The Pool
In which a man finds himself trapped in an empty disused swimming pool with only his girlfriend and a crocodile for company. What will get him first? Starvation, the hungry reptile, or his lack of the insulin he needs to keep him alive? This Thai effort does rather stretch suspension of disbelief, but it's also a rollicking good suspense piece that will keep you on the edge of your seat for most of its running time. I liked it more than Alexandre Aja's CRAWL but be warned - if you're thinking of watching this and you're a dog lover you may not like one particular sequence.
She Never Died
A cannibal lady with super regenerative powers gets recruited by a hardbitten policeman to take down a local human sex trafficking ring. A companion piece to 2015's HE NEVER DIED (which I'd never heard of until now), SHE NEVER DIED is very much like the kind of pulp comic book entertainment we used to see in the 1980s from companies like Empire Pictures. In fact, while last night's THE HIDDEN (1987) actually doesn't feel that dated (and in some ways is more socially relevant than ever), SHE NEVER DIED feels as if it was made 30 years ago, with its cardboard cut out villains and loud and irritating sidekick character. That said it's a pretty entertaining cardboard cut out comic book. Some pleasantly low budget futuristic sets instead of the grim locations used would have been of immense help.
After Midnight
From the ridiculous to the sublime. An ultra low budget meditation on relationships with an added monster, AFTER MIDNIGHT manages to be both touching and surprisingly funny. Hank (Jeremy Gardner) and Abby (Brea Grant) live in Hank's rambling old house in a tiny town in nowhere USA. They've been together ten years but never married. One day Abby ups and leaves for a month. While she's away Hank suffers nightly attacks by a monster with huge claws that tears his front door apart and eats the family cat. Do the monster and Abby's departure have anything to do with one another? I won't spoil it but AFTER MIDNIGHT is a lovely film with excellent acting from the leads and some very funny supporting characters. I very much suspect this will end up a festival favourite.
The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil
There's a serial killer on the loose in South Korea. He rear ends cars and when the driver gets out he stabs them to death. He messes up when he selects as his latest victim gang boss Jang Dong-soo (Dong-seok Ma). Jang beats up the killer but still ends up in hospital needing two hours of surgery to save his life. When he gets out he teams up with the policeman investigating the case and the hunt for the killer is on. A slick, fast-paced crime drama that's apparently based on a true story and with a great lead performance from Dong-seok Ma, who's probably best known as the man who doesn't know how to change his ringtone in TRAIN TO BUSAN.
Vampire's Kiss
What in God's name is this? A late 1980s picture I never caught up with at the time, that's what. And what a very peculiar picture it is. I'm not just talking about Nicolas Cage's performance here, which is a goldfish bowl of eccentric acting all its own, but the film as a whole, which spends its running time ridiculing a man who is obviously mentally ill and believes himself to be a vampire. Was this sold as a comedy? A horror film? Or was it one of those pictures they had no idea how to push and just hoped Cage's bizarre turn would cause sufficient word of mouth? If it's that last one they were right - here we are watching it 30 years after it first hit the big screen. Only composer Colin Towns, channeling James Bernard amongst others with his fabulous gothic score, really emerges from VAMPIRE'S KISS with his dignity intact. But Nicolas Cage is the reason this film will go down in movie history. Required viewing for any serious student of 1980s cinema.
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