Ready or Not: The Heathens of Hasbro - 9/10

Simplistic but yet eloquently cogent, Ready or Not is a sumptuous satire that encapsulates and ridicules divisions of class and gender by fashioning such neo-political stances a crux of medievality. Poking and prodding at elitist eccentrism and roguish American traditionalism, becoming inundated within the world of the rich is a caveat close to death manufactured by way of chance; non-compliance non-negotiable. To get (monetarily and sexually) rich, you’ll have to play the ‘Game of Life’ - quite literally. Ready or Not is a wily Hasbro-Horror of hilarity, an omni-player survival game - for ages 18 and up - and a gambol for gore.

The premise - succinctly elucidated - takes form of a Cinderella style fable whereby foster-parented Grace marries into the love and wealth of the Le Domas family. Upon such consummation, Grace must partake in a family ritual for ancestral acceptance. She must play a game (in honour of the family’s borne wealth via board games); decided by an heirloomic Pandora’s box. Unfortunately for Grace, the box bodes for ‘Hide and Seek’, its instructions laboured in a sacrificial Hard Target(1993) style hunt. Should Grace survive until dawn, the family believe they will suffer the wrath of Satan.

As bat-crap crazy as it sounds, Ready or Not is a very rational feature that attacks systematic discourses of belief. The film is expertly told through poignant storytelling (cunning that the film is told traditionally whilst itself attacking tradition), near perfect pacing and competent cinematography that does not require over-editing techniques to quantify nor qualify coherence. Whilst the concepts and themes are far from unique - the discords of privilege present in Kusama’s The Invitation, ancestral anarchy in Wingard’s You’re Next, charismatic rationalisation in Happy Death Day/2U, dabbling with Dybbuk’s in Ouija - Ready or Not feels remarkably invigorative. Owing to superb direction and an ingeniously contrived fun-fuelling script, a quintessential performance from Babysitter born-to-be scream queen Samara Weaving, mystifying but magical cameos from rom-com heartthrobs Andie McDowell and Adam Brody AND a surprisingly elementary premise stratified with potent meaning - ready or not; here is fun.

Seldom does Horror-com deliver a spirit-bubbled balance, all too often too horrible to be hilarious and vice versa. Ready or Not walks the line admirably with a cringe-to-chuckle-to-cringe rhetoric amped up throughout its 91 satisfying minutes. If to criticise the film - and this is a major gripe - you will want to watch it again; straight away. Makes you seek to your shekels.

Join US!

IT CHAPTER 2: retrofit for a king - 8/10

The fourth caveat on the Derry-go-round, IT2 makes good on its promise to meliorate its formers; ballooning the scares, endearing meaningfulness and emphatically improving upon its televisual shadow of 1990. Truer to King’s beastly hardback, IT2 manages to render itself as a mainstream masterpiece of macabre merriness which is both an intrinsically artistic and instrumentally compelling venture. Intensity here is high on the richter scale; beware those frail of heart, it's definitely wise to spend those pennies. 

IT2 reunites the children of its chapter as adults who have all taken figurative amnesiac pills to move on from their clown-shrouded pasts and the ill dairy of Derry — bar one. Absorbed as the nightwatchman of Derry, the loyal lodger (Mike) realises that the eater of worlds has returned after 27 years and is eating children again. The ‘losers’ reunite to scupper the face-painted felon once more. To kill IT. For good. 

What dignifies IT2’s success is its formal and structural togetherness. Jump-scares are wed with the symptomatic confrontations of a past less scary than a terrifying present. The intertwining transparency in conflating adulthood and adolescence is seamless, achieved through an ingenious editing didactic not dissimilar to Flanagan’s Oculus (but cohering for clarity rather than ambiguity). The cast perform perfectly to their characters and offer a wide spectrum of rollercoaster emotions that reek of the unreal reality they inhabit. The film is architecturally sound and far less flimsy than the original that crumbled into pieces in the final act (ala mobbish spider-shite). And Skarsgard’s presence - of the strabismical succubus - is scarier than the hottest curry on its way out (Skarsgard skims a superb Curry). 

Taking nothing away from the production - that really listened to fans by offering a banquet of baroque and a decent final act - there ARE some kinks in IT. Some story arcs are surplus to requirements, notably the ballad of Billy Bowers and the provenance of Pennywise, both of which yield no purposeful profit. There’s also the voguish CGI gripe; overused (as it was in the first chapter) to the extent that it snobbishly antiquates animatronics, which should have been used for scenes with less grandeur for greater effect (monsters just don’t seem like real monsters without latex!). Lastly, there exists a rather shameful plug for King’s upcoming fiction-to-flick doctor Sleep (heeeeeeeeere’s Jonny!), but hey, that’s commodification for you. It’s not perfect, but IT is less a remake than a restoration, improving upon the quality of IT’s content and not just its aesthetic.

ORANGES AND LEMONS, SAY THE BELLS OF ST CLEMENTS, HOW DOES IT SOUND, BE IN WITH A PENNY, AND OUT WITH A POUND.

|| That’s me when people tell me I should smile. https://t.co/yyyHDK8qtD

— Pennywise (@FearFloats) September 13, 2019

Scary Stories to tell in the dark: STRANGER STRINGS - 5/10

Despite being attached to big biz barons of barbarity, Ovredal and Del Toro’s adaptational vision of Alvin Schwarz’s eponymous stories is one betrothed to fidelity but divorced from ideation. Shot-gunning the contemporaneous horror cycle that can only be defined as nostalgic retromania (patent pending), ‘Scary Movies’ attempts to attach itself to the likes of Stranger Things and IT in the meld of ‘Eerie Indiana meets Goosebumps meets Tales from the Crypt meets Joe Dante’. The retro-references are as intumescent as the film’s affirmation for tropes; as much as the film’s target demographic bewilders. The classification for the film is mindbogglingly incoherent, just is the assertion that the film can be considered an anthology feature. Not to demean Del Toro or Ovredal - whose signatory stylistics manage a teeter above the tropes (Del Toro’s phantasmic colour palette and Ovredal’s fascination with folklorish myths) but the film is stifled by convolution regarding its market for response abetted by its inability to rival the (many) strengths of Stranger Things. 

Closely knit with Schwarz’s compendiums, ‘Scary Stories’ teleports ts audience back to the Nam-stricken America of 1968, awash with ‘Tricky’ (Nixon) politics and adolescent underlings sitting solemnly in their cars. Once upon a time…in 1968…on Halloween…some scare-wearing teens decide to break into a decrepid abode and rifle through the owners belongings. Upon such warrantless search, said Scoobies (younger Scooby-Doo-ers) steal an accursed book that magically renders nightmarish stories upon its pages…and they come true. And people die/go insane/go AWOL (not discover the chamber of secrets). As people inevitably die, the kids have to figure it all out in 107 minutes or the audience get their money back (this does not affect statutory rights).  

Suffice to denote the film as Scooby Doo does horror, ‘Scary Movies’ has its moments; the odd pubescent jump-scare, the materialisation of the leprosy laden contortionist aka ‘The Gangly man’ and a vibrantly vintage  cinematography. It is, pertinently, not just a mediocre horror flick for kids - save from an ill-fitting cervical snap - but a mediocre horror flick for kids…not yet old enough to see it. The liminality of reception aside, ‘Scary Stories’ is an unscary story that acts as a beginners guide to horror for teens and tweens alike. Retro-futrism may prove interesting; cinematic regression is not. And yet, the appetite for IT2 is now unequivocally whet.

a f-anthological feature that  scuppers a sporadic scare, BUT A demographic disaster.  should’ve been…stranger. OVREDAL ; FROM TROLL TO DROLE.

Yes! Let's all do the Jangly! One two three! https://t.co/Duy76ocYdt

— Andre Ovredal (@Filmtroll) August 13, 2019

Breaking rules and focus-pools; the marvel of the rhinestone xxx-man

There's something oddly innovational in Tim Miller's postmodern potty-mouthed pulp of comic book fiction that supplants the cognisance of the (antithetical) superhero movie. That it challenges the conventions of its genre much in the way that 'Kick Ass' and 'Watchmen' debate the valour of heroism, 'Deadpool' further capitalises in a wild decree of satire in exploiting the illusion of fiction for comic effect. In its many self-referential treatments in breaking the fourth wall, at times hilariously deadpan intertextual quips and tongue-in-cheek inappropriateness, 'Deadpool' is wondrously paradoxical - for, whilst it IS standard superhero fare with regards to its fictional narrative, the seams of illusion are repeatedly dissolved (as overt as the removal of chewing-gum from the lens of the camera) in giving the hero an unnatural power of trapezing both worlds of fiction and (almost auto-biographical) non-fiction. In principle, such power should appear rather unsettling, and for the first few occurrences this can be the case, yet it is a tactic - an ingeniously successful one - for the audience to fall for a hero who is anything but.

For a Valentine's Day release, it is not without some irony that the film is particularly visceral in its bone-bending and blood-spattering imagery, yet gives every allure of being a rom-com - amongst horror and many other cross-breed utterances - and hence able to appeal to a vast scope of androgynous demographics with some ease, not dissimilar to that of the onion-layered family film. Contra to this, sure, the repeated ontological breaks can have an effect of some waning and for some the humour unnecessarily shifts between sassy, irking slapstick and cringingly sickly, but this does not dispel that the film is sumptuously shot, intelligently sutured and hysterically entertaining, laced with rambunctious gaffaws aplenty; regardless of one's preferred or politically (in)correct tickle. Just the notion of a superhero having to book a taxi, forget his ammo bag or poke fun at the X-Men is more than enough to judder an englobing chuckle on a whim. Even Stan Lee gets in on the act as cameo DJ...at a strip bar.

This is to commend a considerably well-devised script mirrored with execution par excellence from the cast, especially the encounters between Deadpool and X-Men's CG 'Collossus' (or Mr Colossal morality) and Deadpool's incessant teasing of 'Negasonic Teenage Warhead' (or teeny tweeting doppelgänger to Sinead O'Connor and Ripley from Alien 3) which allow Reynalds to own his character with an awe, arrogance and aplomb that only Ryan masters in muster. If to gripe, the strict attention upon Deadpool's character drastically outweighs the fervent development and comparably banal dialogue of supporting characters. Nevertheless, kudos to Reynalds for redeeming himself in red so lest we might forget his previous aura of Marvel green. The shoes of Deadpool were destined to be filled by Reynalds and, given the film's balanced admixture of universal and geek humour, will surely earn a reprise and perhaps a franchise for a man who has finally found his meta-thespian soulmate in Marvel's foul-mouthed mercenary. Red, dead good and vulgar; 'Deadpool' is quite simply the dark-side of a giddying marvel-lous.

8/10

Mark Kermode on 'The Exorcist'

In conversation with Gavin Esler at the University of Kent

And it all started with horror. Perhaps one of the greatest film critics of our generation (and one that doesn't need to act French), for Mark Kermode film has become his source of vitality spawning a veritable tenure in multi-platform referrals and rants across airwave, page, podcast and projection. 'Modest' Mark may be better known for his raging reviews or unsympathetic slamming of traditionally mainstream fare (and it is hard to blame him, with films such as 'Sex in the Shitty') yet we often forget that his roots and admirations lie within the horror genre. If not for his stint at 'Fangoria', for Mark's passionate adoration for 'The Exorcist' to which he ranks at number #1 in his 'Best ever films' poll, his academic interest in horror-fiction and his excitably frenzied peaks of interest at the sheer mention of the genre. It was of great pleasure to meet the man himself, if only shortly, but it was perhaps of greater yield to hear Kermode backing 'The Exorcist' for an oscar-winning gong stolen by (socially acceptable) best picture 'The Sting'. Click the link below to see a short video (apologies for the iphone cinematography) of Mark Kermode on Friedkin's controversial Blair-mare.

In the jaws of Oz...the Sharknado legacy

The production meeting for SYFY channels bigwigs must have gone down something like this...how can we make a televisual disaster caper AND mesh it with an old-schooled creature feature? The brainstorming sessions are imagined in a vast plethoric ludicrousness on the way towards a tornado armed with feisty fish fodder - supplanting other facetious sea-shacked force majeures in: 'Birthquake: time eels all wounds', 'Octocano', and 'Blubbernami' - plugged with the weary-eyed cameo of expired 'Pie' actress (and surgical disaster) Tara Reid. The tongue-in-cheek synopsis, or even such title, affords the film to do away with any provincial intellectualism in revitalising the heart of the B-movie, whilst also proving the prowess of social media in cultivating a craze, and it's a welcoming resuscitation to a genre that has all too often taken itself far too seriously in the 21st Century. Amongst a foray of time-travelling horror films tackling issues worryingly close to the chest, be it an excellently contrived CTD (cinematically transmitted disease) in the anachronistic 'It Follows', the nostalgic Argento-inspired haunted squat-house with a twist in 'We Are Still Here' or Eli Roth's pretentious Amazonian riff on the 'Cannibal Holocaust' in 'the Green Inferno' - it seems there is a common misdirection for the horror film to delve back into the past to rediscover its epicentre and identity ensnared in a foggy abyss of rhizomic anaesthetisation, a genre became lost in a dispersion of its soul unto a litany of hybridisations. The horror fan, thus, can find sentimental solace in this whirlwind of a social-media piranha that is Sharknado; it's formulaic nonsense, batshit-crazy solutions, emotionless actors, superfluous CGI, OTT gore, it's puns and parodies, rambunctious deaths, even the name 'Tara Reid' front-lining its cover. Realistically, it's not an anthology that will be lauded in optimism by the ardent film critic - literally fathoms away from Oscar-winning fare - and it was never meant to be, it's eponymous surfer-dude hero 'Fin' of a Brosnan-Slater-Campbell tapestry offing inflight hammerheads with a chainsaw. Yet, for the fourth time in history, it's gonna start raining sharks...hallelujah.

VOTE

Does April Live or Die? Cast Your Vote For #Sharknado4 @Syfy.com