FAILURE! *** USA / Mexico 2023 Dir: Alex Kahuam. 87 mins Long-time (and long-suffering) supporting player Ted Raimi is the best thing about writer-director Kahuam’s admirable but ultimately underwhelming one-take thriller. He’s terrific as a heavily indebted businessman under immense pressure – the story unfolding in real time at his luxury but crumbling abode as life and work fall apart all around. James (Raimi) is about to sell his late father’s struggling plastics factory. He’s behind on bank payments, pressured by his ex-wife about their daughter’s upcoming, very expensive wedding and threatened / troubled by various other parties – including…
Author: Steven West
IT LIVES INSIDE **** USA / Canada 2023 Dir: Bishal Dutta. 99 mins Co-writer / director Dutta’s feature debut gives us a fairly familiar American teen / demon scenario with a refreshing perspective. The opening glimpses of Indian-American protagonist Samidha (Megan Suri) (who’s appealing and authentic) reveals her shaving her arms, using phone filters to lighten her skin colour and being patronised at school by peers who “mean well”. While Dutta crafts a convincing, loving family at the core, we’re introduced to Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), formerly a close friend of Samidha’s, but now leading an alienated existence. While Samidha strove…
HERE FOR BLOOD **** Canada 2022 Dir: Daniel Turres. 100 mins Likeable characters and energetic nods to vintage Sam Raimi / Peter Jackson splatter comedies keep this eager-to-please gore movie consistently engaging. Phoebe (Joelle Farrow) is working three jobs and studying for exams, while her pumped-up, pro wrestler boyfriend Tom (Shawn Roberts) earns just $20 a fight. She convinces him to swap her babysitter duties so she can revise – and his reluctant stand-in efforts happen to coincide with our cutaway glimpses of a barrel-chested, masked, leather-clad maniac. Pretty soon, not only is Tom looking after young Grace (Maya Misaljevic),…
MINORE **** Greece 2023 Dir: Konstantinos Koutsoliotas. 111 mins Konstantinos Koutsoliotas, who directed and co-wrote (with Elizabeth E. Schuch) this Athens-set mesh of Greek mythology and JAWS / John Carpenter-infused monster movie, has an extensive background in visual effects, having worked on blockbusters including GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY and Guillermo Del Toro’s anthology series CABINET OF CURIOSITIES. His feature-films to date, notably THE FEAR OF LOOKING UP, displayed a fondness for cosmic horror and dark humour – and MINORE continues in that vein, albeit on a more ambitious level. It smartly takes its time getting to the creature feature stuff…
DOCTOR JEKYLL *** UK 2023 Dir: Joe Stephenson. 89 mins This revisionist take on the oft-adapted Robert Louis Stevenson classic immediately stirs those vulnerable neck hairs with the title and the legend “Hammer Presents” appearing onscreen in big, bright red letters, set to a suitably strident Blair Mowat score. Hammer Films, of course, have impressive history with the Stevenson tome, adapting it into Terence Fisher’s impressively grim but uncommercial THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL (1960) and, a decade later, the fascinating, dark-humoured gender-swapping DR. JEKYLL & SISTER HYDE (1971). Dan Kelly-Mulhern’s screenplay has a 21st century Dr. Nina Jekyll…