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Don’t Go in the Water! – The Meg (2018) and Deep Blue Sea 2 (2018)

27 Monday Aug 2018

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It happens so often that it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. A major studio release is announced, and before you know it, a “rival” production is rushed onto our screens. These so-called “rivals” often operate on a fraction of the budget of the mainstream release, have a cast that few people have heard of, and betray their lack of originality at every turn. Such is the case in 2018 with The Meg being pipped to the release post by Deep Blue Sea 2, a sequel/remake that no one wanted or needed (especially nineteen years after Renny Harlin’s enjoyable if still risible original).

The Meg (2018) / D: Jon Turteltaub / 113m

Cast: Jason Statham, Bingbing Li, Rainn Wilson, Cliff Curtis, Winston Chao, Ruby Rose, Page Kennedy, Robert Taylor, Shuya Sophia Cai, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Jessica McNamee, Masi Oka

The Meg is a silly, silly movie – let’s get that out of the way from the start. It provokes far more laughs than it does gasps, but at least it’s aware that it’s preposterous. This is most definitely a good thing, because if it wasn’t so self-aware, this would be an horrendously difficult movie to sit through. There are moments where the script (by Dean Georgaris and Jon and Erich Hoeber from the novel by Steve Alten) strives for serious drama – usually when someone dies, or the gravity of the situation needs reinforcing – but otherwise keeps things easy-going for much of its running time. It’s as if it can’t wait to poke fun at itself, whether it’s by giving Statham lines of the calibre of “Meg versus man isn’t a fight… it’s a slaughter” (though he does miss out on saying “Megalo-don’t”), or having its characters behave foolishly (add up how many times they deliberately put themselves at risk when there’s no need to). It’s also a movie that seems reluctant to give the Meg free rein when the script puts a resort full of swimmers, and a small dog, in its path. Anyone expecting mass carnage is going to be disappointed; better to watch Piranha 3D (2010) instead.

Of course, this is all professionally made with a suitably excessive budget needed to make the special effects look as impressive as possible, but as with many movies that have a larger than normal protagonist at its centre – see also Rampage (2018) – there are problems with the Meg’s size, and keeping it proportionally realistic in relation to its human co-stars. But there are bigger problems: the movie soon settles for being a series of showdowns between Statham’s gung-ho marine rescue specialist and the Meg that rely too often on the Meg swimming off once their encounters are over; so much for being a super-predator. Of course, this repetition is to allow the cast of characters to be picked off one by one, even though it’s obvious just who is still going to be around when the Meg is finally taken care of. Statham is fine as the improbably named Jonas (the makers clearly wanted to call him Jonah – but too much context maybe?), while Curtis and Wilson stand out because they both seem to have the measure of the material, and are obviously having fun. Turteltaub’s direction is competent without being flashy, there’s one climax too many, and sadly, Statham doesn’t get to punch or head butt the Meg (what were the makers thinking?).

Rating: 6/10 – nothing more or less than a summer popcorn movie with no other ambition than to provide audiences with a good time, The Meg is surprisingly toothless when it matters most; glossy and sleek, it goes where it needs to, but doesn’t offer the necessary thrills to make it stand out from the crowd, all of which just goes to prove that size isn’t everything.

 

Deep Blue Sea 2 (2018) / D: Darin Scott / 94m

Cast: Danielle Savre, Rob Mayes, Michael Beach, Nathan Lynn, Kim Syster, Jeremy Boado, Adrian Collins, Cameron Robertson, Darron Meyer

Where The Meg is a silly, silly movie, Deep Blue Sea 2 is a dreadful, dreadful movie, an uninspired retread of the original, and a chore to sit through (unless your standards are non-existent or you’ve suffered a recent brain trauma). Having the number two in the title would seem to make it a sequel, but in fact this is an unofficial remake, with several scenes rehashed from the first movie, and the action taking place in yet another submerged research station where genetic experiments have been carried out on – surprise! – a number of bull sharks. Sooner than you can say “shark lunch in a tin can”, things start to go wrong, and the tasty morsels – sorry, characters – inside the research facility are being picked off one by one. This tries for grim humour at times, but manages to miss the mark at every attempt; it can’t even raise some much needed unintentional humour either. Instead, the main response it provokes is one of profound ennui, and a deep regret that you started watching it in the first place. To say that it lacks energy, pace, commitment, good performances, and a decent script would be stating the obvious.

It does trade in a healthy amount of rampant absurdity, though, as evidenced by the decision to give the sharks a female leader who gives birth (thankfully off-screen) to a dozen or so little nippers who take over their mother’s murderous duties, and who make loud screeching noises when they attack (these sounds are audible above the water line – of course). Unlike The Meg, Deep Blue Sea 2 has no problem with showing the gory after effects of a shark attack, but against the odds this is one of the very few aspects it gets right. Again, the performances range from very poor (Savre) to perfunctory (Mayes, Lynn), while Beach outdoes the sharks for chewing the scenery as (the meg)alomaniacal sponsor of the research facility. Scott, clearly a long way from his days as a producer on movies such as To Sleep With Anger (1990) and Menace II Society (1993), struggles to make anything out of the by-the-numbers screenplay, its dreary nature and one-dimensional characters proving impossible to root for. If you have to see one shark-based movie in 2018, then make sure it isn’t this one. You have been warned.

Rating: 3/10 – awful enough to make you wish for a shark to come along and put you out of your misery, Deep Blue Sea 2 is the cinematic equivalent of chum in the water; brazenly stealing all the best bits from its predecessor and then doing nothing constructive with them, this is a movie that wastes no time in wearing out its welcome, and becoming irredeemably, dramatically soggy.

Shimmer Lake (2017)

21 Wednesday Jun 2017

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D: Oren Uziel / 86m

Cast: Benjamin Walker, Rainn Wilson, Stephanie Sigman, John Michael Higgins, Wyatt Russell, Adam Pally, Mark Rendall, Rob Corddry, Ron Livingston, Angela Vint, Isobel Dove

A low-key yet bristling thriller, Shimmer Lake – another title that is atmospheric yet has little relation to the main plot of the movie – tells its story in reverse. And so we see Andy Sikes (Wilson) in the basement of his own home, and yet he’s clearly trying to avoid being discovered. Upstairs is his brother, Zeke (Walker), the town sheriff. Soon we realise that there’s been a bank robbery, and Andy is involved, along with two other men, Ed Burton (Russell) and Chris Morrow (Rendall). It transpires that Andy has  the money from the robbery, and Zeke is certain that he’s planning to meet up with Ed. He also has to contend with two FBI agents, Walker and Biltmore (Corddry, Livingston), whose approach to the investigation and the hunt for the three men appears less than serious. When they find the body of Judge Dawkins (Higgins), a wider conspiracy involving the death of Burton’s son begins to come to light. Later that night, having avoided being seen, Andy meets up with Ed’s wife, Steph (Sigman), but their meeting doesn’t go the way Andy had hoped.

The day before, Dawkins demands the return of an incriminating tape from Burton, Morrow’s role in the robbery is revealed, Steph deliberately injures herself before talking to Zeke and the FBI agents, and further details of the conspiracy are revealed. The day ends with the death of Dawkins and Andy coming into possession of the money. The previous day, Chris is lured out of hiding by Steph, and the two meet at a motel. Dawkins appears, anxious to secure the return of the tape. Steph has the money from the robbery and she makes Dawkins hide it until it’s safe. Andy hears that Zeke was shot during the robbery, and the FBI agents arrive in town. And on the day before that, all the various threads that have spun out along the ensuing days are shown their origins as we learn what happened during the robbery.

It’s easy to like the structure that first-time writer/director Oren Uziel has employed in telling his tale of small-town corruption, greed, and revenge, but while Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) is an obvious reference point, sadly – and despite the best of intentions – Shimmer Lake doesn’t match it for inventiveness, style, or sheer narrative trickery. Part of the issue is the pacing, with stretches of the movie feeling as if they’ve been played out beyond their natural length. The early scenes involving the FBI agents are tonally at odds with the rest of the movie, as if Uziel doesn’t trust their inclusion unless they’re cracking wise and providing fleeting moments of comedy. This makes them seem like idiots in a movie where everyone else is being resolutely serious. As the movie progresses and they appear less and less, it’s a minor blessing for the material that they do so, and the tone improves immensely.

But if there’s one main, altogether obvious, problem with Shimmer Lake, it’s the lack of any characters to sympathise with or root for. Zeke is a laconic, quietly thoughtful sheriff who lacks any charisma, and thanks to Walker’s laidback performance, often looks bored by having to mount an investigation in the first place. His deputy, Reed Ethington (Pally), is someone who manages to stay just this side of “dim-witted”, but it’s a close-run thing. Andy is shown initially as panicked, which might have provoked some sympathy, but as the movie reveals more and more of his past, we discover he’s a bit of an arrogant prick, and any sympathy dissipates. Chris is an obvious patsy, Steph is the Lady Macbeth character amongst it all, Ed is the “mastermind” who can’t tell an 8 when he sees it, and Dawkins is the devious bank manager whose private “foibles” act as a catalyst for the bank robbery itself (there’s a back story involving the death of Burton’s son, and this is ostensibly the reason for everything that happens, but Uziel refers to it as a motivator far too often for it to maintain any effectiveness).

What we’re left with is a thriller that spends too much time explaining itself, and not enough time posing a broader mystery than the one we can see in front of us. In telling a reverse-linear story, Uziel does well to hide the various inter-connections and relationships that drive the story backward (forward?), but by the time all is revealed, the viewer is unlikely to care too much, and a last-minute revelation (which is meant to be clever in a “ah-ha-you-didn’t-see-that-coming” kind of way), lacks the impact needed for audiences to say to themselves, “now it all makes sense”. Instead, Uziel presents us with a patchwork of moods, tones, dramatic elements, comedic soundbites, and an unconvincing milieu where Zeke and Reed are the only cops in town, and Andy’s daughter, Sally (Dove), can hear the phrase “fat, f*cking bastard” and then apply it to Reed within the very next minute.

Despite the talented cast, and Jarin Blaschke’s often brooding cinematography, what we have here, ultimately, is a movie whose clever approach doesn’t amount to much, and will in all likelihood, frustrate and annoy anyone who watches it. The test of a good reverse storyline is if it plays just as well – or better – if you watch from end to beginning (or beginning to end – you get the idea). Shimmer Lake is certainly a movie that tries its best, but there are few rewards here for the casual viewer, and for die-hard fans of this particular sub-genre of thrillers, too much will remain obvious no matter how much time Uziel has spent in obscuring things. Like so many thrillers with a clever central conceit that isn’t as rigorously applied as it needs to be, Shimmer Lake is more of a disappointment than a triumph.

Rating: 4/10 – what could have been a tense, nail-biting experience is reduced to that of a tepid, unfocused drama, and though Shimmer Lake takes some narrative risks, they’re not enough to make things any more rewarding; shallow at times, and with a casual disregard for any empathy that might be shown towards its characters, the movie is yet another feature that looks good on the surface but lacks the necessary substance underneath to keep audiences hooked until the end.

What’s in a Name? – The Boy (2015) and The Boy (2016)

11 Monday Apr 2016

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With all the potential topics available to movie makers worldwide, and all the potential titles that could be used by movie makers, it does seem a little unfair on audiences when two movies are released relatively close to each other, and have the same title. Remakes are to be expected, but original movies? Surely, movie makers could check to see ahead of time if some other release is using the same title? And if so, to avoid any confusion, change theirs if they’re going to be second out of the gate? Well, with these two movies that obviously didn’t happen. But if anyone out there is reading this, and they have a movie coming out that has the same title as another recent release, please could you make it clear in the advertising that your movie isn’t the other one? Because that would definitely ensure that viewers don’t run the risk of being disappointed (as they would be in this instance).

The Boy 2015

The Boy (2015) / D: Craig William Macneill / 110m

Cast: David Morse, Jared Breeze, Rainn Wilson, Bill Sage, Mike Vogel, Zuleikha Robinson, Aiden Lovekamp, David Valencia, Sam Morse

A quiet motel, the Mountain View Lodge, is the setting for this adaptation of a section of a novel by Clay McLeod Chapman, a dark psychological thriller that deftly explores the mind of nine year old Ted Henley (Breeze), a boy with little to do other than clean the rooms and scoop up roadkill from outside the motel. Ted is a quiet child who misses his mother; she ran off with someone who stayed at the motel and is now living in Florida. His father, John (Morse), is a lonely, broken down man running a lonely, broken down motel, and both in their own way are still grieving the loss of Ted’s mother. John drinks too much, while Ted – who gets paid twenty-five cents for every roadkill he finds – begins to leave food on the main road so that animals will be attracted to it and run over. His aim is to amass enough money to leave and journey to Florida. And when his father mentions a deer being in the vicinity, Ted sees a chance to “make a killing”.

The Boy 2015 - scene1

His plan goes slightly awry. The deer is hit by a car that ends up in need of repair, and the driver suffers a bad head injury. The man, named Colby (Wilson), ends up staying while he recuperates and his car is fixed. As the only other person there, Ted starts to gravitate towards him, and they strike up a friendship of sorts. When a couple and their son arrive and need an overnight stay, Ted fixes their car so that it won’t start the next morning. While they hang around another day, Ted and the son play together, but Ted’s lack of social awareness makes their play awkward for the other boy. When the family leaves, Ted reverts back to spending time with Colby, and he learns that the man has recently lost his wife in a fire.

But Ted’s interest in Colby is matched by the local Sheriff’s interest in him as well. Colby’s story about his wife may not be the whole truth, and a decision that Ted makes has terrible consequences, but not as terrible as the consequences when attendees at a local prom book the motel for their post-prom celebrations and treat Ted badly.

The Boy 2015 - scene3

The Boy is often an uncomfortable viewing experience, but not for the reasons you may be thinking. Anyone watching the movie beyond its opening stretch will feel certain that what they’re watching is the slow accumulation of traits that will lead to Ted’s first foray into full-blown sociopathic behaviour. And for the most part, they’d be right. But while Ted is front and centre for most of the movie, Macneill pays close attention to the two fathers in Ted’s life during this time, and in doing so, also makes much of the atmosphere that inadvertently supports Ted’s inevitable “decline”.

John is unable to connect with his son, unable to realise just how much Ted is hurting over the loss of his mother. It’s likely he’s always been unable to connect with Ted; he mentions how time-consuming running the motel has always been. It’s therefore also likely that his father has been neglecting Ted for as long as Ted can remember (John inherited the motel from his father). With both parents absent from his life, one physically, the other emotionally, it’s no wonder that Ted has grown up with a different view on life than anyone else he knows (or meets). It’s also no wonder that he tries to strike up a relationship with Colby. Colby represents an opportunity for escape, but Colby has his own issues, issues that conflict with Ted’s needs. There is an inevitable confrontation, but while it’s a necessarily dramatic one, it pales before the conversation Colby has with John about what’s best for Ted. So much is said, and yet it’s what is left unsaid by the two men (and yet understood by them) that makes their conversation so important and so relevant. It’s the point in the movie when the viewer realises that Ted is lost forever.

The Boy 2015 - scene2

As Ted, Breeze gives an astonishing, mesmerising performance. The movie’s effectiveness rests almost solely on his young shoulders, but he’s more than up to the challenge, portraying Ted with an eerie, absent intensity that is more chilling to see than any number of masked slashers. There’s a moment where he clutches a rabbit to his chest, and the vacant look on his face is so disconcerting it’s hard to know if the rabbit is safe or not. Kudos then to Macneill for his direction of Breeze, a major plus that could have gone horribly wrong, and a testament to both their individual skills. Elsewhere, Macneill maintains a palpable sense of impending, unavoidable dread, using the Colombian locations to excellent effect and playing up the unremitting remoteness of Ted’s childhood.

But while the bulk of The Boy is chilling and engrossing, it’s in the last thirty minutes that it takes an unfortunate stumble. The prom party are deliberately antagonistic and unsympathetic, and treat Ted harshly. Their behaviour, coupled with his father’s final act of neglect, pushes Ted to take much more determined, and deliberate steps on his road to becoming a full-blown sociopath. Macneill lets the sequence get away from him, prolonging an audio aspect of things way beyond what’s necessary, and tying things up rather too neatly, thereby negating the complex narrative structure he and original author Chapman have constructed up til then.

Rating: 8/10 – as an examination of nascent evil, The Boy is unsettling in its portrait of a nine year old’s unhealthy fascination with death; with superb performances from Morse and Wilson, and especially Breeze, Macneill’s movie is one that will linger long in the mind, and prove difficult to shift.

 

The Boy

The Boy (2016) / D: William Brent Bell / 93m

Cast: Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans, Jim Norton, Diana Hardcastle, James Russell, Ben Robson

The boy in William Brent Bell’s inefficient chiller is actually a doll, and rather than have a fairly nondescript name like Ted Henley, goes by the unlikely moniker of Brahms Heelshire (pronounced Hillsher). Despite having perished in a fire twenty years ago, Brahms’ memory is kept alive by his parents (Norton, Hardcastle), who treat the doll as if Brahms were still alive. They “teach” him, play him music, read to him, set a place for him at meal times, and have set times when he “sleeps”. Into this bizarre situation comes American, Greta Evans (Cohan), to act as Brahms’ nanny while the Heelshires take their first trip away in twenty years. Before she’s even got halfway through the front door her shoes go missing, the first example of several mysterious occurrences that happen in the following days, and which lead her to believe that the doll is possessed by Brahms’ restless spirit.

The Boy - scene1

As you might expect, The Boy is a silly attempt at a horror movie, and one that stretches credibility as often as it possibly can. In contrast to its titular “rival”, this movie lacks subtlety, a coherent script, competent direction, and halfway decent performances. It’s the kind of movie that looks as if it was offered to Hammer but they turned it down because it needed too much work to make it, well, work. As it is, we’re treated to interminable shots of the doll staring back at the camera, Greta exploring the Heelshires’ house and finding herself trapped at one point in the attic, the promise of Greta’s abusive boyfriend turning up just to be killed, and a twist that undoes everything – however superficial – that the movie has built up until then.

The performances are serviceable, though Norton and Hardcastle bring a level of competence to their roles that the movie doesn’t deserve. Otherwise there’s very little to recommend The Boy, only that it’s mercifully forgettable.

Rating: 3/10 – despite a level of expectation that the movie has no intention of following through on, The Boy is neither scary nor terrifying, and for the most part settles for risible; Cohan is wasted, and Evans struggles as a character who has no clear reason for being there except to look confused – much like the unlucky viewer who settles down to watch this thinking they’re going to watch a movie about a nine year old sociopath.

Cooties (2014)

22 Tuesday Sep 2015

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Cooties

D: Jonathan Milott, Cary Murnion / 88m

Cast: Elijah Wood, Rainn Wilson, Alison Pill, Jack McBrayer, Leigh Whannell, Nasim Predad, Ian Brennan, Jorge Garcia, Cooper Roth, Miles Elliot, Morgan Lily, Sunny May Allison, Armani Jackson, Peter Kwong

Clint Hadson (Wood) is a would-be writer who finds himself back in his home town of Fort Chicken and making ends meet as a substitute teacher at the same elementary school he attended fifteen years ago. On his first day he finds the teachers are an odd mix, while the pupils in his class, particularly Patriot (Roth), are an unruly bunch who give him a hard time. Another of the pupils in his class, Shelly (Allison), is being bullied by Patriot but when he tugs at a ponytail and it comes off in his hand leaving a raw open wound where it was attached only seconds before, he finds himself being attacked by Shelly and having a chunk taken out of his cheek. Shelly runs off after the attack, while Clint takes Patriot to the nurse’s station.

Talking about it afterwards in the teachers’ lounge with Lucy McCormick (Pill), who was at school with Clint at the same time, they are oblivious to the situation that’s developing outside in the playground, as Shelly infects Patriot’s friend, Dink (Elliot), and he in turn begins infecting the other children. As the children’s behaviour turns savage, some of the teachers try to intervene but they’re quickly overwhelmed… and eaten. At the same time, PE teacher Wade Johnson (Wilson) – who’s shooting hoops in a corner of the playground – and the rest of the staff who are watching from the teachers’ lounge, begin to realise that what they’re seeing is an outbreak of zombie children.

Wade makes it back inside the school building, but the now ravenous pupils soon find their way in, and the remaining teaching staff hole up in the music room for safety; along the way they find Calvin (Jackson) who is unaffected. Wade is all for making a dash for his truck, while Clint thinks they should try and get help from the outside. But Lucy has a better idea: they should wait until 3pm when the parents arrive to pick up their children, and signal to them from the roof. But when the time comes only one parent arrives and she’s despatched as quickly as she arrived. Clint and the rest now head down to the hall where they find another unaffected child, Tamra (Lily). And when the hall is overrun, it’s the janitor, Mr Hatachi (Kwong), who comes to their rescue. Now barricaded in the basement, and with no choice but to find a way out, Clint and Wade come up with an idea between them that, if all goes well, will see them free of the school and its murderous pupils.

Cooties - scene

These days, zombie movies are a dime a dozen, and most are instantly forgettable, so any movie using them as the central protagonists really needs to bring something new and/or different to the table. And thanks to Leigh Whannell, creator of the Saw and Insidious franchises, Cooties certainly fits the bill, taking the (accepted) innocence of youth and destroying it with unrestrained malice. The idea of feral kids isn’t a new one, but here it’s taken to the extreme, with teachers being torn limb from limb, and entrails spread about with gory abandon. It’s a bloody exercise that’s reminiscent of the inmates taking over the asylum, but done here with a layer of crass humour to offset the blood spatters.

Be warned though: the movie isn’t as polished, or as funny as the trailer makes out, thanks largely to the script’s decision to keep the teachers moving from one breachable room to another, and by some poor choices when it comes to some of the characters’ quirks and foibles (Pedrad’s angry feminist practically accuses Clint of being a potential rapist without being properly introduced, while Tracy (McBrayer) talks about his partner’s lovely balls – his tennis partner that is). When the movie attempts to subvert the genre it’s on firmer ground, as when Whannell’s scientifically knowledgeable Doug announces he’s discovered the cause of the outbreak to be a virus, and has done so by rooting around in Clint’s vomit and “anal leakage”; when the rest of the staff voice their disgust he rebukes them by saying he wore gloves – and holds up his hands which are clearly glove-free.

Making children into zombies turns out to be a whole lot of fun by itself, and the young cast are clearly having fun with it all, especially Roth and Allison who are the Adam and Eve of the zombie outbreak. The kids aren’t funny at all (which is a relief), and their ferocity is well-gauged, leaving the humour to the adults, and in particular to Wilson, whose bullish PE teacher is ill-equipped to deal with the finer emotions such as love and trust, and who finds it impossible to say “dual rear wheels” (one of the movie’s funnier moments). There’s a great deal of physical humour too – Lucy whacking one of the kids with a plastic umbrella, Wade constructing a weapon out of a tennis ball launcher – as well as a couple of inspired visual gags. It all works intermittently, but still has enough energy and verve to see it through, despite the obvious low budget and presumably short shooting period.

The performances are engaging, with Wood evincing wide-eyed surprise at the sudden, horrific turn of events, while Wilson plays Wade as a stubborn jackass who comes good in the end, and Pill does perky and bubbly before having a Rambo moment that leaves Wilson, for once, upstaged and put in his place. Garcia is the pot-smoking school guard who can’t believe what he’s seeing from the safety of his van, and Kwong is the fierce Oriental janitor who wants to tell the story of the caterpillar and the frog (you have to wait until after the end credits to hear the end of the story). In the directors’ chairs, Milott and Murnion keep things moving but don’t always get the rhythm right, and some scenes are shot with a flatness of style that hurts the movie by virtue of standing out so easily.

Rating: 6/10 – enjoyable hokum that fans of the comedy-horror genre will lap up, Cooties still struggles to maintain a clear focus, and rarely feels as confident as it should do; that said, it is good fun, and has a winning approach that does let some level of disappointment to be overlooked, but in the end, the chase elements are wearying, and there’s not enough balance in the way the differing components are assembled.