Tag: 2016

The Limehouse Golem (2016)

Posted on by fenrisfil

The Limehouse Golem is based on the novel “Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem” by Peter Akroyd. The movie is directed by Juan Carlos Medina and scripted by Jane Goldman. Bill Nighy stars as inspector “John Kildare”, who is tasked with solving the case of the serial killer known as “The Limehouse Golem”. His investigation leads him to a handful of suspects, including Dan Leno, a famous music hall performer, and the recently deceased John Cree. His wife, Lizzie Kree (Olivia Cooke), a former performer, is on trial for his murder. As Kildare uncovers clues, he becomes increasingly obsessed with proving Lizzie’s innocence.

Period Drama

This plays out like a murder mystery and not a horror film. As such doesn’t really offer a sense of terror and foreboding. Most of the murders are re-imagined re-enactment’s of past killings with the various suspects filling in for the killer while a narrator (Usually the suspect) reads journal entries. The mystery itself is rather silly. Given most of the suspects are real life historical characters and this is a fictional murder there wasn’t really any possibility of those characters being the Golem. Clearly these people are only suspects so that they can be in the story. This is Especially true of Karl Marx, who is dismissed as a suspect so quickly his inclusion served no purpose except to excite Marxist viewers. The final swerve to a non-suspect is all too predictable. The whole investigation is dry and lacking in any real suspense.

This in theory could be countered by the character drama but the truth is very few of the characters are actually that interesting. Really just Dan Leno who is portrayed rather well by Douglas Booth. The rest of the cast though do little to raise their characters. Bill Nighy is a decent actor but he’s not the British top tier (Michael Caine/Anthony Hopkins level), he’s not an actor that can raise an average script to greatness. He does fine, but given this is basically a whodunnit, the lead detective needs to be more than just “Fine”. The other actors land around the average mark. All that leaves is the period drama aspect and in this regard it does pretty well, but I need a bit more than this to like a movie.

The Final Curtain

The whole experience feels somewhat shallow. Many decisions in the set up just get in the way of the telling of the story. The story utilizes famous historical characters to try and give the story more gravitas than the plot itself generates. Yet this decision makes the investigation largely pointless. Even the decision to make Kildare gay works against the movie. He spends most of the film desperately trying to protect and being manipulated by a woman. The relationship didn’t really need a sexual attraction. However it would have made a lot of sense and added to the characters journey. Instead his sexuality is thrown around in dialogue but ultimately impacts nothing. The final moments of the story where Kildare must decide Lizzie’s fate would have conveyed very different emotions with that simple change. Instead it is a moment of a man realising his own incompetence. But that’s okay, he gets a promotion anyway.

The icing on the cake is that we are told this is the big killer that came before Jack the Ripper and this too never factors into the story. That is nothing but a marketing line to convince the viewer the killer and by extension the movie is terrifying. It needs this trick because neither is actually true. But the actual result is that the story always falls into the shadow of the Ripper and is found wanting. This is a simple and predictable whodunnit masquerading as a horror story. It is more focused on its themes than characters or plot and is by and large a waste of time unless you are really into period dramas. For a better Victorian horror, dig up “From Hell” (2001) and watch that again instead. 4/10

Rating: 4 out of 10.

A Dark Song (2016)

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“A Dark Song” is an Irish independent horror from writer/director Liam Gavin. This was Gavin’s feature debut having only worked on shorts previously and is his only movie credit. Mike Flanagan (Netflix’ horror series guru) was obviously impressed enough with his work to bring him on board as a director for his second series “The Haunting of Bly Manor”. The movie stars Catherine Walker and Steve Oram. Walker has clearly caught the attention of Ridley Scott recently as she appears in both “House of Gucci” and “Napoleon”. Oram meanwhile is a prolific bit part time actor with over 100 credits to his name. For an indie movie horror these solid names and the film will need them to be solid since the majority of the movie is just them.

Walker plays “Sophia Howard”, a bereaved mother who has rented an isolated house in rural wales and hired occultist “Joseph Solomon” (Oram) to perform grueling month long ritual. The goal of which is to cause Sophia’s Guardian Angel to manifest itself and allow both of them to ask it for a boon. The ritual requires total isolation for the pair, once started they cannot leave the salt circle that is around this isolated house for any reason until the ritual is complete. It will also push them to both their physical and psychological limits. We follow the pair as they embark on this very personal journey all the way to the end… Whatever that will be.

A Journey Into Darkness

A Dark Song has the feel of a 1960’s horror movie. It reminds me of various films of the era including “The Haunting”, “The Devil Rides Out” and “Carnival of Souls. It also reminded me a little of “Don’t Look Now” (1973) which was itself a bit of a holdover from the 60’s. This makes the style quite refreshing. Obviously when special effects are called for they are modern (Though relatively low budget), but don’t expect to see much for the vast majority of the film. Like those 60’s movies, it is a slow burn but with a thick and tense atmosphere. The small cast and the fairly contained location give the film a claustrophobic feel and no doubt kept the budget under control. When things do kick off, it is brief but satisfying.

Obviously with what is effectively a two person cast their characters, relationships and acting quality is what makes or breaks the movie. The acting was mostly good, with a couple of moments that felt a little off. It’s worth noting two people losing their minds in a claustrophobic setting is a big ask for a pair of actors to pull off. It is in that regard very similar to what Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe achieved with “The Lighthouse”. This pair are not as good as Dafoe and Pattinson, but to even be in the conversation with those is an achievement. Those couple of moments where it didn’t quite work passed by quickly and on the whole they were excellent. The characters themselves were very interesting and did provide a good dynamic between the pair.

A Path To Redemption

One of the impressive elements of this movie is the details of the ritual. These are legitimate rituals as practiced by Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn and that authenticity really assist with setting the dark atmosphere. It pushes the unreal to a place where it feels like it could be real. There were obvious challenges to how to represent this kind of realistic occult activity in a horror film and I feel they tackled this well. When the movie switches from subtilty to pure chaos it is at a point beyond what poor Sophia can handle. She is broken. So you are left with the question of how much of what the pair suffer is hallucination from a fevered mind and how much is real. Ultimately it doesn’t matter because it works as a great horror story either way.

The atmosphere is milked to perfection with touches of music that underscore the scenes but don’t overwhelm them (The opposite of something like “The First Omen” where the music IS the atmosphere). The vast majority of the film is deliberately subtle and there are nice little touches that not everyone will pick up on. For example in a later scene there are some ghostly headlights on the road, implying that a car is travelling on the deserted road but Sophia is no longer in that reality. The best thing about the movie though is you really feel the character journey Sophia goes on. The ending is somewhat of a twist I suppose, but it feels absolutely natural.

Judgement

If you are into more subtle horror, especially the character and atmosphere based horrors of the 1960’s then this is definitely one for you. On the other hand if you want a fast pace and brutal murders, you need to look elsewhere as this has neither. It is a clever and emotional horror. It’s not the most visually stunning, though the visuals work fine. The same goes for the soundtrack. Everything is subtle and understated. That’s not for everyone, it’s certainly not a Friday night drive in movie. But if you like claustrophobic character stories with a minimal cast and creepy atmosphere, you will love it. For me this is an easy 7/10. I hope Liam Gavin gets a chance to helm and write another horror some time.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

Seoul Station (2016)

Posted on by fenrisfil

Tonight’s horror film is Korean animated zombie feature “Seoul Station” from 2016. This is the animated prequel to incredibly good zombie film “Train to Busan” that was released earlier in 2016 and along with it’s sequel “Peninsula” from 2020 forms a sort of trilogy. It’s worth noting, much like George Romero’s Night/Dawn/Day trilogy, though based around the same zombie apocalypse, none of the films have any direct ties to each other. None of the characters carry through and each film works perfectly as a stand alone movie. This series all comes from the creative mind of Sang-ho Yeon, who is also the man behind the Netflix series Hellbound (Which is also worth checking out). This is a director/writer to watch out for in years to come.

October Review Challenge – Day 19

Because this is animated and in Korean I can’t make any useful comment on the actors involved, but should you be familiar with Korean voice actors the key voices are provided by: Shim Eun-kyung, Seung-ryong Ryu, Joon Lee and Jang Hyuk-jin. The key character though is Hye-Sun, a young girl that ran away from home and ended up as a prostitute, having run away from that life too she is now on the verge of homelessness only able to stay away from it by hooking up with an abusive boyfriend Ki-woong, a lowlife that refuses to work and wants Hye-Sun to act as a prostitute again, though with the goal of robbing people instead of sleeping with them (Or so he claims).

While we are getting to know Hye-Sun’s story another one is unfolding involving the homeless people squatting in Seoul Station. A homeless man is found by another badly wounded, looking like he has been bitten by someone. His friend who noticed the man bleeding attempts to get help for him, but he is frustrated at every turn being rejected by authorities and pushed around by other homeless people. Eventually he manages to get some pain killers and an energy drink which he takes to his friend, only to find the man dead. When he reports this to the authorities they investigate, but finding the body gone they assume it is crazy homeless people being crazy homeless people. Eventually the homeless man finds his friend apparently alive, but he is then attacked by him.

Zombie Uprising

These events seem to be happening all over and because of their vulnerability and how their actions are ignored by the authorities the zombie plague spreads quickly amongst the homeless. Hye-Sun ends up caught up in it and in fleeing from zombies she finds herself in the police station. The cops though assume the problem is the homeless have all gone crazy and report the situation as such. Meanwhile Ki-woon is confronted by Suk-gyu, who says he is Hye-Sun’s father and demands to know where she is. They too end up caught up in the outbreak and find themselves driving around the city searching for her.

Eventually Suk-gyu finds herself in a barricaded section of the city where many of the survivors, but those survivors are trapped between the zombies and riot police that have mistaken the outbreak for an insurrection. From here I’m keeping quite since talking about the ending in any capacity would really be a spoiler at this stage. So you’ll have to watch to find out what happens.

View From The Bottom

The characters are perhaps a weakness as none of them are especially likeable. You certainly feel sympathy towards Hye-Sun and towards the homeless people, but that is about it. Hye Sun largely just follows other people and often gets them killed when they try to help her. Indeed there would be several more survivors from that night had she simply died the first time a zombie charged for her. That doesn’t mean she’s a bad character and it is likely intentional but I do like to have at least one character I want to survive when watching this kind of film, just to get me more invested in their fate.

The main purpose of this movie though is to look at how a zombie outbreak would impact the bottom end of the societal hierarchy and through that investigate the plight of the homeless and near-homeless in a city where they are basically treated like they are already the living dead. At one point when Hye Sun is travelling with an older homeless man through the underground subway tunnels she breaks down crying and saying she wants to go home (To her father, that she ran away from). The old man too breaks down saying he too wants to go home, but he doesn’t have one and the pair spend a time crying together. It places a contrast where we feel sympathy for both but we also realise the higher level of despair for the old man that has nowhere to even dream of returning to.

How Does It Fare As A Zombie Film?

I’ve always said zombie films need social commentary and this is one that doubles down on that area, but does it well and with it’s choice of social commentary it finds a neat way to give us tragedy too, another key element of these films. The only area in lacks somewhat is the absurdity, but it isn’t totally absent. At one point Suk-gyu and the old man she is travelling with are desperately trying to lift a gate to a subway tunnel to escape an approaching zombie, only to find as the monster draws near it wasn’t a zombie at all but a crazy homeless woman. That scene does a great job of adding humour, but also tragedy and social commentary all at once. That’s the only lighter moment of the movie I can recall however.

The weakest part of this zombie film is the zombies themselves and that is probably down to it being animation. While the animation makes the zombies significantly less scary (and less gory), the format is not really taken advantage of to show us anything that they couldn’t have done in live action. So it seems a waste to me. Maybe it is just down to personal preference, but for me the story is good enough to warrant making it in live action. It is a classic zombie story with an ending worthy of George Romero. However, when I compare this to Train to Busan it becomes clear just how much is lost by doing it in animation.

Conclusion

Overall this is not the classic that Train to Busan was, nor is it quite as good as Peninsula though that is a better comparison. It suffers as a zombie film from being animated and it lacks a bit character wise. However it score a lot of points for story and the clever social commentary. This is a very strong 6.5/10. I may even end up revising it up a notch before the end of October. Had this been done in live action though I think it could have been a 7 or 7.5.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10.