Devoured (2012)

"An intense, troubling film, boasting a spectacular lead performance from Marta Milans, DEVOURED calls to mind such bleak and visceral late '70s NY urban dramas as TAXI DRIVER and DRILLER KILLER in its expert depiction of alienation and escalating horror."

The synopsis from Amazon.co.uk describes "Devoured" so perfectly that there's very little I need to add. That product description absolutely nails it, uses the word "visceral" correctly, and reminds me of the days when I used to write such concise one or two sentence reviews instead of rambling on to fill up a blog post. For someone who doesn't often suffer from nostalgia, I miss those days a lot.

But as I wouldn't be me if I didn't have my own two cents to add, I will just say that I haven't enjoyed any "low-budget" movie as much I did this one. According to the IMDb, the estimated budget was only $1,500,000. That's still a huge amount of money for normal people, but hardly anything in movie industry terms, so maybe that's one of the few points in any independent movie's favour which I'm willing to concede. You don't need hundreds of millions of dollars to make a good movie if you know what you're doing, but the caveat is that you really do need to know what you're doing.

Although this is Greg Olliver's first horror movie, he's been around for a while making award-winning rock documentaries. His IMDb profile page details how he learnt his craft the right way by going to film school and then working his way up in the industry, so he isn't one of the half-arsed hobby horror filmmakers. The result of his knowledge and experience is that he has created an impressively adult "descent into madness" drama here which, despite its obviously Poe-like elements, isn't predictable at all.

Maybe I would have noticed some flaws if I hadn't been so captivated by Marta Milans as the lead, but the attention to detail is such that I doubt there are any important ones anyway. I would like to say that Marta Milans is to "Devoured" what Gretchen Lodge is to "Lovely Molly" (2011), since they both give outstanding performances which carry the rest of their respective movies, but that wouldn't be a completely accurate or fair comparison. It also wouldn't be fair on everyone else involved. Movies are a team effort, after all.

Everything about "Devoured" is as close to perfection as the budget allows. The cinematography is excellent, and from the script by Marc Landau to the smallest acting role, this is a classy, thought-provoking, and thoroughly engaging production. There are some movies which can draw you in as if you're living in them, and "Devoured" is certainly one of them. Whether you would actually want to live inside another person's nightmare is, however, another matter.

For an American movie, "Devoured" has a very European atmosphere and grittiness about it which means that it's bound to be a bigger success overseas, even if it's only for a niche audience. Such slow burns with great characterisation are unlikely to be so highly praised by the teenage slasher crowd who just want to see boobs and blood, and that's a real shame, but stranger things have happened. No matter what your age or tastes, if you call yourself a horror fan, you owe it to yourself to see this movie.

As far as I know, "Devoured" is currently only available from Amazon.co.uk as a DVD or Blu-ray. Hopefully, a US version will start appearing in stores soon. Keep an eye on the official website for further details.

Magic Magic (2013)

"A naive young tourist's road trip across Chile with friends turns into a waking nightmare."

Just a quickie for "Surprise Sunday" which I'm forced to backdate due to the automated scheduling on Blogger failing. Actually, it's my fault, but it's easier to blame someone else! I wrote this review and forgot to set the posting time. Doh!

Anyway, what we have here is a tragic moment for a group of "teenagers" in a foreign country, and the events leading up to it. Essentially, it's a drama about mental illness with elements of a psychological thriller thrown in as red herrings.

Starring Juno Temple as the ill-fated and oversensitive nutter, Emily Browning (from "The Uninvited" remake) as her best friend, and Michael Cera in a even more immature and sadistic role than usual, there's a lot to like in "Magic Magic" but also a lot to hate about it too. For one thing, it doesn't have much to do with magic unless you count some bogus hypnotism and a bizarre folk-magic ritual near the end.

Thus, it's not a horror movie or a supernatural movie per se, but it has a few creepy bits and an air of menace about it in places which you have to be in the right headspace to appreciate. If you've ever felt isolated in a foreign country, especially one where you don't speak the language, you'll be able to empathise with Alicia (Juno Temple) to a certain extent.

Pretty Pretty

Needless to say the actresses in this are all fairly attactive. Alicia and Sarah (Emily Browning) look very natural although Barbara (Catalina Sandino Moreno)—who I couldn't find a picture of but is in the trailer above—steals the show with her exotic beauty and sexy accent in the rare moments that she's on screen. Juno Temple flashes some T&A for perverts everywhere, and gets dry-humped by a horny dog, so kudos to her for being such a good sport.

For the ladies, Agustín Silva, the younger brother of the writer/director Sebastián Silva, should be enough eyecandy because Michael Cera sure as Hell isn't going to do it for anybody! Not only is Brink (Michael Cera) exceedingly irritating, but he's creepy with it as well. My West Coast friends would describe him as "rapey" although he's just a typical ugly teenager who hasn't realised that he doesn't have the looks to pull off his awkward attempts at seduction. He's also chosen the wrong girl to practice on for reasons which become more apparent as the story progresses.

Where's yo chin at, dude?

Overall, "Magic Magic" is an uncomfortable movie to watch and not a completely satisfying one either. As a "moment in time", it fails to be as enigmatic as a cult European movie despite having a similarly unresolved ending. When I say "unresolved", it does have an ending, but it leaves you wanting to know a bit more. Or not, as the case may be.

The filming in Chile is nice for people who would like to see a South American country which isn't so "third world" as xenophobes pretend it is. Chile is actually not much different to Europe financially, but the culture shock will still be there for spoiled Americans. As a coddled Brit, I've never been to Chile either and don't really want to after "Hidden in the Woods" (2012), but that's another story. The Chilean actresses are very good-looking from what I've seen so far, and if I was 20 years younger (and stupid enough to believe in movies!), I would be backpacking my way there right now.

I would recommend "Magic Magic" for the acting, but all that is negated by three scenes of animal cruelty which I'm not going to go into detail about. Suffice it to say that although they may be necessary to the story, such scenes aren't something which I wish to see in anything which is supposed to be entertainment. I've seen far too much animal cruelty in real life caused by idiots like the ones portrayed in this movie, and it just makes me angry.

You have been warned!

The Haunted Airman (2006)

"An injured RAF pilot, confined to a wheelchair is committed to an eerie hospital where he starts to lose his mind"

Based so loosely on "The Haunting of Toby Jugg" by Dennis Wheatley" that it turned out to be another story entirely, "The Haunted Airman" has become a minor curiosity for "Twilight" fans who want to see more of Robert Pattinson before he was famous for being Edward.

I originally saw this when the BBC Four showed it on Hallowe'en way back in 2006, but I wasn't exactly impressed by any of it. In fact, I found it extremely boring and, short though it was, I still didn't make it to the end. There wasn't a lot of attention payed to Hallowe'en by any of the main channels that year, and I have a feeling that I just went to bed rather than look for anything else to watch at the time.

I had actually enjoyed reading the novel many years before and always felt that it represented the best of Dennis Wheatley's work. In comparison, "The Haunted Airman" did little more than use the names of the main characters and Toby's hallucinations of spiders. The rest of the plot involving Satanists who were attempting to drive him insane and cheat him of his inheritance was completely ignored. Toby still was in a wheelchair after being injured in the war, had his letters intercepted, and went mad, but the location had changed and everything was done for different reasons.

Having now rewatched "The Haunted Airman" on the DVD released in 2009 which was designed for Twihards (but one of them must have got fed-up with since I found it in my local pawn shop), I have to say that it was slightly better than I remembered. At least I made it to the end this time.

Robert Pattinson's Toby Jugg was extremely laconic and spent most of his time between being massaged by lighting and smoking cigarettes until he ran out of matches, but he wasn't exactly horrible in the role. As a traumatised and crippled World War II airman, he fitted the part. Maybe he could have added a bit more emotion to his rather blank expression other than occasionally glowering in anger, but he did enough.

Julian Sands as the renamed character of "Dr. Hal Burns" (instead of "Helmuth Lisicky") wasn't quite so credible as a psychiatrist or Julia Jugg's new love interest, but, to give credit where it's due, I don't think anyone else other than maybe Richard E. Grant would have been better. After being in "Arachnophobia" (1990), there was too much of an in-joke when he played with a spider, and I couldn't take him seriously after that.

The story started off okay, it was nicely filmed with only occasional lapses into obviously handheld territory, and it was getting increasingly creepy until Julia Jugg (played by Rachael Stirling) turned up. Then, in spite of the opportunity to ogle a very sexy example of wartime female beauty, everything got really confusing. I couldn't tell which parts of the story were dreams and which were reality. I'd guess that the intention was to convey that Toby Jugg couldn't tell the difference either, but it didn't work so well. This was the point at which I gave up on the film six years ago.

The ending, such as it was, made hardly any sense except to confirm that Toby Jugg had indeed lost his mind completely. The jury is still out on whether that was Hal Burns' intention all along or if it was the accidental result of his inept therapy. Without the bigger occult/communist plot of the novel, Hal Burns' motivation wasn't clear. He had nothing to gain from sending Toby Jugg right over the edge unless he was just some kind of psychopath himself.

At just over an hour, "The Haunted Airman" almost worked within its made-for-TV limitations and internal logic. It definitely succeeded as a standalone movie in its own right, but it was hardly Dennis Wheatley's "The Haunting of Toby Jugg". For a BBC Hallowe'en special, it was more of a wartime drama which dealt with post traumatic stress disorder than the ghost story which a lot of people were expecting from the title.

Lovely Molly (2011)

"Newlywed Molly moves into her deceased father's house in the countryside, where painful memories soon begin to haunt her."

According to one my friends on Twitter, there was a lot of hype surrounding "Lovely Molly" at the London Frightfest. I'm not sure how that same friend missed the chance to see it, but I assume that there either must have been a programming clash with something else which he wanted to see more or he simply missed that day of the convention. Whatever the case, he wanted to know what I thought of "Lovely Molly" so, in spite of never having heard of it before, I gave it a go.

I had no idea that "Lovely Molly" was directed by Eduardo Sánchez or I probably wouldn't have watched it. I've never had anything good to say about "The Blair Witch Project" (1999), and "Altered" (2006) wasn't very memorable. Maybe I shouldn't be prejudiced against certain directors (since most of them are only hired for their ability to boss everyone around on set), but, in the case of Eduardo Sánchez, he's always tried to be something of an auteur. The problem is, of course, that if you set yourself up as such, trying to be all groundbreaking, innovative and original, your movie is either going to be a huge success or completely suck.

However, "Lovely Molly" really surprised me in a good way especially as it was yet another low-budget entry into the horror genre. I wouldn't call the estimated $1,000,000 budget all that low, but, in movie terms, it was the minimum amount which would allow all the bells and whistles for acceptable production values or to hire decent talent both in front of and behind the camera.

I'd hazard a guess that most of the budget was spent on the cast as my one major gripe with "Lovely Molly" is that it seemed to lack a lighting crew. Maybe the intention was to add atmosphere to the already neglected-looking setting, but the gloominess comes across as annoying and a product of some very amateur camerawork particularly in daylight when the sun was behind the actors.

That nitpicking aside, the acting is phenomenal. Gretchen Lodge, in particular, is not only very beautiful and realistically so, but she is outstanding in her role as Molly. Although, physically, she occasionally reminded me of Cécile De France from "High Tension" (2003), she really brings her character to life, and her personality change as the story progresses wouldn't be out of place in an Academy Award nominated movie. According to the IMDb, this is her first movie, and that makes her performance even more incredible. If only every horror actress was this good, we wouldn't have all those embarrassing wannabes in the "Women of Horror" clique who I'm sure you've all encountered over the years.

I didn't really bother to look up the credentials of the other actors and actresses involved as there are no bad performances from any of them. Obviously, Alexandra Holden as Hannah, Molly's sister, has another superb yet far too brief role, and Johnny Lewis as Tim, Molly's truck-driving husband, delivers a sympathetic performance which made me feel quite sorry for his otherwise spineless character.

"Lovely Molly" is a very character driven story so it might seem slow to a lot of people. When it started with a wedding, I feared another "[REC]³ Génesis" about to happen, but, fortunately, it was completely different. There are some superficial similarities as, once again, a video camera plays an important part, but this is not a found footage movie or a parody of the genre. "Lovely Molly" is a serious, ballsy, taboo-laden amalgam of admittedly derivative themes set in a very real and low-income environment.

Because this is a fairly recently released movie which you probably haven't seen yet, I'm avoiding the spoilers (and details) as much as I can. Suffice it to say that there is a lot of nudity, some extreme sexiness which I really didn't expect, and all sorts of horrific nastiness, violence, bloodshed, and murder along the way. You can find out a lot more by visiting the official website which I suggest that you do anyway before you watch "Lovely Molly" as there are some "Blair Witch"-style features on there which add a lot of details to the backstory.

I will just add that one of my favourite scenes is between Molly and Pastor Bobby (played by Field Blauvelt), but I'm not going to give away any more than that.

Now that I've had time for it all to sink in, "Lovely Molly" is absolutely the best and most original horror movie that I've seen so far this year. It's a little bit slow to begin with, very confusing near the end, and slightly overambitious, but the acting is worthy of a horror Oscar if such a thing existed.