J*A*S*M

It’s so clear that this is a black&white pose to be fawned over by the art and festival audiences, who will also find something that actually isn’t there. But as long as poses like this last only seventy minutes, I’m fine with them. A decent atmosphere and a surprising plot twist.

One hundred minutes of lyrical banging the head of a man who’s lost his purpose in life. I can understand Brady, the hero, but I would relate to him more if that lost life purpose of his was something more meaningful than horse or bull riding. The Rider is not for me, but does have its qualities.

Militaristic zombie or contagion horror films look all the same: a bunker, soldiers, loads of testosterone, a female scientist, shooting, running. They aren’t scary. At most, you can relish on the gore and the make-up of the zombies, which in Patient Zero is a complete failure; the make-up weren’t up to standards, really. The story itself has traces of an interesting idea which, of course, isn’t at all exploited. I would love to know if any of the people involved believed that the resulting film would be smart somehow.

A heist movie about a robbery carried out by utterly stupid losers. Something like Logan Lucky but actually entertaining. Bart Layton has an obvious soft spot for bizarre true stories that are hard to believe (like his documentary The Imposter). And let him stick to it if he can make such pleasant films out of them. By the way, whoever makes the subtitles, in about the middle of the film they have a unique opportunity to use Jan Plavec’s famous motto “You haven’t got this far only to get this far”. Don’t waste it :D

Filmbooster lists one Quinn Lasher as the director, but the truth is that the person behind the film is the talented Greek Dennis Iliadis. I wonder what’s happened to him to have fallen so low this year. After years of delay, the anticipated Delirium went straight to Blu-ray in the US and was in the realm of the average, and now his name has been quietly erased from He’s Out There – not that the result is anything to brag about. There are signs of an ambition to do certain things a little differently than in the usual slasher movie by some untalented nobody, but in all respects, the film is still too ordinary and uninteresting. I didn’t feel any energy or enthusiasm and I wonder whether there isn’t anything more pointless than lazy horror. About one quarter of the film is dedicated to Yvonne Strahovski calming down her two annoying brats, which really got on my nerves. And I also don’t understand why it is so awfully bleak visually. Overall, not recommended, even though you can find worse.

This is one of those films where the plausible psychological evolution of the main character, following a brutal attack and the loss of his beloved wife, is completely brushed aside and subordinated to him being able to joke and be tough, immediately after getting “superpowers”. To be clear, in this particular case it didn’t bother me at all, but it’s worth noting in case someone went to this film expecting some serious technological sci-fi. Upgrade is nothing but a light-weight B-movie. A quality and proud B-movie with a lot of nice ideas, plenty of original tricks and a confident technical aspect. I would compare it a little to the new Dredd, but as an experience, Upgrade is a notch higher. What’s fun is that many of the things that seem silly while watching make a lot more sense when you understand the points. On the other hand, I’m not quite sure whether everything that makes sense while watching, still make sense in hindsight. In any case, I’m happy that, after five years, Whannell has written something interesting again, and happier still that he found a director.

An utterly tragic monstrosity! And I was quite confident: decent preliminary responses in Rotten Tomatoes, Barbara Crampton and AJ Bowen (two of my favourites in indie horror), the attractive setting of an abandoned cabin in the mountains. Even the first scene gave me hope for a well made simple forest slasher flick with some kind of weird mutants, but what follows is incredible. Absolute chaos, where everything is mixed up, and never well. Baruh’s method is limited to the constant use of a leading score (there’s always something playing!) and slow motion shots. Nothing in this films works the way the author intended; I haven’t seen such directorial impotence in a long time. And on top of all that, it is really stupid. I wouldn’t mind that in a slasher flick if it didn’t try to be God knows what. I burst out laughing in the last scene before the end credits, when it appeared that the creators wanted to squeeze some political connotation.

Beautifully nasty, dark, stifling, chilling. Something few people will appreciate as much as the knowledgeable horror fans. In Hereditary you need to be able to enjoy the slow, atmospheric, unsettling and emotionally tense first half (or rather, three quarters) as much as the literal (beautiful, if you can call it that) horror atrocities into which the film dives in the end. Half the people will say that it’s slow and lacking cheap attractions (“where are the jump scares?”), while the other half will lament that it didn’t stick to only hints all the way. I love how this film portrays the broken relationships in that family. I love how the director, with only one sound, is able to generate a deeper awful feeling than a dozen jump scares and gore scenes of other films. I love how the actors (excellent, all of them), with just one look and expression, managed to make me shiver and tremble. I haven’t felt so permanently nervous in film in a long time. And last but not least, the advertising campaign also deserves praise for being able to be attractive without giving almost anything away. I strongly advise potential viewers against reading any random comment about this film, because sooner or later, some idiot will say something that you really don’t want to know; the moment when I knew this the film hooked up, and I realised wasn’t watching your average overrated horror indie flick that’s forgotten after a year. Thanks to Planet Dark for the early preview at Kino pilotů, free of any random teenagers going to the multiplex for the new James Wan movie.

Excellent narrative pirouette and a really intense madhouse! I trusted Laugier, but since the film wasn’t preceded by the hype of a big horror event (like this year’s A Quiet Place or the upcoming Hereditary), I was expecting less. And maybe thanks to that I ended up pleasantly surprised. Ghostland lacks the philosophical layers of Martyrs, which established Laugier, but it certainly delivers more horror satisfaction than The Tall Man. A decade ago we were used to this breed of films, but they stepped into the background in such way that today they can feel like a breath of fresh air again. Finally a horror action film that is unleashed and hurts! The action puts the character through such things that you believe that they are deeply traumatising them, and their hysteria doesn’t surprise you. All this, moreover, wrapped in first-class technical form, taking place in the interiors of a magnificent horror cabin, and made special by a narrative structure that makes sense (though I can imagine that it can be self-evident for some). Applause.

I’d love to know what went wrong during the production of Delirium that resulted in a very interesting looking project, produced by Jason Blum and Leonardo DiCaprio, ending up in development hell and falling out of sight for about four years. The result does look accordingly, though. It is a watchable film that shows potential… but in the end, nothing. Nothing extraordinary, even reluctantly. And Topher Grace is one of the worst casting choices I can think of.