Gags the Clown is supposed to be a portrayal of how society obsesses over something so simple; how a man in a clown costume standing motionless captivates the media and the world. While this is an interesting concept, it obviously doesn’t make for a good film, so throw together some found footage and a flimsy lore and you have this: Gags the Clown.
The film is from the POV footage of Wisconsin PD officers Renard and Gruber, teenage friends Sara, Tyler and Chris, news reporter Heather Duprey and cameraman Dale, and Podcaster Charles Wright and producer Wayne; there’s other footage from CCTV and other cops as they stumble across other clown related scenes, but it mostly focuses on these four groups.
Renard and Gruber are called to a parking complex where a woman claims they were attacked by a clown, her boyfriend is missing and their friend…exploded off camera during their escape.
Tyler and Chris think Gags is a great way to prank people, so they go with Sara to a party and scare the host – who is afraid of clowns – but when the party is crashed later by Renard and Gruber, it turns out Renard is Sara’s stepmother and orders her home; instead, she tags along with Tyler and Chris to prank random people.
Here’s some thrown together lore for you
While viewers are led to believe that Gags is some kind of supernatural being, as he flickers between distorted frames of footage; the film tries to justify this with some lazy backstory. Poor Heather is sick of being on ‘Gags Watch’, chasing baseless leads and interviewing a crackpot store owner – who claims Gags is a clown from 1974, he was a circus clown and a fire apparently killed the whole troop.
Meanwhile, Renard and Gruber are notified of people being admitted to hospital for self mutilation and covered in a strange white powder, and they’ve all disappeared while receiving treatment; the film explains the powder as either the drug ‘Bath Bombs’, or cocaine in some other footage.
During all this, Charles Wright – self proclaimed military vet – rants on his podcast about how stupid the whole Gags obsession is, promising to go find the clown himself if his video gets five hundred shares; later, exceeding the target, Charles streams to his followers choosing his guns of choice and beginning the hunt.
Heather is chewed out by her boss when she misses the opportunity to interview Charles first and is beaten by a rival news team; he throws her off the Gags Watch and orders them to return the van, but Heather decides to stay with it and find Charles to capture him shooting someone. Heather clearly sucks at her job since it takes her while to realise that to find Charles she should follow his social media!
Elsewhere, Chris and Tyler try to prank a local fairground, but Chris wouldn’t be let in while wearing the costume; they decide to enjoy the rides for a while when Chris finds a black balloon – which pops and covers him in powder, making him violently ill. Tyler discovers Charles’ first attempt to confront Gags was a bust, but has followed him to an old factory; Tyler thinks it’s a great opportunity to mess with Charles, but Sara wants to take Chris to the hospital. Chris stays with Tyler and they prepare their prank.
Does this count as a Ride-along?
Renard and Gruber report to a break-in, where they find the missing boyfriend from earlier in the evening; he has mutilated his face in a restaurant kitchen and makes his way towards the pair, Gruber shoots him, seemingly killing him, but he gets up, runs out the back and disappears. The pair then catch wind of Gags being at the old factory and head over there.
Heather and Dale are already there, making their way through the dark maze of hallways, following the carnival music leading them to a small circus tent.
Tyler has lost track of Chris, but bumps into someone else, who has mutilated their face, and runs away.
Charles and Wayne are still looking for Gags, when a clown screaming for help runs towards them; Charles shoots, killing them instantly. He then admits that while he was in the military it was as a mechanic and he never saw combat – let alone kill anyone; he blames Wayne for egging him on, but Wayne tells him he recorded the whole thing. They’re startled by Renard and Gruber shouting in the distance and make a run for it.
The cops find the dead clown and Renard confirms it’s Tyler; she begins to panic and splits from Gruber while trying to call Sara, thinking she’s in the building somewhere. Renard falls through a floor and lays, presumably dying, as Sara tells her over the phone that she’s never replace her mother.
Welcome to the Gags show?
Gruber has chased Charles and Wayne into the tent where Heather and Dale are already waiting quietly, too scared to move in case the missing people attack them. Charles tries to tell Gruber that Wayne shot the clown and the scene descends into chaos as the show begins; Wayne shoots Charles, Gruber shoots Wayne, Dale runs leaving Heather alone, and the Gags victims begin to crowd around Gruber.
Outside, a rival news team arrives as Heather escapes. The camera follows her as she bumps into Gags on the grass verge; the camera pans and follows the balloons he releases and then switches back to Heather, who has been gifted a balloon of herself, and Gags no longer there; Heather begins to laugh hysterically and spontaneously explodes.
News reporter, Rebecca Chambers, brushes a piece of Heather from her hair and smiles: ‘Go live’.
2/5: I must have missed the joke here because I find this film neither suspenseful nor comedic. It feels like the writers took two different ideas and mashed them into one film, leaving behind a lazy excuse of a found footage horror film. While the choppy story progressed just fine, the ending was chaotic, rushed and unexplained. Was Gags the clown from 1974? What exactly is that powder in the balloons? Why, and how, did Heather explode?
The only reason it has a two, is because I did find the idea of the film interesting – just not the execution.
Twelve days before Christmas, a small town mall Santa is killed in the parking lot by another Santa and Mrs. Claus – the only clue is a bitten pear, the next day two teenagers are burnt alive in their car at Turtle Dove Point; while the Mayor doesn’t see a problem, and Deputy Fullard doesn’t see a connection, Sheriff Mitchell is sure the sleepy town of Woodridge, NY, has a serial killer or two on the loose.
Meanwhile, teenager Jennifer learns that her mother and stepdad are getting a divorce after the holiday season; her boyfriend, David, and friends Courtney and Joe, invite her to an annual drum fest on Christmas Eve.
Parents divorcing? Become a mall elf!
Later, the Claus’ strike at the home of divorce lawyer Mrs. Frenchen; killing her, her daughter and their dog.
Night four of the killings. Courtney and a few of her other friends hit a bar for some underage drinking; they’re being heckled by someone in the background and decide to head to the toilets – as girls do – and hear someone crying in the cubicle. One of the girls peers under the door and ends up with an arrow in the eye before Mrs. Claus and Santa reveal themselves and kill three of the other girls – leaving Courtney alive.
Against the Mayor’s wishes, the Sheriff brings in the FBI; the five agents suggest that there might be more victims but leaves it to the local force to track any down – Fullard then discovers the Frenchen family slaughtered in their own home. While the police investigate the murders, the FBI agents are ambushed at the station; all five are killed and their ring fingers cut off.
Random British coroner is not so random
Fullard heads out to the farm to follow up on a report of the farmers geese being killed over night – six of them, later revealed to be poisoned.
Across town, Jennifer’s friend, Lisa, disappears from her late swin practice; meanwhile, Jennifer gets a mysterious present after her shift at the mall – surprise, it’s the missing fingers of the FBI agents. Lucy, Jen’s mum, tells the Sheriff (unconvincingly) that she has no idea who could have sent Jen the gift and threatens them with her lawyer: Mrs. Frenchen. Fullard tells her she’s dead, which only seems to solidify Lucy’s theory of who sent her daughter the gift. Sheriff Mitchell implements a curfew.
Fullard discovers seven origami swans at the pool where lisa went missing. Later, during a press interview, a reporter tells Fullard that the Mayor told her curfew should have been implimented earlier, Mitchell overhears that and rushes off to meet the Mayor – punching him in the face; the Mayor fires him from his duties and leaves for his nephew’s bachelor party. Fullard tells Mitchell what he found at the pool and that the Farmer called to report his milking machines had been destroyed.
Across town, Courtney and Jennifer investigate the killings themselves, trying to find a connection to Jen’s family; they later discover that Jen’s mum was dating a soldier before she was born.
Merry Christmas to Sheriff Mitchell, Santa has left a gift on his desk! Fullard puts on one glove (but handles the box with both hands?) and opens it carefully to discover a USB stick, on the stick is CCTV footage of the local strip club; the Mayor has been ‘giving back to the community’ there, watching nine lovely ladies dance – except one of them is Mrs. Claus! She and Santa murder everyone inside.
It’s this point that they begin to piece together the clues: the killers have been following the song Twelve Days of Christmas, starting with the mall Santa – whose name was Partridge – to the ten ‘Lords’ in the strip club. Fullard realises that the milking machines at the farm are the maids, and that the farm isn’t too far from Jen’s old house – they finally found the connection!
Jennifer confronts her mum about the news article she found online; Lucy explains that she married a British Marine, Nick, who came back from a war with PTSD and had violent outbursts; Lucy divorced him one Christmas after he attacked her, and later discovered she was pregnant with Jen. She continues that she thought he’d died in a fire in the asylum he was in – they never offically decalred him dead, but did find his teeth with a burnt out corpse three years prior to the events of the film. Jen, upset, goes to meet Courtney and friends for the drum fest; Lucy is attacked at home by Nick and Mrs. Claus.
Father and daughter finally meet
Mitchell and Fullard go to Lucy’s home to check on her. There, they find a random Piper’s vehicle, Jen’s murdered step-father but no Lucy; they realise the last killings will take place at the drum fest and rush over to the venue. At the bar, patrons are counting down to Christmas day when the lights go out and killings begin; Courtney makes a run for it for help, but is caught in Mrs. Claus’ bear trap. Inside, Nick and Jen meet, and he has Lucy and Lisa wrapped up with IEDs; he wants to prove that Jen is just like him and wants her to pick between mum and best friend – going as far as to place a grenade in her hands as incentive. Mitchell and Fullard arrive; Fullard handles Mrs. Claus – rescuing Courtney – and Mitchell injures Nick. Nick convinces Jen that it will never be over unless he dies, so she drops the grenade which turns out to be a stun grenade – Nick disappears in the smoke.
At the station, Mrs. Claus has a very small cell where Fullard tells her it won’t be long until they get Nick. Unfortunately, Nick gets to him first.
Not-so-saint Nick is back!
One year after the previous killing spree, Nick and his Mrs. Claus, Michelle, are back for revenge; they begin with Courtney’s dad, Jim, as he returns home from visiting her in the city. Nick causes Jim to swerve from the road and into a tree; he makes a run into the woods but Nick catches up with him and kills him, making it look like a drink drive accident.
FBI agent Parker is convinced it’s Nick and Michelle and makes the local officers search for extra clues; they find a hachete in a tree and ‘naughty’ written in blood in the snow. Parker decides not to tell Courtney’s family it was Nick until they’re completely sure.
Courtney talks to her therapist, Dr. Mudd, over the phone about her feelings over her dad’s death. Mudd has an open file on Nick, who she treated at the asylum years prior along with Michelle. Later in the evening, Nick and Michelle break into Mudd’s home, attacking her, and killing her daughter and daughter’s boyfriend.
Lucy takes Jen to the funeral in support of Courtney, but the agent asigned to them doesn’t let them inside. At ther service, undercover agents see Michelle there and catch her – a waiting car speeds away and the FBI follow, believing it to be Nick driving; at a blockade, they discover the driver is Dr. Mudd with ‘nice’ carved into her forehead. Nick is still at the church and the FBI are too late to stop him murdering the Priest who held the service.
Parker is convinced that Nick is after his family again, but can’t figure out the connection between the killings and the family; she goes to Mitchell’s home, who has long retired and just wants to spend time with his granddaughter. Parker convinces him to at least look at the file.
Agents can’t get Michelle to talk, so Parker heads to the old asylum to look fore clues; there she meets Clayton, an abusive orderly turned groundsman. Clayton admits he got Jim a job there as an orderly back in the day, but can’t give her much more as everything was destroyed in the fire – and she’d need a warrent to get it anyway.
Parker’s unimpressed by Clayton
Mitchell thinks he’s found the connection, however, Nick goes after Mitchell, who holds him at gunpoint and calls the police, stating he shot in intruder in self defence; Nick taunts Mitchell into pulling the trigger but the gun is empty and Nick kills him. Parker finds Mitchell’s body, but his granddaughter has been left alive.
Maybe you should have shot first and not hold him at gunpoint?
At the station, Michelle tells an agent she’s swallowed razor blades and they prepare to move her to the hospital. Meanwhile, Nick goes after Clayton, hanging him in an empty room of the old asylum; Parker thinks there something Nick doesn’t want them to see when she sees a blank space among all the pictures he left behind, she says the heat from the lights would leave an invisible trace behind.
Meanwhile, Courtney and Jen plan to meet Nick once more.
As the FBI begin to move MIchelle, they bring in a new recruit and advise him to shoot if she does anything fishy during transport. The convoy hit a roadblock along the way, a broken down vehicle, and can’t decide how to proceed; however, Michelle begins to attack the guards in the van with her, pinning one by the neck with her foot while the rookie holds a gun on her and begs her to stop. The lead of the convoy radios back about the car and Parker knows it’s Nick; the convoy give a description of a man in a Santa suit and Parker tells them to run him down. The convoy is hesitant while Nick begins to cut a rope holding up a tree above the lead truck; in the back, Michelle puts her heel through the guard’s neck while to rookie still hesitates.
The rookie should have listened to his superior
Nick begins to kill of the agents and free Michelle. Parker and the others arrive too late to help, but Parker knew no one would be alive anyway.
In a business meeting, a board discuss the care of patients in the asylums they run – one previously being the Woodridge site; the CEO says costs are more important than care, to the disappointment of one of the women members. The lawyer on the board nips to the toilet, where Nick cuts off his penis and then throws it onto the desk in the meeting; he’d heard what they’d said about care in the asylum, and he knows first hand how bad it is; he asks who’s missing from the meeting, pulling out a list of names from his pocket, and is told Joe is having his appendix removed – Nick then asks what happens if he kills everyone in the room and learns they’ll just appoint a new board, but leaving one alive will make them the CEO. Nick and Michelle kill everyone but the woman who objected to the patient’s mistreatment. Nick tells her to be a better CEO.
Parker and a few other agents arrive later, still trying to piece the connections together; she’s then told they found the invisible writing, left behind at Clayton’s death, with the UV light – it’s a company Christmas card list with the names of Clayton, the priest and Jim’s name on it; Parker rushes to the hospital where the missing board member, Joe, is.
Courtney and Jen are already at the hospital. Joe happens to be Courtney’s uncle and the pair seemed to have figured out Nick’s plan before anyone else; when the crazed duo turn up, Courtney convinces Nick to let her and her uncle go in return for Jen; Nick tells them to leave, but sends Michelle after them anyway. When Michelle catches up, Courtney holds her at gunpoint and then hands the weapon to her uncle while she goes back for Jen; Michelle kills Joe anyway and rejoins Nick with the girls.
Nick is still trying to get Jen to see that they’re alike and gives her a gun to prove it; Courtney encourages her to shoot him, but Parker arrives in time and shoots Jen to stop her – then shoots Nick. Parker arrests Nick and locks him up, but Michelle is now the one rescuing him and kills Parker in the process.
Rating: 7/10 overall, averaging 3.5 each. They’re not bad films, but not great either; I prefer Nick and Michelle’s seemingly random spree in the second film, only to learn that they’re getting revenge on everyone who mistreated them in the asylum – and just happens to be on the company Christmas card list; however, the side story about Nick’s family just seems to be wedged in there, and if you don’t realise Nights Before Christmas is a sequel (like I did) then that plot just seems really random – it’s really important to watch them in order or you’re left a little confused and underwhelmed.
I have a confession to make: the only reason I watched this is because I’ve been binge watching House MD and Omar Epps is in this. Sorry, not sorry.
Benton, NY 2015 on Halloween. A group of high school seniors are at a party and playing spin the bottle with a knife; Patrick ‘Trick’ Weaver takes his turn and is teased when it lands on another boy – Trick picks up the knife and begins a stabbing spree until he’s stabbed himself with a fire poker and hospitalised. Party host Cheryl, and friends Nicky and Troy are witnesses and few survivors of the attack; Troy claims he stabbed Trick with the poker, but other statements contradict him.
Foreman is now a cop!
At the hospital, Sheriff Jayne and Detective Denver are assigned to the case; Denver demands the makeup that was under Trick’s mask be removed so he knows who he’s questioning. While Jayne leaves to do another task, Trick grabs Denver and flips the bed – having somehow undone his cuffs – and begins another killing spree in the hospital Jayne and Denver shoot him multiple times and he falls two stories through a window, when they go down to check the body, Trick is gone and only a shocked EMT is there.
Jayne and Denver believe Trick managed to slip into the river and his body in never found; during further interviews with survivors and classmates, no one can give them a matching description of Patrick, teachers tell them he’s a quiet student but no one has ever met his parents – his home address is a dockyard.
The two sided pumpkin mask disappears from evidence.
Riverton, NY 2016. Trick strikes a high school party and slips away.
Hudson Village, NY 2017. A Halloween party ends in bloodshed, Denver is convinced it’s Trick, who has an online following.
Shady Creek, NY 2018. Denver meets with two FBI agents in a bar, warning them that Trick is due to strike soon, as he’s following the river and Shady Creek is his target; the bartender tells them to leave the cop talk out of her bar. Trick kidnaps one of the agents in the toilets and ties him to an elaborate pulley that will slowly decapitate him; Denver and the other agent try to help, but Trick jumps on the weighted end – killing the agent and maiming his partner. Trick gives Denver the run around and manages to kill the second agent.
Trick’s cult following grows.
Benton, NY 2019. Denver has long since lost his job after the deaths of the FBI agents, he meets Cheryl – who had to return home after her dad’s work accident – and explains that he was forced to retire and is leaving town. Nicky invites Cheryl to the Halloween maze with her younger siblings.
At the hospital, Cheryl is visiting her dad and helping him relearn how to talk; the doctor informs her that the insurance is refusing to pay out on further bills as they opened an investigation, Cheryl is positive her dad fell and didn’t jump like some claim.
Across town, Trick has called out Denver in his latest victim’s blood.
Someone here is sus
Troy and his friends hear about the latest killing, but toast to Patrick’s demise and Troy’s heroics at the party years before; they decide to crash the Halloween event and horror maze. Elsewhere, Trick gives Denver another run around and lures Deputy Green to the harbor with false texts from Denver – he contacts Jayne to warn her and she arrives just as Green is injured by a trap; Jayne helps him back to her car, but Trick uses the crane to swing a gravestone through the windscreen, killing him. The gravestone belongs to one of the FBI agents Trick killed the previous year.
Denver and Jayne go to Cheryl’s old house to find Trick has been hiding there. Jayne calls for backup and Denver’s car is stolen.
At the Halloween event, Cheryl sees someone watching her from a car as she goes into the maze with Nicky and her siblings. Troy tries to sneak his friends into the horror film at the church – but is caught by Talbott and they’re all made to pay a ‘donation’; they quickly get bored of the film and head for the maze, Johnny stays behind.
Jayne and Denver arrive at the church after a call in about his car being seen there; they find another deputy killed at the scene and Denver goes into the maze to search for Trick. Jayne calls for more backup and goes inside the church when Deputy Slater arrives, telling Talbott that they think Patrick is alive and nearby; Talbott spots Trick and chases him up to the projector where Trick kills him and injures Jayne.
In the maze, Nicky’s siblings are scared of the actors and one runs away; Cheryl follows him and finds him hiding from an actor with a knife, she tells him the actor is harmless, not knowing it’s actually Trick.
When a killer is about, assume everyone in a mask is him!
Cheryl meets back with Nicky and Trick kills one of the actor’s in front of them, he injures Nicky and is scared away by Denver, who sends Cheryl and Nicky to the hospital before going back into the maze to evacuate; he runs into Troy, warning him that Trick is after anyone who harmed him that night in 2015 – Troy admits it wasn’t him but Cheryl who stabbed Trick with the poker and she didn’t remember due to shock, so he took credit. Denver and Jayne race to the hospital.
Cheryl goes to visit her dad while Nicky is getting treatment and sees a video of Trick pushing her dad off the roof; she discovers Trick as killed him in bed and knocks her out. Jayne, Denver and Slater arrive too late and set out to find Cheryl; Jayne and Denver find her in a construction area of the hospital and are ambushed by Trick. In the scuffle, Cheryl manages to shoot Trick multiple times and an injured Denver tackles him through a window – falling onto a parked car.
Trick, as he lays dying, admits he’s Johnny – Troy’s friend – and suddenly other people dressed as Trick turn up to take him away; Denver tries to stop them, but is stabbed multiple times by the other Tricks before Slater steps in to help him. Denver begins to recognise the others as the EMT from the night Patrick disappeared, the bartender from 2018 and…Deputy Slater!
The real Patrick rolls up in wheelchair and stabs Denver once more as his cult dispurses; Denver manages to push him from the wheelchair before falling unconscious just as Cheryl arrives with help. Cheryl aids Patrick back onto his chair an sees a scar, remembering she stabbed Trick in the same place; she follows him back into the hospital and sees him disposing of the two sided mask before he heads to security to delete video footage of them attacking Denver.
Patrick lets Cheryl into the room, and after a struggle she manages to kill him.
Meanwhile, Jayne is being attended to by a nurse when Slater comes in to says they’ve lost Trick and Denver might not survive his injuries; Jayne notices makeup he’d missed when wiping it off. Cheryl rolls Patrick into the room and announces she got ‘one of them’, explaining there’s a group doing his work; Jayne reveals to Slater that she knows his secret and kills him.
Sometime later, Cheryl, Jayne and Denver begin their search for other recruits of Trick’s cult.
3.5/5: Trick is a predictable concept that leaves more questions that it answers; I figured out Slater, at least, from the second he came onto the scene, but left wondering how and why Patrick was able to recruit people to do his bidding – especially one particular, easy to forget character revealed at the end. There were some interesting killings around the traditional slashings but the plot fell apart somewhere in the middle, leaving a confusing ending.
K-Shop reminds me of an story my other half told me: a young woman went missing and it turned out she was murdered and turned into kebab meat. Not sure how true that is, but still reminded me of it none the less.
I went into this film expecting a slasher horror, with some British wit, and a predictable ending; and this film is far from predictable, there is a well thought out plot and depth, and perhaps a potential for a sequel if you squint hard enough.
Student, Salah, moves from London to the South Coast when his father, Zaki, falls ill; he offers to build up the Best Kebabs while his father recovers, promising he can finish his paper around the late shifts. Salah quickly learns that the British coastal nightlife is far from respectful, and the Police do little to help the situation.
Place your bets
Zaki discharges himself from hospital and tells Salah his dream to open a Turkish cuisine restaurant; Salah shuts him down, explaining he needs to concentrate on making money from his current business before starting new. While Salah nips downstairs, drunk customers demand to be let inside; Zaki tells them the shop is closed and is pushed to the ground by one of the thugs, Salah finds him but Zaki dies on the street.
Salah’s solicitor tells him that there won’t be a prosecution because the Coroner decided Zaki died of complications due to his existing lung condition; there’s no CCTV evidence because the Council decided it wasn’t a ‘worthwhile expense’ for the area. Salah looks through the menu and business proposal Zaki had made and decides to check out the property he had in mind for the restaurant; there Salah bumps into Big Brother winner Jason Brown, who has bought the building to open nightclub Slush.
Slush drums up more business for Best Kebabs, but Zaki was behind on payments and Salah can’t get anymore stock in. A drunk customer decides to help himself to some chips, and during the scuffle he ends up with his head in the fryer; Salah drags him to the basement and dunks his head into the sink for the deadly burn. With a dead body on hand, and no proof it was an accident, Salah finds a solution to his stock shortage.
Reluctant at first to feed human flesh to his customers, he decides they are what they eat anyway: human trash. Salah begins a successful seven year spree of ridding the South Coast of abusive drunks and putting the ‘best’ in Best Kebabs.
When Salah adds Billy the Weed to him menu, he learns that Slush is a haven of drug dealers working for Big Brother celeb, and club owner, Jason Brown – who is opening a new club in the church close to the kebab shop: Hush. Salah’s latest victim is also a dealer for Brown, but is reluctant to kill him this time around, wanting to end to the madness – especially now that the Council are installing CCTV because of the new club.
Easy to get away with kidnap in a booze capital
Salah takes matters into his own hands in a different way; taking Billy the Weed’s duck costume and filming Brown in the middle if the sex act in public, and then takes his victim’s phones and IDs to dump at Hush before it opens.
Salah and his hostage have a heart to heart; Salah tells him they fled Turkey when he was young and his father’s lungs were damaged by the gases being released on citizens. His hostage promises he’ll change and Salah lets him go. Salah uploads footage he took in Hush online.
The showdown?
Brown figures out Salah has taken out his dealer. He drugs Salah, dresses him in Billy’s costume again and ties him to a chair; Salah cuts through the ties with a knife from the secret pocket and attacks Brown, but the fight ends with Salah stabbed in the side and Brown escaping. Salah tries to follow, but can’t get inside Slush because he looks drunk; he collapses in the street – sees that the dealer he let go still hasn’t changed – and dies.
Not all is lost, however, Brown is arrested for drugs and the deaths of Salah’s victims. Some justice is served.
It’s a bittersweet ending, neither side really won and both lost everything; and the British will still continue to be drunken louts.
4.5/5: It’s a slow burn film, broken up into episodic sections, with a talented cast and great effects; it portrays the problems faced with curbing binge drinkers, Council’s priorities and the growing drug problem in the club trade.
Peter’s so called ‘cruel’ antics are hidden behind off screen plots and backstory; his only visual cruelty is the dead animals nailed to the trees and the aftermath of violence against people. The reality of Peter’s character is that he’s a spoilt psychopath protected by mummy, and the disgruntled child servant did Italy a favour before he turned into a notorious serial killer – which is a shame, because that would have made for a better film.
Instead, we get the story of Archaeologist, Norman, and his deaf, teenage daughter Liz. Norman’s work takes him to Italy where he finds the makeshift gravestone of ‘Cruel Peter’; meanwhile, Liz uses a Bishop’s Sphere to try to communicate with her mother, who died in an accident years prior that also left Liz deaf; of course, instead of her actual mother, she contacts the wandering spirit of Peter’s mother who is still searching for her sons body.
Just because it’s not a Ouija board, doesn’t mean it doesn’t attract evil!
Both Norman and Liz begin to see strange things, specifically a housemaid with her throat slit, and then there’s the sudden appearance of neighbour, Harriet, who is clearly the manifestation of Peter’s mother.
Peter possesses Liz and is lead away to the old family house by Harriet, who, back in her day, was a witch; she had slit the housemaid’s throat to contact Peter when he disappeared.
Norman learns, through his assistant Bianca, that Peter had slit his own father’s throat and his mother covered it up as suicide. Bianca convinces Norman to use the Sphere to contact the child servant of the family, and although he’s fully aware of what a Bishop’s Sphere is, he has no clue of the mechanics – yet still manages to summon the spirit he needed.
Mamaaa, I just killed my daaaad
The child servant shows Norman that he’d had a change of heart – he was going back to Peter to release him when the earthquake hit and killed him, not too far from Peter’s own grave. Bianca’s aunt, the cliche old woman who knows everything, tells them they need to exorcise the gravesite in order to save Liz.
There’s some weird event at the grave while Bianca exorcises the grave; I’m not sure of they were skeletons or zombies, or skeleton zombies, but it’s short lived. The pair then go to the old home of Peter and find Liz; thinking the whole thing is over, they stay in Italy.
It’s never over though, is it? Somehow, Peter still resides in Liz and comes back to her two months later.
To be continued? I hope not.
Cruel Peter is a dull film with a few cheap jump scares, the only thing I can applaud is the alternative use of an alternative to a Ouija board – if only they’d delved deeper into its lore a little more, or into Peter’s history; was he born evil through Harriet’s occult ways? Was he made evil by his upbringing? Harriet’s character is under used, she had the potential to be something truly horrifying and they let her do very little.
On the morning of a family funeral, Steven Graham tries to wrangle his two teenagers; eldest son, Peter, and eccentric daughter, Charlie. Steven scolds Charlie for sleeping in the treehouse because it was so cold, while mother, Annie, is already in the car waiting for everyone.
At the funeral, Annie reads the eulogy for her mother Ellen; she explains that they had a strained relationship due to Ellen’s extremely private life. During the service, Charlies draws in her little book, or eats chocolate that has to be nut free.
Important necklace is important
Annie talks to Charlie before bed. Charlie complains that Ellen always wanted her to be a boy, and Annie brushes it off by saying she grew up as a tomboy herself and Ellen just wanted to recreate those days through Charlie.
A week after the funeral, Annie goes through her mother’s things to find a book on Spiritualism, with a note inside from Ellen apologising to Annie; she then thinks she sees Ellen in her workshop. At school, a pigeon hits the window of Charlie’s classroom; she steals a pair of scissors from the teacher’s desk and casually cuts the head off the pigeon after class, pocketing it to take home.
Charlie is the creepiest part of this film
Steven receives a phone call from the cemetery to inform him that Ellen’s grave has been desecrated; Steven lies to Annie and says it was about a payment issue, and Annie tells him she’s going to see a film.
Annie secretly attends a group meeting for the bereaved; she’s encouraged to share her feelings and goes into a long rant about her Mother, their family history of mental health issues – which lead to the deaths of her Father and older brother – and period of ‘no contact’ between her and Ellen after Peter was born, but Ellen was a key role in raising Charlie.
Peter is invited to a party; he lies to Annie and says it’s a school event, who calls him out and asks if he’s going to be drinking – he denies the accusation, so Annie suggests taking Charlie while Peter tells her she’s unlikely to want to go. To prove a point, Annie finds Charlie in the garden, who is staring at an apparition of Ellen in a ring of fire (then that song got stuck in my head), and forces Charlie to go to the party with her brother.
At the party, Peter tries to impress a girl he likes with a bag of weed; he tells Charlie to have a piece of cake being handed out and leaves her alone to smoke. Charlie begins to go into anaphylaxis, telling Peter it’s getting harder to breathe; he rushes her to the car and speeds towards the hospital while his sister writhes around in the back, she hangs out of the window for air and Peter swerves to avoid a dead deer in the road. Charlie’s head strikes a telephone post.
Pete’s going to need a heap of therapy that he won’t actually get
Peter slowly drives home and leaves the body for his Mother to find. The grief causes further tension between Mother and son. Peter is haunted by Charlie’s presence in the house.
Annie attempts another meeting, but changes her mind without even leaving her car; she’s stopped by Joan, who offers her support as she lost her son and grandson in an accident herself; Annie eventually takes her up on this, going to her apartment and recalling the time, during a sleepwalking event, that she’d covered herself and her children in paint thinner and woke with a lit match in her hand – which started the tension between her and Peter.
Annie clearly deals with her trauma through her miniatures; dotted around her workshop, amongst her commissions, are several pieces of her and her mother in various points in her life – her latest piece is Charlie’s accident. Steven berrates Annie for the model, asking her what Peter would think if he saw it – she brushes it off as artistic release. Later, at dinner, Annie accuses Peter of being selfish and not apologising for what happened to his sister; Peter shoots back that Charlie didn’t want to go anyway – that Annie forced her and therefore her fault, too.
I think a qualified therapist would say this is NOT HEALTHY
Sometime later, Annie bumps into Joan again. Joan is ecstatic to share that she met someone who taught her to perform a seance to speak to her grandson; Annie is skeptical at first, but goes back to Joan’s home to see it for herself. Shaken after what she sees, Joan gives her the instructions to perform it herself and encourages her to do the same while the family is home.
That night, while trying to sleep, Annie follows a trail of ants to Peter’s room; the ants cover his face and Annie screams, Peter asks her what the problem is – completely fine – and pressures her to revealing why she hated him so much; she admits that she never wanted him in the first place while covered in paint thinner once again. Annie wakes from the dream and decides to conjure Charlie; she wakes Steven and Peter to force them to try the seance with her. Things begin to break and fly around, and Annie is possessed by Charlie until Steven throws water over her.
Peter is haunted by Charlie at school. He excuses himself to the toilet and phones his Father; Steven then phones Annie, they argue and she states that she’s not sleepwalking again – not that he accused her of it in the first place; however there is a miniature of Peter missing his head. That night, Peter sees Charlie in the corner of his room and her head rolls off her body that turns into a ball; he then feels someone trying to pull his head off and accuses Annie when she comes into his room. Annie suspects that Charlie’s spirit is evil and tries to burn her sketch book in the fireplace, but burning it causes her sleeve to catch fire, too, until she puts the fire out.
Annie heads to Joan’s, but she isn’t home, and she suddenly recognises the fancy welcome mat at the door; she rushes home to the boxes of her Mother’s things, discovering other mats and a photo album with pictures of Ellen and Joan – the pair was in some kind of cult and Ellen was their leader, intending to use her own family to summon Paimon: the 8th King of Hell. Annie goes into the attic, finding the decapitated body of her mother and the symbol from her necklace painted on the wall in blood.
At school, Peter is briefly possessed and slams his nose on his desk, breaking it; Steven takes him home and puts him to bed, Annie then tells him everything she’s discovered and begs him to check the attic; she then begs him to throw Charlie’s book into the fireplace – expecting to die – and Steven accuses her of digging up her own Mother’s grave. Annie throws the book into the fire herself and Steven goes up in flames. Annie is then possessed.
I didn’t know William DeFoe was in this!
Peter wakes and finds his Father’s corpse, along with some naked people hiding in the dark corners; Annie chases him into the attic which is decorated in occult material. A possessed Annie decapitates herself and Peter jumps out of the window; Charlie’s soul enters his body and follows the levitating Annie into the treehouse where the other cult members are waiting. Joan crowns Charlie as Paimon, and congratulates him on escaping his female vessel and finding a male one to rule over them.
I have a personal theory that Ellen intended Peter to be the vessel of Paimon in the first place, but Annie’s ‘no contact’ for years ruined those plans until Charlie came along and she was allowed back into the family; but that’s just my theory!
The movie starts slow, and I’m pretty sure the creep factor would have been ramped up if Charlie had lived – but that obviously wasn’t the point of the film! There are some great transitioning scenes and effects; the acting is on point and Grandma being Queen of the cult was a great twist!
4/5: Later scenes make up for the slow progression, but still not enough spook factor to push it to full marks.
I can sum up what is wrong with Spike Lee’s ‘reimagination’ of Oldboy, in one sentence:
Joe Doucet is not likeable.
I cannot feel sorry for an alcoholic, deadbeat dad who has no respect for women – or anyone else for that matter; if someone like Joe dropped out of my life suddenly I wouldn’t miss him for a moment.
Oh, you were locked up for twenty years? Diddums. You were framed for the murder of your wife? Shame it sounds more believable that you actually did it.
My hatred for the main character aside, it’s surprising how Lee can call this version a ‘reimagination’, follow the original film story pretty closely and still get it so wrong; which is a shame, because it has a good cast attached to it, with Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen, Samuel L Jackson and Pom Klementieff all from the Marvel cinematic universe – and Rami Malek briefly making a scene.
So, what exactly is wrong with this version?
Let’s start with Joe’s time locked away and his transition to a modern world. Joe spirals at first, once he figures out there’s no freedom in sight he does attempt suicide, he tries to adopt a wild mouse Green Mile style, and draws a face on a pillow in his own blood; however, once free, there is no erratic behaviour, he adapts to modern technology right away, he shows he’s capable of planning and executing those plans.
‘Laugh and the world laughs with with you, cry and you weep alone’
In comparison, Dae-su displayed some psychotic behaviour; he was overly protective if his diaries, had outbursts of anger and violence, and was compulsive. A good scene to really compare the two characters is when they discover the Chinese restaurant; Joe has enough forethought to wait for the henchman to leave, follow the delivery boy and take his bike to find his captors. Dae-su, on the other hand, sees the delivery boy with a big order and chased that moped on foot; he does not second guess that the delivery could be for a large gathering, he just runs.
The dark humour is charming
Joe shows meticulous planning when facing Chaney, the manager of the holding facilities; he precisely cuts chunks out of Chaney’s neck and fills them with salt to torture him, while Dae-su took the first thing on hand – the famous hammer – and just prys out teeth!
Although both Marie and Mi-do are both very 2D characters, existing only as the love interest, Mi-do shows genuine love for Dae-su; she is an innocent girl who chooses him (albeit through hypnosis) as her ‘first’, promising him that when she’s ready she will sing his favourite song. Marie, on the other hand, simply has poor taste in men and swaps one bad habit for another; a former drug user now addicted to ‘lost causes’, Lee tries to pass off her new obsession of Joe as ‘love’ and it’s portrayed poorly.
I’m not sure what’s cringier, Adrian’s obviously fake British accent, or that he has no charm whatsoever; sure, his character may be more mentally scarred compared to Woo-jin, but he shows more erratic and impulsive behaviour for someone who planned a twenty year revenge – compared to Joe, who was the one in solitary. Woo-jin has a calm charm to him that balances Dae-su’s impulsive behaviour.
Relax, guy, take a load off
Adrian promises Joe he will kill himself, but Woo-jin promised Dae-su the instrument to his death, the chance for his own revenge; Woo-jin never planned for Dae-su to have control over his life, he only offered an incentive to solve the mystery and protect Mi-do. There is no such incentive for Joe, Marie is safe and he only has to solve the mystery to clear his own name – Dae-su never cared about clearing his own name, just Mi-do and his revenge.
The reasonings behind the antagonists revenge is similar and yet different. Peodophilla, especially in a family setting, is gross to think about and disturbing when you consider how well groomed Adrian and his sister were; however, going for this gritter version misses the point of Woo-jin’s revenge completely. Woo-jin and his sister’s incest story – although equally disturbing – was young, innocent curiosity, it was never shown that the pair slept together and Korea’s sex education system at the time may have been enough to convince Woo-jin’s sister she was pregnant without intercourse.
Woo-jin loved his sister dearly, and watched (some may argue helped) her commit suicide, it softens the blow of the incest story and makes you sympathise with Woo-jin; for Adrian, there is no softening the blow, he claimed he loved his father but did he really? His feeling are complex but obviously still twisted. What separates the end of the two antagonists is that Woo-jin wanted to join his sister once his revenge was complete, shown by his memory of him holding her off the dam before he kills himself, while Adrian just wanted to end his own, tortured, suffering.
Don’t do it!!!
Dae-su’s ending was left to interpretation. Did he find the hypnotist and wipe the truth from his memory, or did he just convince himself he did in order to live like the monster he is? Joe shows no growth on his end, he doesn’t face Marie and the truth but chooses to hide away once more, running from his responsibilities like he had done before his twenty year imprisonment, like a coward.
While I appreciate the little nods to the original film (which you would miss if you’ve never seen it), Oldboy 2013 skirts over the dark humour and characterization that made its 2003 predecessor a success. As a whole, Spike Lee missed the most important message Oldboy gave: Even though I am no more than a monster, don’t I, too, have the right to live?
The Darkest Dawn has a much steadier filming hand compared to its predecessor Hungerford; it’s less chaotic and more youtube blog video, which is a plus if you hate the erratic camera movement.
The Darkest Dawn centers around aspiring journalist Chloe Murdock, who receives a video camera for her sweet sixteenth; she begins capturing snippets of her everyday life, including the news reports of a freak storm in Hungerford. Not long after the initial reports, Chloe’s mum goes missing and not long after that there’s a mass evacuation of her town. The invasion from the end of Hungerford has begun, causing hysteria and a close encounter with a plane crash; the insects begin dropping from the sky, infecting Chloe’s dad and resulting in his death; Chloe and older sister, Sam, are saved by the very unstable Bob.
Bob seems to hate Chloe with every fibre of his being, despite keeping the pair safe in some underground tunnels of London, and his behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing with each new clip. After an unknown passing of days, the trio hear voices in the tunnels; Cowen, Adam and Kipper have been searching for a base in the tunnels and stumble across them. Adam and Bob immediately butt heads, but Kipper and Cowen are willing to help and share supplies.
Swapping stories
Cowen’s group are still searching for Adam’s sister Phil, who was taken by the infected in the first film, and camp with Chloe’s group for the night; however, Bob ambushes Cowen while they sleep and Adam strangles Bob protecting Cowen. Chloe and Sam join Cowen’s group, figuring it was safer with them than anywhere else; they eventually stumble across the ‘base’ they were looking for but it’s empty, aside for dying the doctor, Helen, who circles Manchester in her own blood before slipping away.
Trying to figure out where the others have gone, the group discover something called ‘Project Ascalon’ and the manifesto of members who were at the base; Phil is alive, and heading towards an evacuation point a few miles away.
The group exit the tunnels to find London destroyed. Kipper finds a boat and they head up river, hoping to catch up to the evacuation point; they make a stop at a lone house on the river bank and Cowen heads inside with Adam to look for supplies. Chloe follows shortly after and they discover an old man and his dead wife upstairs; the old man offers Adam and apple for his safety and Cowen takes Adam back onto the landing to talk in private; Cowen wants to give the apple back, but Adam argues that the old man is dead whether he has the apple or not. There’s a gunshot. Adam intentionally left his gun with the old man, saying he ‘gave him a choice’, and retrieves his gun before leaving.
Further up the river, obvious ambush is obvious when a young boy runs outside begging for help; as everyone rushes in, Adam is the only one smart enough to hang back while the others are held at gunpoint. The three men decide to keep Chloe and kill the others, but Adam shoots two of them and Chloe stabs their leader to death.
Their luck only gets worse when they are attacked by yet another crazy group, but also one of the invading ships; the boat is ruined and they group continue on foot, discovering a group of infected chasing a young woman; worried it’s Phil, Adam rushes to help. It’s not Phil, but the woman is dying and Adam ends her suffering; Adam briefly freaks and tries to kill himself, but is stopped by Cowen, convincing Adam he did a mercy kill and it was ok.
The group try to relax at night, but Sam can’t handle the lively atmosphere after watching her sister kill a man; Kipper assures her she’s doing well protecting Chloe and the group narrowly avoid another invading ship before settling down for the night. In the early morning, the camp is found by Hopper, who is the ultimate twat, and Ricky; Hopper wants to kill a few of them, but Ricky reports back to Sarge that they found the group.
At the temporary camp, Cowen meets a familiar face. Sarge is the man who led his escape from the factory and out of Hungerford; Cowen explains they’re looking for Phil and Sarge calls out ‘Pip’ – Pip is Phillipa and there’s an emotional reunion for the flatmates. In the barn, Sarge explains that he went back inside the factory and found Phil, and has been keeping her safe since; it’s clear Sarge cares for Phil like a daughter and it’s adorable!
Cowen tells them they found the tunnel base and Helen, showing them the map she’d circled. Phil tells them it’s not a circle, Helen and a team of doctors had discovered type O- blood subdues the parasite the bugs inject. Sarge won’t divulge what Ascalon is.
Sarge weeps for a lost friend
Sam warns Chloe not to tell the soldiers she’s type O-, saying it could be dangerous for her if they knew. Chloe tries to find out what is in a guarded box the soldiers are referring to as ‘Ascalon’, when an invading ship passes over and begins dropping bugs; survivors of the attack take shelter in the barn, but it’s soon apparent Phil is infected, in the panic Chloe tell the group she has the blood type they need.
Sam’s a nurse and helps with the transfusion, Phil returns to normal; Sarge explains Ascalon is a weapon they took from one of the ships they managed to take down, and the group settle down. During the night, Hopper and a few other soldiers mutiny – they kill Sarge and take Chloe for her blood along with the mysterious box; the others try to ambush them at the evacuation point, but the infection tries to take hold of Phil again and they’re caught.
Hopper throwing his small dick energy around
Hopper and his crew hold them at gunpoint, he kills Sam out of spite and takes the others to the box. Hopper states that he will use Ascalon to defeat the invasion, when a green light from the weapon throws everyone to the floor; Hopper accidentally summoned a ship and the evacuation point is under attack.
Cowen and others secure the weapon in the chaos and radio for evacuation, which will only happen if they have the weapon with them; however, Adam recognises that they won’t get far with the ship nearby and takes Ascalon to destroy it. The rest manage to get on the helicopter with the now empty box, and moments later there’s a huge explosion that wipes out the ship.
Phil gets another transfusion from Chloe and asks for Adam when she wakes. Chloe, in anger and sorrow, drop the camera from the helicopter.
The Darkest Dawn is less alien invasion and more apocalyptic survival; it’s unclear how much time has passed between the initial invasion in Hungerford and Cowen’s group finding Chloe and Sam. It seems that the UK (or at least London and its surrounding areas) have fallen into anarchy rather quickly, and that the military leaders were ready to surrender in the first days of the invasion – which I find unrealistic that they would surrender so easily. There are smoother transitions between clips and the film feels a lot less choppy than Hungerford did; Cowen and his friends have fleshed out characteristics off screen between films, more mature and obviously mentally scarred by the things they’ve seen.
While a different POV for the film is a nice change, Sam and Chloe bring little to the screen other than plot convenience in the last half hour of the film.
Also, where the hell was Jenine from the first film? Did she die? Cowen got over her quick!
3.5/5: It’s a lot smoother and well paced. However, there are some unanswered questions from Hungerford: what was the alien creature at the end of it? How quickly did it go from a small invasion to the destruction of London? Who trained Cowen and the others weapons combat? What were the web like cocoons?
Cowen Rosewell wakes up one day and decides to start his video project for college: Seven Days in the Life of Cowen. How exciting could seven days be around your average college student?
Well, Cowen also happens to start his project the same day a freak storm hits his hometown of Hungerford; a strange cloud cluster looms over the town hall and lightning strikes, knocking out all radio and phone signals, and causing a fire in the old factory.
Not your typical thunderstorm
Cowen continues to video the antics of himself and his flatmates: Adam, his sister Philippa (Phil) and Kipper; after a day of drinking, Adam throws up out of the window as the local Councilman falls unconscious in the street, the group go out to help but he’s already gone…leaving a small pool of blood behind.
The next morning, Jenine arrives at the flat to invite the group around to her house for a party; Adam and Phil have already embarrassed Cowen in front of her by writing ‘Cock Suka’ on his forehead while he was asleep and letting him answer the door – Cowen is initially upset, but forgives and forgets, and they all head out to the party. On the way, they pass various people acting strangely, but ignore it.
The group enjoy the party. Cowen and Jenine rekindle their feelings, having dated previously, and plan a date for the following week. After taking a pee somewhere in the garden, Cowen passes a window to see the Councilman – Jenine’s dad – smacking his head against the window repeatedly; Cowen tries to tell Adam what he just saw, but the girl next to Adam suddenly coughs up blood and collapses. Jenine accuses Adam of slipping her something and tells everyone to leave.
The next day, Cowen phones Jenine to apologise and explain what he saw her dad doing in his office; she tells him that her dad has locked himself in – kicking the keys under the door to her – and is simply just stressed out before hanging up. In the kitchen, Phil opens the door to the postman who instantly tries to choke her; Adam defends her, grabbing a knife and stabbing him, it doesn’t have any effect and he continues his attack until he’s sprayed in the face with deodorant; the postman’s face is badly burnt and drops dead in their living room. The group decides that, because Adam is on probation, they shouldn’t call the police and just dump the body in the dumpster since no one checks them.
While moving the body, Cowen notices a strange hole on the back of the postman’s neck; the next morning, he convinces Adam to take a look but he brushes it off from the glass he’d landed on; Cowen explains that the knife had no effect but deodorant did, and wants to test his theory.
I had to pause the film for a second here to follow their line of logic. They refused to get the police involved, despite video evidence of self defence, because Adam is on probation – however, Adam can risk assaulting someone with deodorant to the face over a hunch?
Dante fails to see your logic here
Luckily, the random citizen they choose just happens to be affected by the spray; Adam and Cowen chase him to the old factory where they see a group of people acting strangely. Adam slips away to have a better look, but Cowen is spotted and runs back to the flat; Adam isn’t far behind but is clearly acting different and is sprayed in the face, causing a strange insect to escape from his neck and killed by Cowen.
The group decide they should try to get out of town and Cowen wants to grab Jenine on the way; they break into the supermarket where Kipper works to grab more deodorant and are ambushed by the infected laying in wait. Safely back at the flat, and with fifteen cans of spray, Kipper plans their route to Jenine’s and they head out with weapons in tow; Jenine is hiding in her room as someone already tried to break in, and she won’t leave until they’ve sorted her dad out. They get the insect out, but it’s too late for her dad.
A mistake by Phil, on the way home, puts her in danger and Adam freaks out after rescuing her, causing a fallout between them; Jenine tells Cowen she has keys to her dad’s car that’s parked at the council office, he tells the group he plans to go at dawn but Phil sneaks out instead, wanting to make up for the mistake.
Cowen convinces Adam to stay behind to protect Jenine for him; he heads out with Kipper and they’re ambushed, only to be saved by Terry (Hungerford’s worst PC in my opinion). Terry leads them to the council office where they find Phil and Terry begins the drive back to the flat; Terry explains that people have disappeared, even his own colleagues who went to the factory, and that he had to kill his own Sargent in self defence. Up ahead, there’s a group of infected in the road and Terry flips the car while turning to avoid them.
Phil is taken by the infected from the car, Terry has died in the crash, and Kipper and Cowen arrive back at the flat to discover Adam and Jenine have been taken, too. The pair decide they should head to the factory, but have to split up then they find two children abandoned in a car; Cowen goes to the factory alone, people are locked inside a pen outside the factory and Cowen promises to help them later; deep inside the factory, he finds people wrapped in a strange web-like cocoon. Cowen is attacked by an infected, who drags him to another area where he finds Adam and Janine; in the darkness, some Ivan Ooze looking monster attacks a woman and advances on the trio, only to be shot dead by the rescue team.
Always look to the skies
The trio are led back outside by the military and reunite with Kipper. They look to the sky and see a huge spaceship overhead.
Later, looking into the camera, Cowen explains that there is an invasion and they don’t know how many insects have been released; Britain’s communication with Europe has been cut off and they didn’t find Phil. Cowen turns the camera around to a city of destruction.
I don’t like ‘found footage’ films, so I have a negative feeling about this film from the beginning; its only saving grace is that the special effects – as few as they were – are really good! The storm looks real and eerie, the postman’s burnt face looked professional and the insects are realistic. However, aside from the main five cast, the acting in places is poor and the fight choreography is terrible; two main scenes that stand out is Adam’s fight with the postman, where Adam jumps before he’s actually thrown, and the infected beating on some victims looks unconvincing.
As I stated above, there is that strange plot based logic of ‘we’re not calling the police but let’s assault some random person on a whim’, and Hungerford’s worst cop suddenly becomes rambo for five minutes.
2.5/5: Is it a bad film? No, but it’s not the most entertaining found footage film I’ve come across either. I must be good enough for some, because it has a sequel, which I will check out for the sake of curiosity.
It has been a long, long break; you’d think a world-wide lockdown would force me to spend all this free time reviewing my bag full of horror – alas, I’ve spent it catching up on gaming and learning a little Korean!
Oh, and surgery recently.
Maybe I was subconsciously worried that I’d blow through my stack of films and have nothing left…
Anyway, I promised a double creature feature so here it is!
Don’t go down in the deep dark
When Olive Crown applied for a deep sea expedition, to test the world’s most advanced diving suit, she didn’t expect it to go so wrong; after pushing the dive suit beyond its limits, Olive comes across a strange creature that attacks her, when she wakes, she has no memory of the event, but she is fired from her job for breaking the suit.
Before Olive leaves, she checks the damaged suit and finds a strange egg in one of the oxygen tanks; she smuggles it off the ship and hides it in her basement of the home she shares with boyfriend, Matt. Matt welcomes her home along with Olive’s sister, Ellie; there’s some sexual tension between Matt and Ellie, so either they’ve already slept together or Matt is just super loyal to Olive and resisting.
Once the egg hatches, Olive keeps it in a fish tank to study; the octopus like creature can survive out of water and seems to refuse all types of fish – and rather than go out and buy raw meat, Olive risks a finger to feed it blood; it’s no wonder it backfires when she actually tries to feed it raw meat later. Olive confides in her former co-worker and shipmate, Johnny, about her find, under the promise that he doesn’t tell her former boss, Dr. Fletcher.
Olive begins to realise that she and the creature share a bond, and she cannot resist its newborn, late night cries for blood – one particular shot had me thinking she was breast feeding it, but it was just her arm, thankfully!
Johnny doesn’t have a spine it seems, since Dr. Fletcher bursts into Olive’s home to claim what he thinks is rightfully his creature; he becomes the first victim of the creature’s hunger and now meger amounts of blood from ‘mummy’ won’t satisfy it. Feeling betrayed, Olive feeds Johnny to the creature, too.
Matt, who has been at work at a care home during all this, has noticed Olive’s decrease in sanity and calls back Ellie to help; rather than actually help, the pair are caught in the act by Olive, who tosses Matt to be fed to the now adult creature and chains her own sister to the radiator. Olive shows Ellie eggs the creature has produced, calling herself a grandmother; Ellie implores her to but the egg back, but Olive insists the creature won’t harm her.
Famous last words.
Ellie manages to escape, but so does the creature. Ellie goes down to the ocean where eggs have washed up everywhere and Cthulhu rises from the water in the distance.
The Creature Below isn’t a bad film, but it’s not a good one either; the flow of the film is a little janky, I’m not entirely sure how Olive went from ‘feed the baby blood’ to obsessively drawing Cthulhu – or how she kidnapped an old lady in a wheelchair from Matt’s workplace without anyone spotting her???? You can also tell the CGI budget went entirely on the creature; the dive at the beginning of the film looked like one of those scuba figures – the type you put in fish tanks – on a string, and the ship looked CGI, but I’m not sure if it was or just weird lighting.
Also, did we really need the scene of her getting dressed?
Rating: 3.5/5
A shark’s obsession with eggs.
The sister film to the famous Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (there are two other Mega Shark films, but apparently not connected?); where said shark is obsessed with eggs, rather than people.
Don’t get me wrong, people get eaten, but it seems to be all about this perfect omelette it’s looking for.
In the depths of the Congo, in an illegal diamond mine, the work awakens Big Croc’ Momma from her sleep; across the world, the Megalodon attacks a US Navy ship, killing everyone but McCormick; he blames himself for the attack because of a sonic device he had been working on may have attracted the shark – he offers to help Hutchinson find the Megalodon.
Back in the Congo, Putnam captures the Croc’ and her eggs; he organises transport on a cargo ship, but it is attacked by the Megalodon, allowing Croc’ to escape 400 miles from Florida; the USS Lexington – with McCormick aboard – learns of this attack. Hutchinson is sent to interrogate Putnam when he washes ashore and is surprised to learn about the Croc’ and her eggs; Putnam is taken back to Lexington before the three of them head to an island where Croc’ is laying her eggs, they’re close to hatching, so a bombardment is ordered – but not before Megalodon gets to snack on a few; this upsets Croc’ and she invades Miami and heads for Orlando, but is pushed back by an Arch Flash produced by a power station.
With both creatures back in the water, Putnam suggests luring them into the Panama Canal to be bombarded by the Navy again; the fight between the creatures causes a tidal wave and frees the creatures to battle in open water again.
Big Croc’ Momma has laid more eggs than Megalodon could hope to devour all along the US coast, and they’re hatching! A Nuclear sub is sent out to destroy the Croc’ and Megalodon before they can reach Hawaii – only for the Megalodon to swallow the missile whole, making it even more dangerous than ever. Hutchinson’s helicopter crashes on the beach, so Putnam and McCormick head out with a little boat and McCormick’s sonic machine; the plan is to drop the device into the underwater volcano, luring the creatures to it – and it works! Big Croc’ Momma, her babies, and Megalodon follow the sonic sounds and the heat causes the missile inside Megalodon to explode.
They all lived happily ever after. Until a giant lizard invades Japan.
Again, not a terrible film; there’s a lot of back and forth of fetching and carrying eggs, and I spent way too much time trying to figure out if a 150 foot Croc’ can make it from Miami, to Orlando, and back in record time; but if you want to just sit back and watch a dumb creature film, then this is it!
GONGPO REVIEW 