Tag: serial killer

Longlegs (2024)

Posted on by fenrisfil

It’s Nick Cage time! Nick has been killing it on the indie and B-Movie scene for the last few years making a mixture of art, comedy and horror (Often at once) and clearly having fun with it. He’s been prolific too, you can pretty much count on 2-3 new Nick Cage films every year and they’ll all have something positive about them. Part of this has been a run of good horror movies. Everything from the crazy “Mandy” (2018), the solid Lovecraft piece “The Color Out Of Space” (2019), fun movies like “Willy’s Wonderland” (2021) and “Renfield” (2023) and recently the dark and underrated “Arcadian” (2024). But “Longlegs” is a movie that had hype long before anyone realized Cage would be in a central role. A number of cryptic trailers certainly helped put the movie on a lot of peoples radar, including myself.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Longlegs is written and directed by Osgood Perkins. The directors previous feature movie “Gretel and Hansel” was praised for the cinematography and criticised the script. However, since neither the writers nor cinematographer from that movie are involved here that leaves Perkins somewhat of a wild card. The movie stars Maika Monroe as “Agent Lee Harker” a young FBI agent with a somewhat psychic talent and a mysterious dark past which she can’t quite remember. Nicholas Cage plays creepy occultist villain “Longlegs”. Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt and Michelle Choi-Lee fill out the rest of the key cast.

Agent Harker is recruited to a special task force trying to solve the “Longlegs” murders. The murders are unique in that the families all seem to have been murder/suicide situations, but are tied together by cryptic notes left at each scene in the same handwriting and the date of birth of each of the families daughter. Harker immediately is able to make progress on the case but as she does she begins to realize things are a lot more personal to her and her mother than she could ever have guessed.

Atmosphere

The film has a good atmosphere. That is the big selling point. The story breaks down a little bit at the ending, and has some issues throughout but is serviceable. Nick Cage finds another character that allows him to make the most of his skills at playing the unhinged. This time though he pushes for more unsettling than comedic and mostly achieve that. Perkins does a good job of showing only as much of Cage as needed. This keeps the mystery and makes sure that the performance from cage doesn’t cross into “Not the bees!” territory. Maika Monroe’s character on the other hand drifts through the entire film like it’s a fever dream. This is entirely intentional and while it doesn’t ask a lot of the actress she pulls it off well. Alicia Witt is a pleasant surprise here too and as Agent Harkers mother Ruth.

The plot certainly has a lot of interesting elements but it ends up somewhat cluttered. . Because of the dream like state that Agent Harker is in throughout the movie it’s hard to get any kind of emotional attachment to the character. She never actually does any detective work. Instead, all the solutions just magically come to her. It’s fairly clear early on (Perhaps from the start), what the Gotcha will be. When it happens, Harker’s reaction to it remains muted due to her continuing dream like state. It’s not quite the emotional pay off it should be. Her mother has an important roll, but we have no reason to care about her. This is largely because she isn’t introduced properly until half way through the movie.

Final Fate

The movie does spend some time humanizing Agent Carter, though Blair Underwood seems to be mostly phoning it in. It’s also done for somewhat obvious reasons, yet isn’t really effective. When these events pay off I was spending most of my time shouting at the screen for Agent Harker to do the obvious thing and stop standing around drooling instead of caring about what was happening. The ending left me somewhat unsatisfied, where as it should have left me feeling unsettled. I think part of this are that too many elements are introduced to this puzzle late on. The movie should have pushed a feeling of inevitable doom hard from the start.

The ingredients are here for a great movie, but the end result doesn’t quite live up to its potential. It is however a good step forward for Perkins as a director and I hope he builds on this in the future. Overall, while not entirely working the movie scores points for atmosphere and for Nick Cage’s performance. This is a 6/10. If you like atmospheric horror or Nicholas Cage being goofy, it is a recommendation. On the other hand, if you like deals with the devil and big gotcha moments in an atmospheric horror check out the vastly superior Angel Heart instead.

Rating: 6 out of 10.

In A Violent Nature (2024)

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“In A Violent Nature” is a 2024 slasher film with a twist. The movie takes the killer perspective idea (Used so effectively in the intro of “Halloween” (1978)). The movie is written and directed by Chris Nash and is his feature length debut. Chris previous made short films including one entry for “ABC’s of Death 2”. Ry Barrett plays the killer “Johnny” and Andrea Pavlovic plays final girl “Kris”. The story begins with a group of teenagers taking a necklace they find hanging on the remains of a fire tower in the woods. This wakes up long dead killer Johnny who sets out to recover his necklace.

As the story progresses and Johnny starts to kill everyone in his way as he searches for his necklace we gradually learn the killers backstory. As a child he was tricked up to the fire tower where someone scared him and he fell to his death. Later Johnny’s father confronted the killers and dies in the ensuing brawl. The local folk law is that the vengeful spirit of Johnny has been responsible for two killing sprees decades apart. Eventually Johnny narrows his sights on a young woman called Kris and her boyfriend Colt (Cameron Love) who desperately attempt to fight back.

Not Every Idea Is A Good One

This is an attempt to bring some art and perhaps originality to the slasher sub-genre and I applaud the attempt, but for most part the art detract from the atmosphere. Since we are following the silent killer and not the victims, we don’t really get to know any of the characters. I didn’t find myself caring at all about any of them, including the killer. They are all about as generic as slasher film characters come. Some of the scenes are approached in interesting ways but none of this is consistent. We switch from observing a murder quietly from a distance in a detached way, to a horror effects guys wet dream a few minutes later. The ending even abandons the killers perspective gimmick, making it feel tacked on from another film.

While conceptually interesting, in practice this is a movie that falls flat. It feels like the writers just threw together every idea they thought was “Cool”. Then packed it with a vague Jason Voorheese knockoff story. As a result, some of the scenes in isolation are pretty cool (For various reasons). As a full movie however, it’s hard to really feel much of anything for it. While not a complete disaster it is a disappointment. “Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon” (2006), did the killers perspective better admittedly in a more meta and dark comedy way. This was more like someone watched the opening of “Halloween” (1978) and wanted that to be the entire movie. Had John Carpenter done that, I very much doubt we’d still be talking about that movie 46 years later. This is a narrow 5.5/10. It has some merit, but basically one to skip.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10.

The Initiation (1984)

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Initiations to a sorority crop up relatively frequently in horror, especially in the 80’s. This one goes straight for the obvious with the title “The Initiation”. The movie is mostly directed by Larry Stewart. The original director, Peter Crane was fired a few days into filming but some of his footage remains. Charles Pratt Jr. provides the script. The movie stars a young Daphne Zuniga as “Kelly Fairchild” one of the aspiring pledges for a sorority. Daphne would most famously appear in “Spaceballs”: The Movie” (1987)” as “Princess Vespa”.As is usually the case for this kind of horror, the head of the sorority has a grudge against our lead and so wants to make their initiation especially unpleasant.

Kelly has plenty of her own issues however since she is plagued by a recurring nightmare. In the nightmare she stabs her father with a knife and then a man is set on fire in front of her. She decides to investigate this with the help of an older student, “Peter” (James Read) that is working on his PhD and is specializing in the study of dreams. The answer to the puzzle seems to be related to a series of murders that has started to happen around town, apparently at the hands of a partially burned man. All threads will link up as the pledges attempt their initiation in the department store.

Sorority Slaughter Shenanigans

Despite the title, the story doesn’t really revolve around the initiation until the final act. It’s a bit like “Jason Takes Manhattan” in that regard. It’s also worth noting the initiation plot is virtually the same as in “One Dark Night”, only intimidating for the girls. Here the setting is a department store and the pranksters trying to scare them are totally ineffective. Not that it matters when there is a psycho hanging out there as well and that’s where the two stories diverge. It’s similar setup but very different movies. The focus is really more on Kelly and her dark past, along with building to a big twist. The twist here while somewhat predictable isn’t embarrassingly so. So it does work.

One thing this has over One Dark Night is that these characters are a little more varied and relatable. That’s not to say they are particularly deep. Instead they are very much college kid stereotypes, but there is enough there to actually care when they die. The acting quality however varies a lot across the board. Daphne Zuniga is the stand out and it’s no surprise she found her way on to Mel Brooks radar for Spaceballs. Her performance is great as the lead and also (spoilers) in her second role. Most of the main cast are passable too, but as you reach the smaller roles the quality drops off. Notably Peter’s colleague in the dream clinic Heidi has a few lines that really dropped me out of the movie.

Conclusion

Overall, I found this a pretty reasonable horror. It is generally fun, with a touch of that college kid comedy humour in places (Porky’s, American Pie, etc). The kills are relatively creative, the characters aren’t horrible and there is a proper story to it. There’s nothing exception here though, so it doesn’t warrant a high score. The movie lands a 5.5/10, held back from a six by those spots of bad acting. Still worth checking out though, especially if you like seeing frat boys/girls killed in slashers films.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10.

Peeping Tom (1960)

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1960 was an important year in history of the horror movie. Most importantly it was the year that “Psycho” came out, but it also featured “Eyes Without A Face”, “Village of the Damned”, “The House of Usher” and the less well known “Peeping Tom”. Despite the lower profile, this is a film that heavily influenced Martin Scorsese and many others of his generation. Indeed it’s largely thanks to Scorsese that the film is known at all these days as he helped fund a wider re-release for the movie in the 1978 after it had fallen into obscurity. When the movie was released the critics were disgusted by it and savaged it suggesting it be thrown into a sewer and other colourful language. As a result it was withdrawn from theatres fairly early and effectively ended the career of it’s director Michael Powell.

Decades later, critics revised their opinion. Now they called it one of the greatest horror films of all time. The revision was too late to save Powell’s career. Some people are ahead of their time, but if you are too far ahead the response can be savage. One of the main reasons for the backlash was that some sections of the film involve old movies of the main character and his father. These scenes reveal how the character was abused as a child by his father. The problem here was that Michael Powell chose to perform these scenes with his real life son. There was no actual abuse involved, but it seemed this made critics uncomfortable. Anyway, let’s look at the film itself shall we?

Don’t Let Me See You Are Afraid

The movie opens up with “Mark Lewis” (Played by Karlheinz Böhm), picking up a prostitute. Lewis is secretly filming her with a hidden camera. We see from the point of view of the camera viewfinder as he follows her into the flat and murders her. Later, we see him watching the recording in his dark room. Following this opening we are introduced to the other side of Lewis. A focus puller for a film crew who aspires to become a filmaker. His job doesn’t pay enough to cover his costs though and so he supplements that as a soft porn photographer for a local corner shop. His photos are sold under the counter to select customers.

Lewis is a shy but relatively pleasant person during the day. However he has been secretly working on his own film, a documentary about fear. Mark lives in his childhood home, though most of it is now rented out to other residents. One of which “Helen Stephens” (Anna Massey) has taken a liking to the young man. Mark likes Helen too but doesn’t want her to become one of his victims. He shows her the few films he dares to share with anyone, those of his childhood where his psychologist father abused him to investigate the nature of fear. She is shocked, but supportive. Their relationship becomes tricky because Mark is reaching the end of his documentary and soon he will be unable to keep the two halves of his life separate.

The Eye Of The Beholder

This is a very good movie. There is no denying that. The story has many layers, but the visuals are masterfully put together too. Let’s start with those visuals. This is 1960. Shooting from the first person perspective isn’t completely unknown at this point (Indeed there has been whole movies of it), but showing murders from the killers perspective is pretty new. Psycho of course made use of this two, but here it provides a double function. We’re not simply seeing from the killers eyes, but we’re seeing through his camera. We are seeing effectively a section of his documentary on fear. The movie has made us a voyeur of murder.

This isn’t the only thing interesting visually. Powell uses a technique called colour Chiaroscuro, where he uses a saturated palette with dramatic shadows. The colours are quite aggressive, almost feeling seedy. This is contrasted by the “Old” black and white camera footage of the young Mark taken by his father. This is another interesting one for horror at the time, it is almost a found footage situation. The scenes skillfully portray the abuse that Mark suffered but because of the nature of the home movies these scenes didn’t require much in the way of acting skills, so not a huge surprise he filmed them at home with his own son.

The Price of Obsession

In the film Mark has two obsessions and they are almost indistinguishable from each other. One is his obsession with fear. It is seeing fear that drives him to kill. More importantly though it drives him to capture that fear on camera. That is the real obsession here, Mark is a filmmaker and he is making his masterpiece. Most of the time Mark is a nice enough person, shy even especially around women. But his entire demeanor changes when he is preparing to film a kill. His most ambitious murder is recorded at the studio he works on the set on the very movie he has been working on for his day job. As his victim dances (Warming up for what she is an audition tape), he dashes around adjusting props and cameras. He is focused like a razorblade, his victim is no longer a human but just another prop to get in position.

Mark is driven by obsession. Obsession with his camera, which he takes with him everywhere he goes (Until Helen asks him to leave it behind on a date). There is also Marks original obsession with voyeurism, where the movie takes it’s title. But it is his obsession to finish his documentary and record the faces of fear that drive him beyond all reason. Martin Scorsese felt this obsession reflected the drive of many a filmmaker and the dangerous line they walk in their pursuit of perfect. Considering that, it frames Powell’s direct involvement and the damage it did to his career with the themes of the movie itself. The masterpiece reflects the reality (But fortunately it was only a career killed in real life).

Conclusion

This is an exceptional film and I can see why Scorsese was so heavily influenced by it. Karlheinz Böhm is not an actor I know, but he is exceptional here. The film really is clever and definitely was ahead of its time. As always though I review from the modern day, not in context of how ground breaking something was. This movie has aged remarkably well though. Nothing here really has dated, except perhaps for the color palette but that palette works so well for the movie even this isn’t a problem. This scores a well deserving 8/10

Rating: 8 out of 10.

10 Rillington Place (1971)

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Many horror films have been made based on true stories. Usually these are embellished and sometimes end up having very little in common with the true story. In the case of 10 Rillington Place from 1971, an attempt was made to present the story of serial killer John Christie as accurately as possible. The focus of the story though isn’t so much on the horrendous crimes of Christie but on the travesty of justice that saw an innocent man hanged for some of his crimes. The movie was directed by legendary director Richard Fleischer, with a screenplay by Clive Exton. It is based on the novel by the same name by Ludovic Kennedy. Screen legend Richard Attenborough takes on the role of serial killer Christie and John Hurt plays unfortunate scapegoat Timothy Evans.

10 Rillington Place is part psychological thriller and part court room drama. The primary purpose of the movie is not to scare the audience so much as to lay bare the travesty of justice of the real life case involved in the story. It is effectively a drama designed to expose the great flaw of capital punishment. Despite that, there are definitely horror elements to the story. It is after all about real life serial killer and rapist John Christie, that murdered at least 8 people including his own wife and one baby. The film shows a few of those murders and while they are not especially graphic they didn’t need to be.

The Case That Shocked A Nation

The story starts when Timothy Evans, his wife Beryl and their baby move in to one of the apartments in Rillington Place. By this point Christie has already actively murdering women and burying them in his garden. It’s not clear how many he has killed, but we see one murder at the start of the film. Christie sets his sights on adding Beryl to his collection. Here I’m torn between not spoiling too much of the film and recognizing this is all real life events so a lot of people will already know what happens next. Suffice to say Christie ends up framing Timothy not just for Bery’s murder but also for their baby’s. However Christie’s bloodlust means he doesn’t have the sense to quit while he is ahead.

The movie doesn’t really have a main character though since it is more concerned with showing the historic events. At times this can make the film seem a little dry. There’s no mystery to it either, but then when dealing with a real life killer any attempt at mystery would be futile. Instead the film needs to build the suspense of impending doom for those living under the roof of 10 Rillington Place and it doesn’t always manage this. This is probably intentional though since the movie wasn’t meant to be a horror as such. It’s hard to dramatize these characters without delving into horror a little though and that is largely down to some impressive performances from the two leads.

Star Performances

Richard Attenborough plays murderer Christie and he plays it with cold calculating calmness that makes the character that much more terrifying. He rarely seems flustered and even when he is, he still has a coldness about him and a politeness. I can’t help but see an element of Attenborough’s performance in Anthony Hopkin’s portrayal of Hannibal Lecter 20 years later. Of course Hopkins was playing a fantasy character and so could ham it up a little and have a bit of fun with it, but underneath that you can definitely see Attenborough’s Christie. The two were friends and collaborated many times, so it makes sense.

Attenborough wasn’t the only big name actor in this movie, we also have John Hurt showing his flexibility as the somewhat simple minded man scapegoat, way out of his depth, Timothy Evans. Hurt won a BAFTA nomination for his role and it was well earned. Evans is a man with a certain amount of pride and an equal amount of hubris and yet is played the most tragic of hands. His wife and child murdered and he takes the blame. It is too much to deal with and Hurt puts it all into his performance without overdoing it.

The Verdict

Overall this is a pretty strong telling of a tragic and horrifying series of events. It makes a good argument against capital punishment as well as the failure of a police to spot a killer with no clear motivation. It is however a little too dry for my liking, even for something based on real events. That leaves it a little short of a 7 for me but it’s still a recommendation. This is a strong 6.5/10.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10.

Hannibal Rising (2007)

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The big debate about this film is if Hannibal Lecter should ever have had an origin story/prequel movie. The answer in my view is: Probably not. That said, an origin for the character is absolutely consistent with Thomas Harris’ writing style. Every other character in his novels have their motivations and psychology examined closely. Often, by Dr. Lecter himself. Harris style of writing largely relies on the realism of these characters. What made Hannibal stand out so well was because he was the enigma, the one unexplainable evil. Harris edged into explaining a lot of Lecter’s thought processes in “Hannibal”, his third novel. That novel was less warmly regarded and the film adaptation skipped most of those elements. To be fair, it’s hard to show thought processes on screen. For this reason, they were correct not to have Clarice take Hannibal up on his offer and go off with him.

But if you have read the novels, it was always clear that Harris wanted to explain Hannibal to us. He just wasn’t sure if he should and I have heard that he did need his arm twisted somewhat to finally set to work on a full origin story. Supposedly it was producer Dino De Laurentiis who told Harris that if he didn’t write the origin story, someone else eventually will. Horrified by this prospect, Harris set to work. As I mentioned though, if you read the books you know Harris does try and help the reader to understand Lecter. He’s not entirely the enigma he is in the movies. To make sure his message wasn’t lost this time he insisted on writing the screenplay to the eventual movie himself. For better or worse director Peter Webber has provided a fairly faithful adaptation of the source material.

Dark Origins

The film begins with a young Hannibal (Played by Aaran Thomas), with his loving family and young sister Mischa (Helena-Lia Tachovská) living in a castle in Lithuania. This is not a good time to be in Lithuania though as the Nazi invasion of Russia has turned the area into part of the bloodiest front line in World War Two. As Hitler and Stalins forces clash, the Lecter family is caught in the middle. The parents are killed and Hannibal and Mischa are left to fend for themselves. Matters get worse as a group of ex-Nazi’s now just trying to survive as Russian forces take over the region hold up in their castle. With it being in the thick of winter and no food available they take drastic action.

Many years later, the story picks up with an adult Hannibal (Now played by Gaspard Ulliel), who has made his way to his last surviving relatives home in France. After settling in, he sets out on his mission to extract vengeance on the people that murdered and ate his sister. Gong Li plays his aunt “Lady Mursaka”, who understands Hannibals drive but can’t stand by who he is becoming. Dominic West (McNulty from the TV series “The Wire”) plays Inspector Pascal Popil, a detective that specializes in bringing war criminals to justice. He too understands Hannibal’s desire for vengeance, but won’t let him get away with taking the law into his own hands. Rhys Ifans plays “Grutas” the head of the gang that murdered Hannibal’s sister.

A Man of Exquisite Taste

The most obvious issue with this film is that Hannibal Lecter is not a character that any actor can play. The gold standard is obviously Sir Anthony Hopkins, who elevated the character into the movie villain hall of fame. Before Hopkins took on the role Brian Cox put in an impressive performance in the movie “Manhunter”. After the release of this movie a third actor, Mads Mikkelsen would take the role and make it his own in a way that arguably even outdid Sir Anthony. With that in mind, perhaps my view of Gaspard Ulliel is a little unfair. However, I was not impressed. It’s not that his acting was bad or anything. It’s just we’re dealing with a complex and chilling character at a time in his life where he is perhaps the most conflicted he is ever likely to be and he felt… generic.

As for the origin itself, it does make a certain amount of sense. Starting out with a trauma that desensitized him and showed him how brutal life can be. Then giving him a reason to pursue and murder those that had wronged him. After that, I guess he just kept going. But this is where the problem lies. Even though Lecter does murder one character simply for being rude there’s not really any suggestion that he will keep going indefinitely with those kinds of murders. The vast majority of his actions were motivated by his revenge. So these elements don’t totally add up. What we do see though is his casual brutality and lack of empathy for his victims. This is balanced by the fact he does not harm the children on one of his victims. So at least here we see something of the man he would become.

A Trail of Destruction

There is another problem too. All these killings are high profile. It’s hard to imagine that no one ever casually looked into Lecters past. Had they done so, he would have quickly become a suspect in Chesapeake Ripper case. In the movie, he fakes his own death too. But then doesn’t change his name after. In the novel at least he is actually arrested, but between the public support (For killing war criminals) and the lack of evidence, he is released. There was an obvious solution here in Inspector Popil. Had the story allowed for Popil to be somewhat sympathetic and realizing that the only way for these men to face justice was for Hannibal to kill them there could have been an air tight backstory for the character. Instead though Popil is totally dedicated to the law, despite his own tragedy. So much so it’s hard to imagine him buying the faked death and not flagging the name globally.

Popil’s actual role appears to be like an early version of Hannibal’s relationships with Will Graham and Clarice Starling. Someone he finds very similar to himself, but just not quite able to see the world the way he does. Sadly though the film doesn’t spend any time looking into this relationship. It’s just sort of there. Another relationship somewhat wasted is Hannibal’s odd romance with his Aunt, Lady Murasaki. We aren’t given a great deal of time to know the character except that she is the one person Hannibal feels close to. Perhaps the idea was for Popil to be a prot-Will Graham and Lady Murasaki to be a proto-Clarice Starling, but in practice neither of them really are that interesting.

Conclusion

As a stand alone movie, this is a reasonable revenge story. As an origin story for Hannibal Lecter though it is a disappointment. It’s not however a complete disaster. Things do, by and large, add up. Even the plot holes can be explained by the fact that in the novels at least, no one suspected Lecter until Will Graham. There was no investigation because Lecter, sensing he’d been rumbled, immediately attacked. While an origin story for Hannibal Lecter was always likely to disappointed, I do feel this one could have been better. Specifically with more to his relationship with sympathetic characters and perhaps a different actor in the lead. I’m giving this a solid 5.5/10. Despite some promise the movie largely just coasts along on it’s predecessors coat tails.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10.

Trap (2024)

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Is there any director more all over the place in quality than M. Night Shyamalan? Most of his movies are divisive with the audience, rejected by most but loved by a solid number. Some of his movies are universally panned and some are universally loved. It could be argued that he is doing exactly what a director should do (When making original content). Taking big risks and following his inner muse. However, his work always follows a certain formula, namely the big twist. As a result, he has all the hallmarks of both a good and bad director. Auteur’s do tend to have their own unique style. But when that style makes the stories predictable it does more harm than good. In many ways Shyamalan is his own worst enemy, because technically speaking at least he is a good director.

Here he has a conceptually interesting story. John Hartnett stars as “Cooper”. A family man taking his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a concert by “Lady Raven” (played by M. Night’s daughter, Saleka Shyamalan). Cooper though has a dark secret (Revealed in the trailer and early in the movie, so not a spoiler), he’s a notorious serial killer known as “The Butcher”. It turns out the FBI was aware he would be at the show (Though they don’t know who he is or what he looks like) and have the venue locked down. Having caught on to this it is down to Cooper to find a way out, preferably without ruining his daughters big day. He is being hunted by FBI profiler “Dr. Josephine Grant” (Hayley Mills).

Two Sides of Night

This is very much a film of two halves and it is the first half which is by far the superior. The interesting thing is this first half is entirely free from Shyamalan style twists. Sure the concept itself is somewhat of a subversion, but you find out very early that Cooper is the butcher and his attempts to escape the trap plays to M.Night’s actual strengths as a director. Scenes play out with a tension underneath where the audience understands the stakes but most of the characters on screen do not. This is classic Hitchcock style tension and Shyamalan pulls it off well. The pacing is pretty solid too leaving you on the edge of your seat. The problem is there is only really enough content here for half a movie. Horror films don’t need to be long, but all too often these days we see a horror with a cool concept that just can’t sustain itself for even 90 minutes. These ideas are better off as anthology shorts.

The second half of the movie is where we see the bad side of Shyamalan. Where the obsession with twists and subversions actually leads to the film becoming clankly and predictable. Here we see Cooper constantly outsmarted by almost everyone he comes across. He loses all ability to inspire fear and with the mask now off he turns out to be far less interesting as an antagonist/protagonist. In some ways it reminds me of the 2018 Halloween sequel since you effectively have three “Final Girls”, from three different generations taking down the villain. The difference is that none of these three are really main characters. Lady Raven comes closest but she doesn’t take a central role until the second half of the film and leaves the story a fair while before the climax. The result is a complete disconnect between the audience and these characters. It’s also a noteworthy horror for the total lack of deaths during the film.

Conclusion

This is a difficult film to rate. This represents the best and the worst of the M. Night Shyamalan. The first 40 minutes are very solid and would probably have garnered a strong 6.5/10 from me. The rest of the film though is disappointing and probably would have landed a 5/10 if I was feeling generous. I’m going to balance those out to a 5.5/10. Ultimately this is not entirely bad and you won’t regret watching. However, it’s not worth going out of your way for it and it certainly won’t be bothering your physical media collection (If you have one). Slightly above average, but with the good weighted so heavily towards the early half you will likely walk away with a bad taste in your mouth. I don’t really recommend it, but if it’s on streaming and you have nothing else you want to watch, go for it.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10.