Korean cinema once again blurs the line of good and evil while at the same time twisting your stomach and fraying your nerves. This film isn't Oldboy but it is certainly memorable.
When a police officer's fiancee is tortured and killed by a serial killer, he vows revenge by hunting the killer down and... instead of handing him over to authority or even killing him, the officer instead exacts his own torture and deprives the killer of further victims.
Directed by Kim Jee-woon (The Good, the Bad and the Weird; a cult favourite of mine) and starring Min-sik Choi and Byung-hun Lee in the lead roles, this film certainly delivered what I was expecting. Some great acting with disturbing characters and good film making.
Who are these people, you might ask, Min-sik Choi is most recognised as the lead from the original Oldboy (within my top 20 films) and you might recognise Byung-hun Lee as he features in recent western blockbusters such as the G.I Joe films.
I Saw the Devil is not for the faint of heart. Our serial killer, who we follow for most of the story, is rapist and murderer of young women, and we see a lot of what he does. Unlike a lot of western cinema this film doesn't pull its punches very often, but the effect is exactly as the narrative requires. The killer is merciless, but our "hero" becomes so unhinged with revenge that he becomes something of a monster himself.
While many can sympathise with revenge, especially on someone so hideously deprived as our killer, the calculated lengths in which our law abiding officer goes to make him suffer makes the audience start to question his integrity.
The film's best moments are surely when these two characters connect; the brief moments when the murderous hunter is hunted down himself. Byung-hun Lee is an excellent on-screen fighter and even shows some parkour skills here too, coupled with Min-sik Choi's terribly disturbing finesse at acting as a psychopath, you have a great chemistry between the two.
I was a little worried for repetition when the character looked to reenact the hammer scene from Oldboy, but it wasn't so. Instead we get a similarly great fight within a moving taxi cab!
But, this isn't as good as Oldboy (the theme of revenge makes the two supposedly comparable) certainly my expectations weren't too high and this easily exceeded them, but I Saw the Devil felt a little drawn out. I think twenty minutes could have been cut easily from it and still have the impact. This feeling is exaggerated with multiple moments of "is that the end?" It also suffers from some occasional cliches, though I can't say it was predictable.
It isn't for everyone, sex and increasingly agonising torture scenes are rife, but fans of the slasher genre definitely need apply! The film making is above average and doesn't fall into too many cheap shocks and the acting is excellent, making it one of the best in the genre.
Last year's The Purge is probably the one film in recent memory that requires a remake. Its sequel Anarchy makes up for a lot of the first's problems to make a decent dose of urban violence.
The film follows a man out to partake in the sixth annual Purge in an American city. His reasons are not explained, but he is armed like a small army and has a modified car to survive the violent streets. But not long after the Purge begins he finds himself defending four innocents trapped and being hunted down...
The problem with the first Purge was its lack of enthusiasm for its creative and original premise. We have a scenario for any crime to be legalized for twelve hours once a year, and yet all it did was give us the sort of murderous home invasion film we always get.
Anarchy does slightly better. We see a much broader view of what the Purge does to regular people as our characters move through a major city. The idea that the Purge is an outlet for personal rage and frustration depicted with bloody carnage and wanton violence.
It even extends the premise into something of a class war, giving the film series much needed teeth to elevate itself above the hordes of generic slasher movies. Is the Purge just to relieve tension in American citizens and provide safety and security for 354 days of the year as advertised, or is it something more insidious? The rich can defend themselves, but what about the poor?
The idea gets great foundations to begin with; two of our characters are part of a struggling family and feel sympathy towards a rebel cell fighting against the government that founded the Purge. The characters here are much, much stronger than in the previous film (not that this is a difficult task...)
The film does take the concept in some very eerie directions towards its conclusion, there is even a couple of great grey areas around the human capacity for violence, which is exactly the sort of head-turning controversy that this film series needs (and can easily provide!) to get noticed. It also has a lot less of the cliches that plagued the first film, our lead protagonist's motivations are kept so secretive that we still have something to look forward to besides the film's more traditional narrative trappings.
But while Anarchy plays the premise far better (practically erasing the first film from memory, yay!) it still seems as though writer/director James DeMonaco doesn't want to go into the intellectual side of his creation... Sure, Anarchy has a lot of weight when you read between the lines (dare I even say it has some real promise at times!) but it is too easy to see it as just another slasher movie.
Again, we don't see anything other than murder. Just, plain old murder. Sure there are different means this time, but the ends are always murder. While if this sort of scenario came to be, yes, murder would be the main threat and cities would become a chaos of marauding thugs and trained killers, but there must be a more insidious and personal side to crime at work that we aren't seeing in these movies. The Purge could still be a deeper, more character driven study into psychopathy and the depravity of the human animal... but DeMonaco is clearly going for the more marketable approach: blind violence.
It obliterates its predecessor. If you are concerned this is more of the same, don't be as Anarchy delivers a better dive into its rich premise and potential themes. But it isn't the edgy masterpiece it could easily be, and does seem to preach the idea that all Americans seem to think about when given the freedom from law is nothing but murder.
What with The Purge: Anarchy coming out this week, I decided I best catch up with last year's film that I failed to catch in cinemas. I had been told already that it was a bad movie, but sadly it didn't fail to live up to its reputation.
The Purge is set in near-future America where for one night in the year, all crime is legal. The film follows Ethan Hawke, a wealthy husband and father of two who designs home security against The Purge, but when his son rescues a homeless man and takes him into their home, a band of purgers arrive demanding their prey back otherwise they will kill everyone in the house to find him...
It has been said many times, but The Purge has a great premise, with near endless possibilities, and is not entirely dismissible as a real concept: society is seen to benefit from it as individuals can vent their most terrible anger and frustrations for just one night, rendering every other day of the year peaceful. What would you do during such an event, where you could do anything that is normally prohibited?
But unfortunately... the film takes this inspired, original premise and takes it down to its most base implementation: James, our protagonist, must defend his home from a horde of murderers. Yawn!
As a result the film is terribly uninteresting and very cliche. I find that horror films, or slasher films in this case, rely upon their setup, and you can tell a lot about them from the first fifteen minutes. The Purge needed to show more of its premise and its effect on the country as a whole before reducing it down to the narrow setting of one house; this feels like a sequel to a better movie. With such a premise, well developed characters can swing wildly out of balance; we could see seemingly normal everyday people commit crimes no one would expect of them. This film should be a fantastic delve into complex and/or deplorable acts humans are capable of!
But what little character building we get in the first few minutes is so transparently deliberate that there are zero surprises for the rest of the film; you know how it is going to play out, even down to its final dying minutes.
It isn't laughably bad (although of course there are moments of character stupidity) but it is so mercilessly bland and colourless to behold that it is instantly forgettable. A lot of the film is shot in their house after the power has been cut, so we see a lot of stumbling about in pitch dark corridors, coupled with some of the lamest jump scares I've seen in recent memory (and I tend to fall for them, even the predictable ones, but some of these didn't even make me blink.)
Which is all very sad, because the premise is extremely interesting... but I cannot say that this film is worth watching for the premise alone since it so badly misses the opportunity.
I somehow doubt this year's Anarchy will require watching The Purge in advance... So really there isn't much here to be interested in.
Deeply disturbing, for a film I just dived into blindly I was not prepared for it (especially when I wasn't feeling well!)
Elijah Wood plays a serial killer who stalks and targets young women and after stabbing them to death, he scalps them and staples their hair onto mannequins so they can live with him.
Yeah, so I picked this up because of one reason: Elijah Wood in an 18-rated horror, would it be good or laughable since his fame as a Hobbit? The answer is yes, it is extremely good... a little too good.
What hits hardest about the film, is that Maniac is shot entirely through the eyes of our killer; the film puts you in the driver's seat of this stalking, chasing, butchering and frightful man, exposing his inner demons and psychosis along the way. It is very unpleasant to watch in this perspective. As you'd expect, we don't see Elijah unless he is looking at a mirror (and a couple of deliberate moments of psychosis) yet his acting is mesmerising all the same. Towards the end, if you make it that far, you begin to learn about why he does these terrible things.
Of course, as his killing spree continues, there is evidence of police investigation, but this is massively underplayed; the film's dedication to its use of perspective does not budge, and uses little to grant levity. The only humanity is portrayed through his relationship with a young photographer who he actually managed to have dialogue with.
In terms of physical effects, they are extremely effective and gory. Since the film is a remake of an old grindhouse film, I can safely say these effects live up to the vintage film style!
It really puts all modern slasher films to shame in its execution alone, and in terms of horror I find this far more unpleasant to watch than say... The Human Centipede. As such I can't say I enjoyed the film, but I can respect how it challenged me.
Despite all the atypical slasher cliches, You're Next does have some appeal. Even if it is a long slew of endless murder.
When wealthy parents invite their children and partners to their countryside house, they are suddenly surrounded by masked murderers who are intent to hunt down and kill every one of them. However, one of the hunters' victims may not be all they appear to be, and someone may have ulterior motives.
You're Next is very predictable. I could tell you what happens and you probably wouldn't be greatly phased when watching it. Like all horror films these days they feel the need to have a twist (a simplified boast of wit or intelligence maybe?) but here it is almost clear from the start.
It has all of the classic jump scares, even some of the more embarrassing ones: someone alone in the house, early on, gets a fright when a friend gets their attention by... putting their hand on their shoulder from behind. WHO WOULD DO THAT??
The characters are quite interesting however, and the film's attempt at building a family unit initially was quite convincing to me; I felt like I could relate to some of them. Some of them, anyway. There's a LOT of family members, in fact the film's gradual introduction of them all felt a little cartoonish, like the dwarves arriving at Biblo's house. "How many disposable characters are we going to have??" I wondered. I think there were ten in total.
I think what was interesting for me was the hunters... who turn out to be pretty bad at their work! They incompetently fall into traps and are actually dispatched as readily as the victims. This was very amusing to me, besides the usual slasher cliches that made me chuckle. It is probably due to them wearing impractical masks that probably remove ALL peripheral vision; I was surprised they didn't lop their own legs off with those axes!
The soundtrack too was very distinct, it almost had a 1980s, or even sci-fi tone to it and as such became quite surreal to hear in such a grudgy environment. Still, I found it interesting.
I feel as though I'm giving credit only to take it away again immediately. If you know your slasher movies, you won't find anything out of the ordinary here. It is literally a long procession of murders strung together by an overhanging ambiguity as to why it is happening and who's behind it.
If you want a cheap scare, there are certainly worse choices than this! Kudos for being an 18, even if that was mostly just for excessive gore.
Additional Marshmallows: In a bid to resist spoiling everything... I can't not complain a little about all the "super-powered women" in films now (especially horrors). I mean, I get it, but after so many they are going to get repetitive and not at all surprising. We need another Evil Dead "Ash" type hero!
Why does nobody think about the hillbillies!?
That's what Tucker and Dale Versus Evil asks the viewer as it takes the tired teen slasher horror film and turns it on its head, making a gory but entertaining comedy as two hapless red necks are mistaken as killers by a group of dumb teenagers on vacation. A breath of fresh air for me!
It only has a run time of eighty minutes, and that's no surprise; the film's gimmick is very straight forward to setup, but is executed well for horror fans to see the developing spoofs. The film starts ordinarily enough with dumb teens and ominous red necks, only for the point of view to switch and we see these two men as hapless, innocent bystanders, while the teens themselves turn into a pack of raving lunatics.
That isn't even explaining it fully, the teenagers are acting like the stereotypes of the genre; reacting blindly and taking everything at face value, scaring and winding each other up into a frenzy. It was good fun watching them go into an ignorant insanity... worryingly believable too really.
I was surprised to see Alan Tudyk (Firefly and 3:10 to Yuma) here as Tucker, he's always a fun character actor to watch. The film has a lot of heart too, in fact I was more compelled by these two men than any character in a traditional slasher film! But it really was how the film reverses the summer vacation horror on its head that made it worth watching, making the slew of murders merely slapstick accidents, the two hillbillies looking on in horror.
It is a lot of fun, and if I had to pick any holes in it I would only say that some of the teens' jumps in conclusion are a little extreme, or how the one sane kid does a 180 turn in logic to "charge in guns blazing" towards the end. They are minor gripes, but for such a simple, short film they appear more obvious.
Having subjected myself to so much of this genre, seeing a well made spoof-with-a-heart of it is greatly rewarding because... well... teenagers in those films ARE stupid! I'd say this is up there with Shaun of the Dead.
