: the film was Stitches (2012), the filmmaker was an Irish writer/director/editor named Conor McMahon and it became, hands down, one of my favorite films of the entire year. By turns horrifying, hilarious and almost ludicrously splatterific, Stitches was a glorious return to the good old days of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and introduced the world to one of the greatest, new horror icons of the 2000s: Stitches, the homicidal, undead clown. Death by ice cream cone? Two scoops, please!

After a few years of silence, McMahon’s newest opus, From the Dark (2014), has been unleashed upon a largely unsuspecting populace. As someone who not only liked but positively loved McMahon’s previous film, I found myself greedily seeking more of the same: after all, horror-comedy is never an easy sub-genre to pull off but the writer-director made it seem so easy-breezy the first time around, who can fault me for pulling an Oliver Twist? Proving he’s anything but a one-trick pony, however, McMahon’s newest film is the furthest thing from his previous one: From the Dark is an ultra-serious, low-budget and very modest production (the entire cast appears to consist of four actors, including the costumed creature) that involves a bickering couple stumbling upon ancient evil in the picturesque Irish countryside. While the film never approaches the sublime heights of Stitches, it handily showcases another side of an extremely exciting new(ish) filmmaker and points the way towards an interesting future.

Sarah (Niamh Algar) and Mark (Stephen Cromwell) are a young couple who set off for a romantic getaway but end up running into the usual raft of horror movie problems: their car gets stuck in the mud, in the middle of nowhere, and Mark is forced to set off and find help, as Sarah waits with the vehicle. Characterization is light but we get a few basics: the couple aren’t married, yet, although Mark’s dim view of the institution of wedlock doesn’t bespeak of a particularly rosy future. They bicker a little, although we can tell there’s a lot of love here. We also get the notion that Sarah is the stronger of the two, both mentally and emotionally: again, never bad qualities to have in a horror movie heroine.

Mark ends up stumbling upon a seemingly deserted farmhouse, although an intriguing opening scene has already set the scene for this, as well: our first image is of a grizzled old farmer digging up some sort of “body” in a peat bog, a body which seems to move of its own volition after the farmer leaves. We witness “something” attack and drag the farmer into a nearby pond, which makes Mark’s discovery of him standing in the dark farmhouse, zombie-like, somewhat disconcerting. After bringing Sarah back to the farmhouse, in order to help the seemingly wounded farmer, he suddenly turns on the couple, attacking viciously.

To make matters worse, the “thing” that the farmer initially dug up is roaming around the countryside, looking like a rather terrifying combination of the troglodytes in The Descent (2005), James Sizemore’s creations in The Demon’s Rook (2013) and Max Schreck’s take on Nosferatu. It’s big, monstrous, vaguely humanoid and seems to be very hungry (or angry…it’s a little hard to tell). There is a bright spot, however (quite literally): the creature can’t stand light, similar to the monsters in David Twohy’s under-rated Pitch Black (2000). Thus, Sarah and Mark retreat to the “safety” of the farmhouse and make a desperate stand, utilizing flashlights, lamps, candelabrum, makeshift torches and anything else they can get their hands on. If they can only make it to the morning, perhaps the healing, warm rays of the sun will wash away the evil. It’s going to be a long, dark night, however…a very long one, indeed.

Were I not such a huge fan of McMahon’s previous film, From the Dark would, most likely, have hit me a lot harder than it did: as it stands, however, I can’t help but feel a tad disappointed, even though there’s nothing particularly wrong with the finished product. It is a bit familiar, true: if I’ve seen one recent indie horror about a couple stranded out in the wilderness, I’ve probably seen at least five (to be fair, maybe four). It’s not like McMahon and crew drop the ball on this facet of the film: despite the familiarity, Algar and Cromwell are a likable enough pair and everything moves forward at a fairly fast clip. The cinematography, courtesy of Michael Lavelle, is plenty evocative and atmospheric, even if the occasional camera shake feels woefully out-of-place. The creature looks great from farther away and pretty good from up close (the closer we get, the more it looks like one of the aforementioned Descent critters) and there’s a really intuitive use of light and shadow to help build suspense and tension, both of which also tie into the basic mechanics of the film.

Pretty much everything is in place, yet From the Dark still feels a touch under-cooked, just a shade less developed than it needs to be. For one thing, there’s absolutely no mythos attached to the monster whatsoever: while I found the recent Horsehead (2014) to be cagier than necessary with its titular creature, From the Dark vaults straight past “mysterious” right into “unnecessarily vague.” The creature acts and looks sort of vampiric (the Nosferatu nod, being buried with a stake in its chest), infects people like a zombie, has night-vision (hence the light resistance, I’m assuming), has human-like hands and feet and, at times, seems to be able to fly around (or, at the least, run really quickly and silently). I definitely didn’t need an awkward exposition scene where an old townie holds a flashlight under his chin and tells us a ghost story but I also needed more than what we’re given. As it stands, we don’t even get the vague insinuations of age-old mutations hinted at in The Descent: we pretty much get a monster, which chases our protagonists around for a while.

This sense of vagueness also points towards another major difference between From the Dark and its predecessor: From the Dark is a markedly less clever, inventive film than Stitches. While this might have a little to do with the differences in tone (Stitches, after all, was an extremely dark comedy featuring a motor-mouthed comic in the lead sociopath role), some of the cleverest, most outrageous aspects of Stitches were the incredibly inventive death setpieces, not the hilarious dialogue. In these moments, Stitches was not only one of the smartest, wackiest modern films, it was one of the smartest to come down the pike since the glory days of the ’80s.

As compared to Stitches, From the Dark is as bare-bones, meat-and-potatoes as it gets. The only setpiece in the film that really stands out (aside from the beautifully Gothic final confrontation) is the one where Sarah maneuvers from the upstairs of the farmhouse to the ground floor, moving a lamp, as necessary, to provide meager protection from the rampaging creature. It’s a gloriously tense scene, exquisitely blocked and genuinely thrilling: too bad that so many other scenes devolve into your basic “run and get chased” formula. Stitches was a film where you never had any sense of what’s coming next: from clown sex to death by ice cream scooper, McMahon seemed to pull twists and outrage seemingly out of thin air. Here, McMahon seems to be following a pre-established recipe, giving us all of the required beats and moments for this type of thing but with a decided lack of “seasoning”: even the creature’s aversion to light hearkens back to Pitch Black, which managed to make much better use of that particular “gimmick.”

Despite my disappointment, however, I still enjoyed From the Dark. While Stephen Cromwell’s Mark got a little tedious and whiny by the film’s conclusion, Niamh Algar’s Sarah was always a sturdy protagonist and a more than suitable “final girl” to move the proceedings into their logical conclusion. In fact, I was so impressed with her organic progression from “scared” to “ass-kicking” that I’m going to make a point to follow her more in the future: I’m hoping that more filmmakers take McMahon’s lead and start making Algar the focus of their fright flicks.

I also really liked the film’s look and atmosphere, for the most part, and totally dug the idea of the monster, even if the actual execution was a little too vague and anonymous for my taste: I found myself thinking about it for some time after, trying to fill in the missing pieces. This, of course, is pretty high praise for any film, least of all a low-budget horror film: if I find myself thinking about any of it afterwards, that’s always a big plus, in my book.

There’s no doubt that Conor McMahon is one seriously talented dude: irregardless of its numerous issues, From the Dark is still vastly superior to many similar films. It’s also great to see that he’s not a one-trick-pony: anyone who can create something as giddy and uproarious as Stitches, yet follow it up with something as serious and glum as From the Dark seems poised to avoid pigeon-holing at all costs. At the end of the day, however, I’m nothing if not a greedy bastard: for that reason, I’m gonna be holding out for another Stitches. Serious or funny…flip a coin. As long as McMahon’s next film displays the same delirious level of invention and imagination as his killer clown opus, I’ll be that proverbial kid in that proverbial candy store.

 

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2/4/15: Bones to Pick

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Ali Marhyar, archaeologists, As Above So Below, Ben Feldman, catacombs, childhood trauma, cinema, co-writers, Cosme Castro, Dante's Inferno, dead father, disappointing films, Drew Dowdle, Edwin Hodge, film reviews, films, Flamel, found-footage films, François Civil, Hamid Djavadan, horror, horror films, John Erick Dowdle, Leo Hinstin, Marion Lambert, Movies, multiple writers, ossuaries, Perdita Weeks, Philosopher's Stone, Roger Van Hool, set in Paris, suicide, The Descent, trapped underground, visions, writer-director

Let’s get one thing out of the way right off the bat, shall we? John Erick Dowdle’s As Above, So Below (2014) is not a good film. It has many of the elements of a good film, such as a killer location, some genuinely effective scenes and some thought-provoking ideas but this does nothing to change the final outcome: it just isn’t very good. In the same way that both a good and bad meal may contain identical ingredients, writer-director Dowdle’s movie has all of the necessary pieces, yet the end result is a tedious, dull, overtly silly and largely disposable bit of cineplex fluff. Upon finishing the film, I really only had one question, similar to the question I had after finishing Escape From Tomorrow (2013): how, exactly, did this potential souffle turn into mush? Take my hand as we descend into the darkness and let’s see if we can’t figure that out, shall we?

In the interest of fairness, let’s start with the elements that actually work. First, and most obviously, AASB has an absolutely unbeatable location: the legendary catacombs and ossuaries that lie beneath the streets of Paris. To this point, no other filmmaker has really shot down there (at least that I’m aware of), making the ancient site something of an undiscovered territory. Without putting too fine a point on it, the catacombs are absolutely astounding. Not “cool CGI, bro” astounding, mind you, but honest-to-god “your mind has just been blown” astounding. If there is any real reason to sit through AASB (and there are a couple, mind you), the location is absolutely Reason #1, with a bullet. In fact, the only thing that dings the location aspect is that it isn’t utilized enough: too often, the filmmakers resort to substandard chills in obviously fabricated locations when all they had to do was point at the real site and let our goose-flesh do the heavy lifting. If you have any interest in urban exploration (which I most certainly do), this aspect, alone, might make AASB worth a look.

Secondly, certain elements of the storyline work extremely well. While the film often resembles a confusing hodge-podge of Dan Brown-esque historical adventuring and sub-standard found-footage tropes, the central narrative is just intriguing enough (most of the time) to carry the audience through some extremely choppy waters. Extra points for the myriad references and connections to Dante’s Inferno, a classical work of genre fiction that is relatively untapped in these modern times. While the film, ostensibly, revolves around Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) searching for Flamel’s legendary Philosopher’s Stone, it’s mostly an excuse to dump the cast (almost literally) right into the Inferno. When Dowdle and company focus on the Dante aspect (the “abandon hope” bit is particularly well done), AASB is not only interesting but fairly unique: the gold beneath the mud, so to speak.

Thirdly, AASB contains a handful of highly effective scenes/scares, some of which end up being quite memorable. There’s a scene involving a mysteriously ringing telephone that comes perilously close to becoming a minor classic and the visual of the burning car is actually pretty damn cool. The film’s conclusion, which I won’t spoil here (although I will bet money that you’ll figure it out before Dowdle elects to reveal it), is also pretty neat looking. One of my favorite bits in the film, however, has to be the scene where Scarlett figures out that the group needs to keeping heading down: the bit where she bashes a hole in the floor, allowing water to flood into the unseen space below them, is appropriately Lovecraftian and reminded me (favorably) of the scene in Mann’s The Keep (1983) where the soldiers break through into the “abyss.” There’s an appropriate sense of space to many of the film’s underground scenes that makes the film simultaneously claustrophobic and impossibly large: it’s a great trick and definitely one of AASB’s hidden aces.

And there you have it, folks: the positives, benefits and virtues that can be found in As Above, So Below. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s take a look at the rest, shall we? Spoiler alert: it ain’t pretty.

Right off the bat, Dowdle’s film is populated with some of the most obnoxious, tedious, hateful and just plain awful characters I’ve ever had the misfortune of “knowing.” Familiar with the term “cannon fodder?” Dowdle and co-writer Drew (his brother) sure are, since there isn’t a single person in the film worth saving. The chief offenders, of course, are Weeks’ Scarlett and Ben Feldman’s (of Mad Men fame) George. Taken separately, the characters are whiny, obnoxious, nonsensical and prone to some exceptionally rash, stupid decisions. When put together, however, the pair form the Voltron of Awfulness: they’re like a black hole that sucks anything good straight into the cold reaches of the cosmos, never to be seen again. Even worse, they’re both essentially the same character: in fact, their personalities are so interchangeable that I began to refer to them as “female George” and “male Scarlett” in my notes.

The combined wretchedness of Weeks and Feldman’s performances should not take away from the rest of the cast, however: no one makes out like a bandit in this. At best, as with the case of Edwin Hodge’s Benji, the characters (and performances) are clichéd, rote and highly predictable. At worst, as with Cosme Castro’s ludicrous La Taupe or Francois Civil’s blustery Papillon, the characters take us right out of the action (such as it is), reminding us that we’re watching a bunch of actors tromp around in darkly lit tunnels for upwards of 90 minutes. I can honestly say that I never found a character I could root for: even by the film’s rather upbeat conclusion, I was hoping a sudden earthquake would swallow the idiots and send ’em straight back to the Devil’s living room.

To further add insult to injury, the camerawork is genuinely nauseating, as if someone took a look at the seasick camera motions of progenitors The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Cloverfield (2008) and said: “I can make it even shakier.” When the film is action-packed, the camera shakes. When the film is quiet, the camera shakes. When the group is stressed: shakes. When they’re relaxed: shakes. By the time the whole damned thing was through, the only thing I wanted was some Dramamine and a flat space of carpet to lie down on. This shaky camera issue becomes even more pronounced, if possible, during the film’s handful of action sequences, such as the stone monster attack scene. While I have a tendency to hate overly kinetic action films like The Bourne Identity (2002), AASB made that film feel like it was shot in slo-mo. It’s so hard to figure out what’s going on in any of the chaotic scenes that I eventually just stopped trying.

The film also constantly recalls better films, such as The Descent (2005), by virtue of ripping them off. The scene where Benji gets stuck in the tunnel should be familiar, as are any of the ones where the group realize they’re going in circles (pick your reference for that one). The character of George, who makes a hobby of breaking into places and fixing things (I shit you not), feels like he’s from at least four different films, while Scarlett’s driven, whiny and high-strung group leader might be more familiar to folks when she was Heather, the doomed director from Blair Witch. Time after time, AASB seems to parallel other films, both consciously and unconsciously: it’s like a long, sustained case of deja vu. Hell, there’s even a nod to the infamous “closet vortex” scene from Poltergeist (1982) when Papillon gets pulled into the car, although the CGI utilized here makes the ’80s film look like Avatar (2009), by comparison.

Not to be overly mean, here, but I have to say it: one of the film’s biggest issues is that it wildly vacillates between “reasonably intelligent” and “gap-mouthed drooling,” often within the same sequence. Take, for example, the sequence where Scarlett realizes that she had the wrong stone and needs to go back to get the correct one. The scene is staged and executed exactly like a video game, with Scarlett running, jumping, climbing and punching rock monsters like she’s trying to earn experience points. It reaches its loony apex when she stumbles across the specter of her deceased father: stopping just long enough to hug him and apologize for “not being there,” Scarlett takes off as he fades away. It’s almost as if Dowdle thought: Hmm…I could take the time to give this an extra beat or two, for emotional resonance…or I could just get back to running and jumping.

This lack of reason ends up infecting just about every area of the film: characters act in inconsistent, dumb ways; various elements are introduced, only to be summarily dropped almost instantly (try as I might, I can figure out no good reason for either the ageless Knight Templar or the cowled, “scary face” guy that the group bump into); and there’s no rhyme or reason to the whole Philosopher’s Stone thing: it ends up being the worst kind of McGuffin, since it’s proved to be largely unnecessary (from what I can tell).

And, finally, the film just isn’t scary, despite being billed as a horror film. There are about five legitimate jump scares in the film, one of which (the figure appearing behind Benji) is so moldy that you might need a breathing mask. The others range from good (the phone) to inane (the cloaked guy), although the film gets the most mileage out of my absolute least favorite genre trope: the past coming back to haunt characters. If I’ve seen this once, I’ve seen it a thousand times and it’s just never effective: every character in here sees their dead brother/father/child/lover so many times that it just becomes tedious. Similar to the way in which so many films fall back on the hoary old “possession” cliché, using “past trauma” as a scare factor is really just a way for the filmmakers to admit there’s nothing under the hood: rather than take the time to come up with any genuinely unique, frightening visions, we just get the standard “dead dad/brother under water/person in a burning car” shit. If we actually got to know and like the characters, perhaps these would bear weight. As it was, however, it just made me hate the characters AND their dead relatives that much more.

Here’s the thing: perhaps I sound so bitter over Dowdle’s film because it had such potential to be a real winner. A found-footage film set in the Paris catacombs? Friends and neighbors, that pitch practically prints money, at least for a jaded horror-hound like me. In the end, however, I probably should’ve listened to my gut: after slogging through Dowdle’s previous films, Quarantine (2008) (a direct remake of the Spanish [REC] (2007)) and Devil (2010), I should have figured this wouldn’t be smooth sailing. While critics seemed to have enjoyed Devil and audiences liked Quarantine enough to warrant a sequel, I must admit to disliking them both pretty evenly: if nothing else, Dowdle seems to be a remarkably consistent filmmaker, which surely counts for something. With irritating characters, a squandered setting and enough ludicrous moments to insure that the palm-mark never left my face, As Above, So Below is one of the most disappointing films I’ve seen in some time. Some day, a filmmaker will make a genuinely interesting film about the catacombs. This isn’t it, of course, not by a long shot. For the time being, however, it is, quite literally, the best we have.

 

10/13/14 (Part Two): The Way Out Is Through

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31 Days of Halloween, Alex Reid, all-female cast, auteur theory, cave system, Centurion, cinema, cult classic, cult films, Dog Soldiers, Doomsday, favorite films, female friendships, feminism, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, friends, horror films, horror-adventure, isolation, Molly Kayll, Movies, MyAnna Buring, mysterious cave, Natalie Mendoza, Neil Marshall, Nora-Jane Noone, Oliver Milburn, Saskia Mulder, Shauna Macdonald, spelunking, subterranean monsters, The Descent, underground exploration, unexplored cave system

One of the biggest problems with the horror film genre, practically from its inception, has been the way it tends to marginalization women. In many cases, female characters exist solely as either cannon fodder or eye candy: the concept of the “male gaze” is so intertwined with the slasher film, for example, that it’s nearly impossible to separate that particular sub-genre from its inherent misogyny. One of the laziest defenses of these decidedly old-fashioned ideals, of course, is that the genre has “always been this way”: Dracula chased virgins, masked maniacs hunted nubile co-eds and T & A was just something to hold interest in-between creative kill scenes. This is, quite obviously, a pretty huge load of horse-shit: these things “have always been like this” because they benefit the status quo, pure and simple. Audience enjoyment of a horror film shouldn’t be precipitated on the need to constantly see bare breasts any more than it should be precipitated on the need to constantly see gore: the horror genre is so much more than the sum of (some of) its small, mechanical parts.

For the time being, the film world (particularly the horror genre) is predominantly a “boy’s club”: male directors still overwhelmingly outnumber female directors, although there are certain small in-roads being made. The Soska sisters, to name but one example, seem poised on the cusp of a massive filmmaking revolution…if ever there were folks duly suited to picking up the torch and burning down the institution, the fearless creators of Dead Hooker in a Trunk (2009) and American Mary (2012) seem like them. We’re a far cry from anything actually approaching equality, of course, but the same could be said for the subject, in general. The most important thing to keep in mind, I think, is the notion of the doctor “doing no harm.” If filmmakers are not willing (or able) to completely right the imbalance, then they should, at the very least, not be contributing to it. It may be a small gesture, in the end, but it’s often the smallest gestures which can lead to the biggest breakthroughs.

British auteur Neil Marshall’s sophomore feature, The Descent (2005), is one film that I honestly feel “does no wrong” as far as the subject of gender politics goes. For one thing, Marshall’s film features an almost exclusively female cast, a complete rarity in the horror genre: the only male in the film is featured in the intro and he’s out of the film within the first five minutes. For another thing, Marshall’s neo-classic is informed by feminism to the degree that patriarchal notions and power dynamics are largely left by the wayside: the focus here is firmly on the various interpersonal relationships between the women, rather than having the female characters serve as plot devices to complete a male character’s arc. The Descent is that most impressive of “message” films because it’s message is so basic, yet important: women are capable of kicking as much ass, sowing as much chaos, getting in as much trouble and being just as strong as their male counterparts.

Like Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), The Descent is, basically, a two-fer-one: a bracing, thrilling caving adventure and a claustrophobic, terrifying monster flick. For the first half of the film’s running time, there’s no notion whatsoever that this will develop into anything more than a thrilling drama about the ways in which best friends can drift apart. Via a gripping white-water-rafting intro, we’re introduced to our protagonist, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald). Sarah’s happy, now, but sudden tragedy will strike, stripping her of her family and her old life all in one fell swoop. In order to help their friend recover from her devastating loss, Sarah’s friends, led by alpha female Juno (Natalie Mendoza), decide to “get the band back together” for one more spelunking trip, just like the good old days. The friends haven’t seen each other since Sarah’s family was killed, so this is an excellent time to re-ignite old friendships…and reopen old wounds.

Seeking a suitable “adventure” for her decidedly less-experienced friends, Juno ends up taking the group to an unexplored caving system rather than the “beginner” cave that she promised she’d take them to. Once the truth is out, Juno’s thrill-seeking new friend, Holly (Nora-Jane Noone) is stoked but everyone else is decidedly less enthused: what was supposed to be a nice get-away among former friends has now turned into something decidedly more intensive and, potentially, life-threatening. As they continue to explore the cave, a roof collapse cuts off their way back, forcing them to push forward into the unknown. There’s a great sense of thrill and adventure here: as the friends press on, they fear the unknown but there’s a visceral punch to the notion that they’re all boldly going where no one has ever gone before.

No more is this sense of hesitant excitement more pronounced than the white-knuckle scene where they must make their away across a seemingly bottomless chasm: as Rebecca (Saskia Mulder) makes her away across the cave ceiling, one agonizing inch at a time, there’s a genuine sense of the pioneer spirit. And then, of course, Marshall drops the other shoe: as Rebecca traverses the ceiling, she comes across something not only unexpected but existentially terrifying – an aged, rusted climbing spike driven into the otherwise untouched cave ceiling. The realization hits the friends hard: they’re obviously not the first cavers to explore the system, yet it doesn’t exist on any maps. This, of course, means that the previously explorers never actually made it out alive.

With this new knowledge firmly in mind, the group begin to notice odd things here and there: an abandoned mining lamp, strange cave drawings, mysterious shadows that seem vaguely humanoid but melt into the background whenever examined…it all culminates in the jaw-dropping reveal where they find themselves in a huge antechamber filled with all manner of skeletal remains…including, of course, human bones. From this point forward, The Descent becomes a no-holds-barred battle for survival as Sarah, Juno and the others engage in bloody, life-or-death combat with a group of subterranean creatures that appear to be an awful combination of human and bat. As the friends are hunted through the darkness by creatures that thrive on the inky emptiness, they must pull reserves of strength from deep within themselves, reserves that many of them never knew they possessed. Old rivalries and betrayals will surface, pitting friend against friend, even as the ravenous monsters press in from all sides. Far under the ground, hidden from the “normal” world above and completely off the grid, they most wage the most desperate fight of their lives or snuggle into their cavernous new tomb and accept that there are just some places that humans do not belong.

The first half of Marshall’s film is so gripping and enthralling, similar to the nature-based adventure setpieces from Deliverance (1972), that the appearance of the monsters seems destined to tip the film’s serious edge into total pulp territory. Instead, the horror-based second half actually dovetails perfectly with the more adventure-oriented first part, creating a beast similar to Master Blaster from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). It’s a nifty hat-trick but one that Marshall pulled off with similar aplomb in his feature-length debut, Dog Soldiers (2002), which grafted an action-packed military film onto a werewolf movie. As an interesting parallel, Marshall’s first film featured only one female role (albeit a prominent one), whereas the follow-up featured only one (brief) male role in an otherwise all female cast.

While The Descent’s casting is certainly noteworthy, there’s absolutely nothing gimmicky about the concept: the film never feels like a jaded attempt to shoehorn diversity into a largely male-oriented genre but, rather, an honest, genuine attempt to tell a horror story from a feminine perspective. Most impressively, the cast never feel like female actors subbed in for their male counterparts: the themes and ideas explored here – friendship, betrayal, the importance of the family unit, the need for emotional honesty – all feel organic to the characters and there’s appears to be a genuine focus on the female characters. Despite a plot point that involves infidelity, there is a refreshing lack of male needs guiding the overall story: these are women who are perfectly capable and happy on their own, without the need to be intrinsically connected to male counterparts. In the truest notion of equality, the characters in The Descent are just allowed to be their own characters, for better or worse, and there’s no notion, at any point, that they’re merely marionettes being forced to dance for the male gaze. In a genre that seems to thrive on finding inventive ways to showcase distressed young women wearing as little clothing as possible, Marshall’s extraordinary film does the zaniest thing possible: it opts to just treat them like human beings and let the drama arise organically from the characters and situations. Fancy that!

As with Marshall’s debut, The Descent is an absolutely stunning bit of craftwork, featuring some truly gorgeous cinematography (the scenes lit solely by red flares are genuinely beautiful, conjuring up a haunted atmosphere that’s equal parts dreamy and Stygian) and some of the most impressive locations ever committed to celluloid. Truly, The Descent stands as one of the crowning achievements of the cinematic caving subgenre (narrow as that might be) and is practically the first and last word on caving-based horror films: there have been a handful of others but they all look pretty impoverished compared to Marshall’s flick.

The acting, as befits all of Marshall’s films, is note-perfect. Shauna Macdonald, in particular, is an absolutely riveting hero: while she doesn’t possess the steely reserve of someone like Lt. Ripley, there’s an honesty to her character’s actions that feels both suitably dramatic and grounded in reality. Sarah is not a fearless character strutting through an apocalyptic wasteland with gum in one cheek and her boot up someone’s ass: she’s a regular person whose preservation instincts propel her forward, even as her options seem to be running out right and left. Similarly, Natalie Mendoza could have played Juno as a shrill, one-note antagonist, someone whose sole function was to awaken a change in the main character. Instead, Mendoza infuses Juno with enough nuance to allow audiences to empathize, at least to some extent, with her actions. One of the most powerful moments in the entire film comes from the scene where Juno accidentally kills one of the party: her character has been cocky and obnoxious, up to that point, but the fear, pain and horror in her eyes are new emotions and Mendoza is a capable enough performer to allow each to bubble to the surface, in time, even if only briefly.

I fell in complete love with The Descent after my very first screening of the film (which happened to be in a theater, thankfully) and my opinion hasn’t wavered one iota in the decade since. The film is easily one of my favorite horror movies, of any era, and is one of the modern horror films that I feel completely comfortable with canonizing: I think that The Descent is a film that audiences and critics will be returning to for many decades, similar to any of the greats in the genre. Even viewed as critically as possible, I can find very few real faults with the film and the high points soar handily above the high points of many, many other films. The fight sequences are visceral assaults to the senses, the feeling of claustrophobia is so complete as to be almost suffocating and the film has one of the single greatest, most perfect endings in the history of cinema. No lie: if I were Marshall, I’d get a bumper sticker that says “My film kicked your honor student’s ass.”

 

10/13/14 (Part One): Going to the Dogs

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31 Days of Halloween, action films, aliens, auteur theory, British films, Centurion, Chris Robson, cinema, cult classic, Darren Morfitt, Dog Soldiers, dogs, Doomsday, Emma Cleasby, extreme violence, feature-film debut, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, horror films, horror movies, isolation, James Cameron, Kevin McKidd, Leslie Simpson, Liam Cunningham, Movies, Neil Marshall, Sam McCurdy, Sean Pertwee, soldiers, The Descent, Thomas Lockyer, war games, werewolves, writer-director-editor

Like horror-comedies, action and horror hybrids walk a pretty fine line: too much of the action side of things and you get, well, an action film. A film which features endless scenes of zombies engaged in bone-crunching MMA action might be thrilling but it probably won’t be very blood-chilling. Likewise, traditional zombies that pop out of the background, stumble around and bite people might be horrifying and blood-chilling but probably won’t elicit the kinds of fist-pumping responses we might get from our mixed-martial artist gut-munchers. It’s a real formula, in a way, a formula which very few films really get right. The gold standard for these types of horror-action hybrids, as far as I’m concerned, is James Cameron’s classic Aliens (1986), the direct sequel to Ridley Scott’s horrifying sci-fi classic. Coming in at a close second, however, would have to be writer-director Neil Marshall’s extraordinary feature-film debut, Dog Soldiers (2002). Soldiers fighting werewolves? It doesn’t get much more thrilling than that, friends and neighbors.

As befits its no-nonsense style, Dog Soldiers jumps us into the action fairly quickly and keeps the accelerator floored for the majority of its running time. A small squadron of British soldiers, led by Sgt. Harry Wells (Sean Pertwee) and including Pvt. Cooper (Kevin McKidd) among their ranks, are in the Scottish Highlands for a run-of-the-mill training exercise. They seem to be a good bunch of guys, close-knit and good at what they do: we’ve already spent a little time with Cooper as he tries out for a Special Forces position and know that he’s a helluva fighter with a strong moral center and a particular respect for dogs, which seems to befit the protagonist of a werewolf film.

In short order, our intrepid group of soldiers begins to get the idea that things might not be as copacetic as they originally thought: they constantly hear odd noises in the surrounding forest and someone/thing tosses a slaughtered cow in their general direction, which would be enough to unnerve just about anyone. The situation gets even more extreme once they stumble onto the destroyed campsite of Capt. Ryan (Liam Cunningham) and his Special Forces unit. Ryan was the son of a bitch from the intro to shot the innocent dog but he appears to have seen much better days: he’s cut up pretty bad and looks as white as a ghost. He’s also babbling that “They tore them apart!” and the even more sinister, “There was only supposed to be one!”

Faster than you can say “Full moon,” the squadron are under siege and end up taking refuge with a passing Good Samaritan (Emma Cleasby) at a nearby abandoned farmhouse. As the enraged werewolves try to storm their meager safe house, the soldiers must band together against a foe that seems to be not supernaturally strong but also unbelievably cunning and vicious. There’s more than meets the eye here, however, and the odious Capt. Ryan appears to be right at the very heart of the mystery. What is the secret behind their hirsute attackers and will any of them survive to greet the new day?

Horror films have incorporated action elements for generations but this really became explicit with the rise of horror franchises, such as Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, in the ’80s. One of the conventions of these type of films, perhaps best exemplified in something like A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors (1987), are the scenes where the protagonists engage in heated battle with the main villain. These “action” moments are almost always qualified, however, with the knowledge that the “normal” people are never a match for foes like Jason or Freddy: they might temporarily get the upper hand (at least until the finale) but they’re way to “wimpy” to ever pose any real threat to these super-strong monsters. This is one reason why Scott’s Alien (1979) can be considered a horror film, whereas Cameron’s follow-up is distinctly horror-action: in Alien, the human characters (with the exception of Ripley) are all too weak to even finish off one Xenomorph, let alone a handful of them. The hat-trick that Aliens pulls, then, is to give us a group of protagonists who are utterly and completely badass: Space marines, as it turns out, and set them loose against the alien menace.  This way, we don’t question when the marines are kicking alien ass up one side and down the other (although this doesn’t happen quite as easily as I’ve, obviously, made it sound) because that’s what rough-and-tumble space marines are supposed to do: kick ass.

By making our protagonists tough-guy soldiers, Dog Soldiers levels the playing field quite a bit and allows us to suspend disbelief for the resulting action sequences. We don’t question that these guys have sharp reflexes and are able survivalists because, well, that’s kind of what we expect of soldiers. Since the opponents are more evenly matched (at least slightly more, as the werewolves are still towering, mountainous and furry buzzsaws), this allows for a more even balance between the action and horror elements. There are genuine horror elements in the film, not least of which is the ultimate “reveal” about the werewolves identities, which are allowed to play out at a more leisurely pace. For the most part, however, Dog Soldiers definitely plays like one all-out action sequence after another, similar to the way that Dario Argento liberally sprinkled murder set-pieces throughout his early classics.

For a debut film, Dog Soldiers is a remarkably assured and nearly flawless construction. Marshall also handled the editing of the film and displays a deft talent for putting action scenes together in fast-paced and evocative yet clear ways: this isn’t the chaotic chop-chop editing of Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) but something that’s altogether more fluid, with characters being much more delineated on the screen. The cinematography, by extension, is also crystal clear and sharp: Sam McCurdy, the director of photography on all of Marshall’s films, thus far, has a real eye for color and detail that gives the proceedings a rich look.

Effects-wise, Dog Soldiers is a complete marvel: the violence is sudden, harsh and well-done, while the creature effects are simply stunning, recalling nothing so much as Rick Baker’s groundbreaking work on The Howling (1981). Unlike films that hide their monsters behind shadows and off the edge of the frame, Dog Soldiers is (rightfully) proud of its lycanthropes and takes every opportunity possible to trot them before the camera. Thanks to the stellar effects work, the creatures look equally imposing whether shot in a long shot or in close up: you won’t see any zippers on these costumes.

One of the most important aspects of any “squadron-based film,” of course, is the effectiveness of the ensemble cast: as with everything else, Dog Soldiers knocks this out of the park. Sean Pertwee does a great job as the Sarge who just wants to get his guys out of the shit and Kevin McKidd (from TV’s Rome) injects enough grit into his performance of Pvt. Cooper to prevent the character from seeming like too much of a “goody-goody” cliché. Cunningham is a rather teeth-gnashing, over-the-top villain, but the performance ends up working, perhaps because it gives the group someone entirely more “manageable” to fight against.

One aspect of Dog Soldiers that sets it a bit apart from similar films (and parallels it with Cameron’s Aliens) is the film’s overall serious tone and intent: while there are the occasional clever one-liners and cheeky moments, the emphasis is definitely on adrenaline over the easy release that comic relief affords. Truth be told, the film’s funniest moment is also one of its most badass: as Spoon (Darren Morfitt) is about to be devoured by a werewolf, he tosses out the immortal retort, “I hope I give you the shits, you fucking wimp!” Epic, indeed.

For my money, Neil Marshall is, hands-down, one of the single most impressive genre directors in the business. While I’ve enjoyed some of his films more than others (Dog Soldiers and The Descent (2005) occupy a pretty lofty perch, whereas Doomsday (2008) and Centurion (2010) reside a bit closer to solid ground), I’ve never been anything less than completely entertained with any of his work: he’s the kind of director that can get me excited for any project, sight unseen, and is a filmmaker that I expect to follow for several good decades to come. It’s always handy, however, to go back to the beginning and see how it all started. For Marshall, it started with this thrilling, edge-of-the-seat classic about werewolves and the soldiers who fight them and it doesn’t show any signs of stopping anytime soon. Utterly essential for genre fans and anyone who relishes a ripping good, military-themed action film.

The 31 Days of Halloween (Week 3)

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31 Days of Halloween, Arachnophobia, Big Ass Spider!, Dead Birds, Dead Silence, Dog Soldiers, Halloween, Halloween traditions, House of 1000 Corpses, I'm Not Scared, Infestation, Mama, Neil Marshall, October, Post Tenebras Lux, Rob Zombie, Thale, The Burrowers, The Descent, The Devil's Rejects, The Haunting, The Stepfather

With Week Two officially under our collective belts, it’s time to look forward to Week Three. Due to availability issues, there may need to be a little shuffling around. As of right now, however, this is what the week is shaping up to look like:

Oct 13 — The Descent (2005) / Dog Soldiers (2002)

Oct 14 — The Haunting (1963) / Dead Silence (2007)

Oct 15 — Mama (2013) / The Stepfather (1986)

Oct 16 — House of 1000 Corpses (2003) / The Devil’s Rejects (2005)

Oct 17 — Dead Birds (2005) / The Burrowers (2008)

Oct 18 — Infestation (2009) / Arachnophobia (1990) / Big Ass Spider! (2013)

Oct 19 — Thale (2012) / Post Tenebras Lux (2012) / I’m Not Scared (2003)

At this point, there may be some issues with the October 17th and 18th screenings: if so, I’ll slot something else in with The Burrowers and will bump the Natali weekend up to this week. If so, I’ll be screening Splice (2009), Haunter (2013) and Cube (1997) on October 17th instead of the currently listed “spider mania” films.

Stay tuned for backlogged reviews from October 8th-yesterday: it’s been a busy month, already, and there’s still lots more to come!

7/10/14: A Mediocre Day at Black Rock

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actor-director, Anslem Richardson, battle of the sexes, Black Rock, cinema, disappointing films, Donkey Punch, drama, female friendships, film reviews, films, friends, Iraq War, islands, isolation, Jay Paulson, Kate Bosworth, Katie Aselton, Lake Bell, Mark Duplass, Movies, survival-horror, The Descent, The League, The Puffy Chair, thriller, violence against women, war veterans, Will Bouvier

I really wanted to love Katie Aselton’s Black Rock (2012): oh, boy, did I ever. I went into the film with not only the highest of hopes but also the greatest of expectations, practically willing it to be amazing. How could it lose, after all? The film stars and is directed by Aselton  (a complete gold mine in the uproariously funny TV show, The League), is written by her husband, Mark Duplass (also of The League and equally amazing), features Lake Bell (who may just be this generation’s Crispin Glover) and is a female-centric survival-horror film. A pedigree like this seems almost tailor-made for my sensibilities, especially considering how much I’ve always loved The Descent (2005).

Alas, Black Rock ends up being a pretty major disappointment. From a clichéd storyline and heavy-handed musical score to unrealistic, irritating acting and wooden dialogue, the film ended up deflating all of my expectations, one by one. Rather than being a neo-classic, Black Rock ends up being a distinctly lackluster entry into the survival-horror subgenre, more Donkey Punch (2008) than Wilderness (2006). Even worse, the film manages to fail as both a friendship-oriented drama and a horror film, keeping one foot planted in the worst of both worlds.

All that poor Sarah (Kate Bosworth) wants to do is return to the secluded island that she remembered so fondly from her childhood and relive her girlhood memories with her best friends, Abby (Katie Aselton) and Lou (Lake Bell). The only fly in the ointment, of course, being that Abby and Lou can’t stand each others’ guts. Being a real Kissinger, however, Sarah decides to bring everybody together by just, you know, lying about it and invites them each separately. When they all show up at the dock, ready to board the boat, Abby and Lou look about as excited to see each other as a fly and a fly swatter might. Thinking fast, Sarah defuses the situation by pretending to have cancer. That’s right, Sarah the humanitarian bridges the divide by telling her best friends that she has a terminal disease. Let the good times begin!

From here, we get some pretty sub-Blair Witch arguing in the woods stuff, as Abby and Lou proceed to hash out every bit of their contentious relationship. Rather than seeming like a good way to get the gang back together, this begins to seem like a plot on Sarah’s part to have her friends kill each other: could this be some kind of Hitchcockian twist on the part of screenwriter Duplass? Nah…it’s just a lot of pointless bickering to add some “drama” and “character development.” The big problem? All of the “development” stops at the obnoxious phase and never makes it past that.

While tooling through the woods, our trio are surprised by three hunters: Henry (Will Bouvier), Derek (Jay Paulson) and Alex (Anslem Richardson). Turns out that the ladies all went to high school with Henry’s older brother, Jimmy. After as much awkward hemming and hawing as a junior high formal, Abby invites the guys to hang out and get shit-faced with them. This, of course, doesn’t make Sarah and Lou particularly happy, since Sarah wanted a girls’ weekend and Lou just wants Abby to spontaneously combust, but Abby gets what she wants because she’s Abby, dammit!

After another exceedingly awkward scene where Abby gets trashed and makes fun of Derek’s lack of facial hair while flagrantly coming on to Henry, she excuses herself to go get some firewood, followed shortly afterwards by Henry, who sees a good opportunity to take this to the next level. This, of course, leaves Sarah and Lou alone with Derek and Alex, which is just enough time to learn that the three guys are recently back from Iraq, where they were dishonorably discharged. “Something” happened over there, something that they don’t want to talk about but, hey: these are still probably nice enough guys, right?

Not quite, as we find out once Henry attempts to rape Abby out in the woods. She puts the kibosh on the attack with a large rock, which ends up putting the kibosh on the rest of Henry’s lifespan. This, in turn, makes Derek and Alex fly into a murderous rage: how dare this crazy bitch kill their wannabe rapist/potentially lunatic war veteran/cuddly best friend?! Since any measure of actual thought, at this point, would derail the rest of the film, the remaining guys make what seems to be a pretty reasonable decision: kill the three women.

Being a survival-horror film, however, this is all just set-up for one long game of cat-and-mouse between the three friends and their (presumably) insane captors. It goes without saying that they’ll break free, escape, suffer injuries, fight back, get in touch with their inner warriors and kick a ton of ass: it goes without saying because these are all of the traditional beats in any survival-horror film and Aselton and Duplass are absolutely not interested in doing anything outside of this particular box. Period. This, of course, all leads to an ending that could probably be seen coming from at least the end of the first act, if not the opening credits and the sudden realization that tremendous success in television comedy doesn’t necessarily translate to incredible success in a thriller/horror film.

Not to flog this horse too much but Black Rock really isn’t a very good film. It’s stunningly unoriginal, for one thing, almost seeming like a paint-by-numbers attempt at this particular subgenre. While the cinematography and shot selection is actually quite good, the musical score is eye-rolling, so heavy-handed that it felt like the music was constantly elbowing me in the side, going, “Eh? Eh? Get it? You get it?” The script is consistently awful, filled not only with howlingly bad dialogue but also so many character and plot inconsistencies that it felt unfinished, as if the dialogue was half-scripted, half-improv.

The fatal blow, however, has to be the unrealistic acting and thoroughly unlikable characters. To be quite blunt, all six of these people are shitheads: the men are all homicidal, misogynist, insane, steroidal assholes, while Sarah is a misanthropic, self-centered nitwit, Abby is a bat-shit crazy boozehound and Lou is a unlikeable jerk who spends the entire film making bitter beer faces at Abby. Not only would I never want to be stuck on an isolated island with any of these people, I didn’t want to be stuck in a movie with them, either. By the time folks started to die off, it was too little, too late: I kept hoping this would turn into some sort of alien invasion film and ETs would swoop in and turn these jackasses into ash piles. Alas, it was pretty content to stay a thoroughly pedestrian survival-horror film.

Perhaps the worst thing about Black Rock is how much wasted potential there was here. Aselton, Bell and Bosworth are all more than capable actors, while Duplass was responsible for writing not only the mumblecore films The Puffy Chair (2005) and Baghead (2008), but also the way-excellent Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011). What the hell happened? Short of any kind of definitive answer, I’m going to have to assume that this all looked a whole lot more promising during the planning stages, kind of like mixing the perfect souffle, only to have the whole thing collapse into mush in the oven.

6/6/14 (Part Two): Alpha Males

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action-adventure, adventures, Alaska, Alaskan wilderness, alpha males, based on a short story, Bronson, cinema, Dallas Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, faith, fighting animals, film reviews, films, flashbacks, Frank Grillo, Greg Nicotero, guy movies, isolation, Jack London, Joe Anderson, Joe Carnahan, killer wolves, Lee Marvin, Liam Neeson, man vs. nature, Movies, Narc, Nonso Anozie, oil riggers, Ottway, plane crash, Smokin' Aces, snow, stranded, survival, survival-horror, The A-Team, The Descent, The Grey, voice-over narration, wolves, writer-director

Mankind likes to think that it’s the master of any domain it comes across but the reality isn’t quite as optimistic. Sure, we can go into frigid Arctic areas, travel deep below the sea and even walk on the Moon: if we put our minds to it, nothing seems impossible. Throw humans into any of these situations wearing just the frail skins we were born with, however, and see how far we get. We may be able to use technology and innovation to take us further than anyone has gone before but, at our core, we are shockingly fragile, insignificant little things. Without the various safety nets we establish for ourselves, like clothing, shelter and weaponry, humanity is very much at the mercy of the natural world. Hunters are all-powerful when they’re armed but look an awful lot like food when they aren’t. A shady banker with a computer can bring down the world: a shady banker, in the forest, with no protection, will get eaten by a bear…that’s just the way the world works.

Writer-director Joe Carnahan’s The Grey (2011) (an adaptation of Ian Mackenzie Jeffer’s short story, “Ghost Walker”), is yet another examination of “man vs. nature,” one of those time-honored tales where disparate and diverse personalities must come together in order to survive a greater threat. In the process, the characters will do lots of surviving, lots of dying and lots of personal discovery. While this type of story is certainly nothing new (hell, Jack London may have invented this subgenre all the way back in the 1900s), The Grey ends up being an extraordinarily powerful film, anchored by a quietly explosive performance from Liam Neeson and a strong, viscerally violent atmosphere. While popular jokes at the time may have cast The Grey as nothing more than “Liam Neeson punching wolves,” the film is a helluva lot more than that. In fact, it may just be the best survival-horror film since Marshall’s classic The Descent (2006).

We’re immediately dropped into the desolate, snow and wind-blasted wilderness of Alaska, where we meet Ottway (Liam Neeson), our guide through this particular wasteland. Ottway is a master outdoors-man and responsible for protecting the rugged members of an oil-rigging crew from the hungry wolves that endlessly patrol the icy wastes. Ottway is also a hopelessly damaged individual, suffering from some sort of unnamed loss (we get lots and lots of flashbacks) that drives him perilously close to eating a bullet. He doesn’t, however, and boards a plane with the rest of the crew, including Diaz (Frank Grillo), Flannery (Joe Anderson), Talget (Dermot Mulroney), Henrick (Dallas Roberts) and Burke (Nonso Anozie). When the weather gets worse, the plane freezes over and ends up crashing in a spectacular, absolutely thrilling sequence (talk about edge of your seat…literally): the lucky ones are killed in the crash. The unlucky ones, led by Ottway, must now survive in the harsh elements with only the clothes on their backs and a few canisters of pilfered airplane fuel to start fires. They need to get back to civilization but there are plenty of eyes watching from the woods…hungry eyes.

As Ottway does his damnedest to keep the survivors alive, he finds himself butting heads with the worst aspects of humanity, including greed, fear and the selfish desire to survive at the cost of everyone else. In particular, Ottway finds himself at odds with Diaz: while the vicious wolves circle in the darkness, Diaz and Ottway circle each other in the light, sniffing for weakness and constantly struggling for domination. Even as Ottway discusses the need to find and slay the alpha male wolf, the struggle for alpha dominance within the survivors threatens to tear them all asunder. Will Ottway be able to overcome his own emotional issues in order to fulfill his duties as group protector? Will the men learn to work together, against all odds, or will they continue to be picked off, one by one, until only their bones remain to remind of their existence? In order to survive, the men will not only need to overcome the wolves: they will need to become the wolves.

The Grey is, first and foremost, a glorious return to the kind of big-screen adventure-survival epics that used to be de rigueur at the box office back in the ’70s. In many ways, the film isn’t such a huge departure from films like Deliverance (1972), Jaws (1975) or Sorcerer (1977) but a much closer parallel would be the aforementioned one with The Descent. In many ways, The Grey is definitely a survival-horror film: the wolves are introduced in a way that establishes them as monsters (the glowing eyes and frightening baying) and the alpha male wolf is established in a way that sets him up as the “chief bad guy” (the scene where Diaz tosses the decapitated wolves’ head into the darkness, only to be met by the angry response call from the alpha male, isn’t much different from any scene where an evil leader reacts in anger to the death of a subordinate at the hands of the heroes). In this way, the wolves are very similar to something like Peter Jackson’s orcs or Marshall’s cave dwellers and serve a similar function in the film.

An action-adventure film lives or dies by its action sequences and, in this regard, The Grey is a complete stunner. From the initial plane crash to the heart-in-mouth scene where the survivors rappel down a craggy mountain-side to the final confrontation with the alpha wolf, The Grey is one incredibly intense scene after another. Carnahan masterfully coils and uncoils the tension, building up quiet, personal dialogue scenes into explosive action beats, prompting me to (literally) jump out of my seat on at least a half-dozen occasions. One of the scenes, which begins as a confrontation between Diaz and Ottway but ends as a confrontation between Diaz and a wolf, is so perfectly executed that it’s almost a textbook example of how to set-up and execute such a moment. I’ve never been a huge fan of Carnahan’s other films (I positively abhor the empty-headed Smokin’ Aces (2006)) but he displays an absolutely deft touch on The Grey that has me eagerly anticipating his next project.

The film almost always looks and sounds great (the sound design is particularly strong) but I wasn’t fond of cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi’s (who also shot the Oscar-winning Silver Linings Playbook (2012)) frequent over-reliance on blown-out visuals. His landscape cinematography was so beautiful that it was frustrating to have such an obvious visual aesthetic for the more intimate scenes: I get that it’s a cold, white, desolate place…no need to rub my nose in it. Additionally, in the minor quibble department, I felt that Ottway’s frequent flashbacks/dream sequences wore out their welcome pretty early into the film and frequently killed the forward momentum. The sequences did a little to help establish Ottway’s character, although this type of character development seems particularly heavy-handed and unnecessary.

Ultimately, however, no discussion of The Grey can be complete without singling out Liam Neeson for some special recognition. Although the rest of the cast is solid (Dermot Mulroney is particularly good as Talget), this is definitely Neeson’s film. Over the last few years, Neeson has been gradually morphing into an action star, not too far removed from what Bronson and Eastwood were doing in the ’80s and ’90s. In fact, it’s pretty easy to imagine someone like Bronson, Eastwood or Lee Marvin playing the part of Ottway: it’s a quiet, brooding role that requires not only plenty of ass-kicking but also some degree of wounded vulnerability. Ottway may be a man of action but he’s still just a man: Neeson shows us the confusion, fear and conflict beneath his stoic visage, without doing anything to denigrate his inherent heroism. Ottway is not some unrealistically pure “white knight”: he’s just as fucked up as everyone else, yet manages to work through his issues to do what needs to be done. It’s a truly multi-faceted performance made all the more impressive by how little (relatively speaking) Neeson says. Those flinty eyes tell a helluva story, however, and Carnahan/Takayanagi take full advantage of this with plenty of intense closeups, ala Eastwood and his similarly flinty orbs.

While The Grey could, perhaps, be considered the ultimate “guy movie,” (the only women in the film appear in flashback/dream sequences, which is probably rather telling) I think that there’s a lot more bubbling beneath the surface than mindless chest-beating and machismo. This is definitely an action film, through and through, and packed with enough hardcore, visceral violence to please even the most discerning gorehound (the film doesn’t skimp on the “wolves eating people” visuals and there’s one bit involving half of a guy that’s pretty difficult to watch). Along with action and violence, however, there are some surprisingly deep conversations about the nature of faith and there’s one particularly moving scene where Ottway helps a dying man pass on peacefully. They’re rare moments of beauty and serenity in an otherwise unforgiving, harsh landscape but they make the film an overall richer experience.

Ultimately, I found myself quite taken with The Grey: perhaps future viewings will help push it into the neo-classic status of films like The Descent but, for the time being, it simply stands as an extraordinary, ridiculously exciting adventure film. That being said, the film also features one of the most perfect final scenes I’ve ever seen (ruined only so slightly by an unnecessary post-credits tag), a scene that manages to be simultaneously regal, sad and ruthlessly badass. It’s a scene that stops right before it begins, leaving the viewer’s brain to fill in the gap. It’s a wonderful, powerful, amazingly cinematic moment: it’s what movies are all about (in my non-humble opinion) and any modern film should be proud to feature anything close to it. If the finale doesn’t find you on your feet, fist thrust heroically into the air…well, let’s just say that there may not be any hope for you, after all. The Grey is vicious, vital, bloody filmmaking at its very best: you’d be wise to give it a look sometime.