Reviews

Just wow. I hope that the director received accolades for this gorgeous piece of art at all the most important film festivals.

This is an incredible film, one with something for everyone to enjoy - for example, when the cult ecstatically danced and sang to "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft", I knew that i would follow them forever.

The acting on this film is worthy of all the Daytime Emmies, all of them, even the ones for technical stuff and craft services.

The acid sequence was also a winner. I took acid once at a small festival in the early 2000s and it was exactly as portrayed. Uncanny.

And the ending? No spoilers but hang on to your hats! Whoo! Pheoooooow.

This was, perhaps the most fulfilling film I've ever seen. I finally feel like someone read all of those feminist essays I wrote about Terminators 1 and 2 as an undergrad and made them into a perfect film - a lesbian reading which is also a parable about toxic masculinity while also being decidedly pro immigrant AND featuring all kinds of ass kicking and stupid special effects nonsense, which simultaneously never takes itself seriously but somehow still ruling completely.

My only, surprising for me, criticism is that I missed the sleazy Jared Kushner psycho blankness of Robert Patrick, and I never thought I would experience that. It's a weird feeling. It's fine though, I can just go and watch 2 or 3 of the made for tv films he suat out last year to assuage that feeling.

It may have not done well in opening week but I bet this film cleans up in the next ten years with streaming rights, dvd, and the universe of action figures , tshirts, lunch boxes and (oh please ladygod) novelizations that I will be buying everyone I know for the rest of my life (starting with a woke Karl doll complete with apron and loving family.)

Postscript... I just read some of the negative reviews of this film and, I think they have a point... after watching this film I felt so empowered that I could've gone outside and fought the nearest man, to to feel what it was like to ...overthrow something. I can see why they're scared.

I'm never getting that time back am I? Never. In my more charitable moods I think this movie may have started with a script - you know, with characterization and a story arc, maybe a joke or two . The writer was optioned, they were so excited... then some execs came in, started making demands.... "it needs more parties, more gross out humor, no wait, less, it needs more lingering shots of girls' arses, no an accidentally getting high scene..." by the time they'd finished, what was left was the cinematic equivalent of a dribble of slime down a cavern wall.

I need to believe that it happened this way as I need to believe that no actual professional would read the script for this POS movie and do anything other than throw it straight in the trash. I wouldn't even recycle the pages for fear someone might accidentally read them and die from the sheer, mind killing averageness on display.

No.

Once upon a time someone bet the film maker that he couldn't make a film starring Nick Cage with the opening lines:

"Knock knock..." "Who's there?" "Eric Estrada" "Eric Estrada who?" "Eric Estrada from CHIPS"

They were probably young, maybe at film school. The drugs were probably stronger back then. But it stuck with him, he kept to his dream.

He sure showed them.

If you only see one made-for-VHS action movie featuring Tonya Harding, Martin Sheen's brother and the single greatest use of a puffy shirt of all time - this year, make it this film. Whatever it's called.

The trailer promised little and offered less. Thirty seconds in a parade of snapshots promising more of the generic horror films that seem to be swamping our screens at the moment. But having sat through Neil Marshall's second film – a tale of humanity pushed beyond its limits and into its most gruesome instinctive self, I have been forced to tell myself once more never to believe the trailers.

The film is surprising for several reasons:- Firstly, it is a horror film about a group of women who do not a) do nothing but run around screaming or b) take their clothes off. There's not even a scene featuring people in their underwear having pillow fights. Secondly, It's a horror film that's been released in the last year that a) isn't a remake of a successful Japanese film and b) doesn't have Dakota Fanning in it.

Marshall explains that he wanted to make horror films that are entirely for adults, and this film thoroughly deserves its 18 rating. The women loose their veneer of humanity faster than a rat up a drainpipe and quite willingly become brutal killing machines fairly early on. The scare factor is increased somewhat by their attackers taking almost human form – making it even more unwholesome when the women celebrate and seem to relish killing their enemies, a part of the narrative at its most gruesome when Sarah (as played excellently by Shauna MacDonald with a "Creepy Carrie" expression that would make Sissy Spacek blush), the woman who is still mourning for the loss of her husband and child a year before is attacked by and kills a child crawler in the cave. The movie also smacks of a well put together action film with the show being stolen by Natalie Jackson Mendoza who plays the tough cookie with something to prove – Juno. Who chops up and kicks her way through monsters in a way that forces the words "you go girl" from your mouth before you even knew they were there.

Marshall is a technically skilled film maker and the tone is almost playfully set up with the beautiful extreme long shots of the vaguely threatening landscape (in a style deliberately reminiscent of Kubrick's "The Shining") contrasting entirely with the later fast paced low light close up action within the cave. Probably the most irritating part of the film is the excessive use of choppy editing throughout the fighting sequences which seems to act to distract from the action on screen and leaves the audience feeling slightly unwell, (like they've just sat through Blair Witch again), but this is, thankfully, limited. He does, however, use some fabulous visual tricks to overcome the lack of a natural light sources below, by eerily illuminating the cave with flares and the piercing spotlight of torches which maintain an air of authenticity throughout.

The British have always made good horror films, from the success of the Hammer films to Don't Look Now. You can make a scary film with a low budget, about three lights and some good story telling and The Descent keeps up this tradition. Overall the film left me feeling upset, disturbed and desperate never to go potholing, which I think is a measure of its success. The fact that I actually grew to like the characters before they were maliciously picked off one by one is a credit to the writer / director and the injection of some good old fashioned human tragedy to the proceedings lifts The Descent slightly closer to (although by no means amongst) the acclaimed movies of the seventies that it so wishes to join and far away from the mass produced rubbish of Hollywood.

There's much you can write about the made for TV extravaganza that is "When Dreams Come True". I bought this movie for camp value when I had a particularly bad hangover and it actually made it worse. It's the story of a man with a giant head - but his face only takes up half of this head. Not only does he have a tiny face and a giant head but he also has very big hair. This is the entire plot of the film, apart from some deeply unnecessary subtext involving gypsies. The most frightening thing was that having seen and, supposedly got over this film, I then started seeing giant head tiny face man everywhere - he popped up as the virus carrier in "Twelve Monkeys" and then working with Lar Von Trier and Bjork as the creepy guy with the massive head in "Dancer in the Dark". So, there is a moral to this sad and twisted tale. Never buy a film for a pound - it will haunt you forever more. (The punchline being that I've now watched "when dreams come true" about ten times!!!!!)