X – Film Review

Posted on March 19, 2022 by ashleymanningwriter

Director: Ti West

Writer: Ti West

Starring: Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson, Brittany Snow, Owen Campbell, Stephen Ure, and Scott Mescudi

Rating: ★★★★½

Ti West’s X is a slasher throwback to the 1970s, filled with blood, gore, and enough tropes for a horror fan to play bingo with. It’s also the scariest film of the year so far and something that shouldn’t be missed by any horror fans.

A group of young adults travel to a farm to make an adult film to get rich and famous. They’ve rented out a farmhouse to avoid the judgement of others. While they’re making the film the elderly woman who lives on the farm starts to take notice of them and follows them around getting a little obsessive in the group.

The film starts with the police arriving at the scene of the crime, just giving you a little hint of what happened, before it jumps back twenty-four hours with the group of adults jumping into a van, Texas Chainsaw style, and travelling to the farmhouse. They even stop at a gas station, but there’s no warning not to go to the farm. All throughout the film there’s a slasher trope set up and then subverted in some way, the gas station is just the first. It’s a pure tribute to the films that inspired it, especially Texas Chainsaw and Psycho, which the film even mentions halfway through. Even visually, with it’s washed-out colours and almost grainy texture, it’s an homage to what’s come before.

For the first half of the film there’s a growing sense of dread and tension as all of the pieces are put into place for the second half. But once it gets going, there’s no respite until the end. It’s full-on horror that’ll have your heart beating hard, your nails dug into armrests and your eyes glued to the screen. It’s terrifying. There’s not an overuse of gore, or jump scares, just an overwhelming sense of dread that really gets under your skin.

Eliot Rockett does an amazing job with the cinematography with a blend of nostalgia driven shots and incredibly stylistic and stunning sequences. The moment just after the first death happens, it just looks incredible. There’s also a great use of music from the era, as well as a spine-tingling score from Tyler Bates and Chelsea Wolfe.

X is pure horror, filled with a love of the genre. The film is scary, unsettling and incredibly tense all the way through. It’s definitely going to be appearing best horror of 2022 lists.  

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Master – Film Review

Posted on March 18, 2022 by ashleymanningwriter

Director: Mariama Diallo

Writer: Mariama Diallo

Starring: Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Amber Gray, Ella Hunt, Talia Ryder, Talia Balsam, Bruce Altman

Rating: ★★½

Master is a look at racism and diversity through a more traditional horror story. It’s a mix of social issues and a haunted house story, that sadly doesn’t really work as either. It ends up being very uneven and never really lands the point it’s trying to make.

Jasmine (Zoe Renee) is the new student at Ancaster, a prestigious university that presidents and senators studied at. Jasmine’s dorm room is the same room that someone killed themselves in decades before, and the idea that its haunted has never really left the university. The new Master of Studies, Gail (Regina Hall) is also struggling to settle into her new role at the university and feels that’s somethings not right in her own home.

Tonally this film is all over the place. If you go into this not knowing what it’s about, you’d be tricked into believing it’s a straightforward drama about racism, and then creepy things start to happen. It never properly settles into being a horror, so it doesn’t ever get to a point where it’s actually scary. There are sequences that start to head that way, but it doesn’t go far enough to really chill you. Then when the final twenty minutes come around it becomes so messy and borderline silly that it doesn’t work as a horror or a drama. There’s some good moments and twists later in the film that work, but it doesn’t leave a lasting impression.

As good as Zoe Renee is in the film, her character never feels real. The film spends a lot of time focusing on the racism going on in the university and Jasmine struggling to get the grade that she deserves, but there’s not enough time spent with Jasmine just building up her character, so when it does get scary you just don’t really care. Gail, on the other hand, feels a lot more fleshed out and you get more invested in her side of the story.

Master is mainly about subtle racism that’s ingrained into the Ancaster. On that level the film works, it’s just not scary enough for a horror film. The characters are flimsy, and it all falls apart as the ending comes around. It’s entertaining while it’s on, but not as hard hitting as it could have been.  

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The Perfection – Film Review

Posted on March 17, 2022 by ashleymanningwriter

Director: Richard Shepard

Writers: Richard Shepard, Eric Charmelo, ad Nicole Snyder

Starring: Allison Williams, Logan Browning, Steven Weber, Alaina Huffman

Rating: ★★★★½ 

The Perfection is a dark psychological horror that really gets under your skin, straight from the start with its striking and captivating opening right through to its mesmerising ending. It creates an incredibly uncomfortable and creepy atmosphere and is an excellent horror film.

After taking a decade away from music, to look after her dying mother, former child prodigy cellist Charlotte (Allison Williams) reaches out to her old teacher, Anton (Steven Weber), and joins him in Shanghai to help pick out a new student. While she’s there Charlotte meets Lizzie (Logan Browning), another of Anton’s students. At first there’s a jealousy as Charlotte feels that Lizzie was her replacement, but the two connect and end up travelling China together, until Lizzie starts to feel sick and things take a turn for the worse.

Director and co-writer Richard Shepard perfectly creates and unsettling atmosphere right from the opening scene. There’s jump cuts and a chilling score that sets up the film perfectly. It’s abrasive in a way that makes you pay attention and that this isn’t just another horror film. It instantly tells you that things aren’t going to be okay. Then the film almost turns into a drama for most of it’s first act, as Charlotte and Lizzie get to know each other. It lulls you into a false sense of security, even if the opening is still lingering in your mind, then it all clicks into place, and everything gets going. There’s twist after twist, a building sense of dread that keeps you guessing what’s going to happen next. Whatever direction you think the film is heading in, it goes somewhere else.

Allison Williams and Logan Browning are both excellent in the film. Their chemistry is great from the first moment they share together. The score from Paul Haslinger is great and sets the scene perfectly. The only let down is that some of the effects look kind of cheap and aren’t that believable, but while it has some gross-out moments, it’s not the main focus. The plot does veer towards being unbelievable with all of the twists, but it all still works and you never reach a point that takes you out of the film.

Since its release on Netflix in 2019, The Perfection, has slipped off the radar. It’s really something special and more than worth seeking out. It’s a stylish horror and is something that will stay with you for a long time after the credits start to roll.

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Adam by Eve: A Live in Animation – Review

Posted on March 16, 2022 by ashleymanningwriter

Adam by Eve is a strange and hypnotic project from singer/songwriter Eve. It’s part music video, part animation and part live action story all mixed together. The main plot follows Aki whose friend Taki disappears right in front of her in a café. Aki. who is searching for her friend, is also haunted by strange dreams that she can’t quite understand.

The world of dreams is something the film spends a long time exploring, using the musical segments and animation to really let loose and be a strange as possible. Being a musical there’s no hesitation as you’re sucked into the world being shown in front of you. It’s bizarre and very strange, but it all works. There’s very few moments where there’s not music, pulsating out of the speakers as you watch Aki’s story. It’s completely memorising to watch.

If you’re like me and not that familiar with Eve, then the references won’t click, but you’ll end up being a fan by the end and this is definitely something that will reward multiple watches. It’s a little chaotic and you’re never really sure what’s going on, but it’s very welcoming for people not familiar to Eve’s work in music and manga, which the film references throughout. It’s almost a crash-course in Eve with music from all stages of his career as well as references to his manga, Kara no Kioku.

The various animation styles are all shown perfectly, and are just as much of a spectacle as the music playing in the background. It’s filled with stylish flair. Equally the dream-like live action sequences keep you hooked as the loose thread bringing everything together. It’s a showcase of art from start to finish. The moments that feel closest to a music video look great, with excellent flashes of light and colour.

Like the best music videos this is something you’ll want to watch over and over again, what makes it better is that there feels like things you’ve missed along the way and want to go back to discover more. I can safely say that Eve will be on repeat for the next few weeks.

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Orochi – Film Review

Posted on March 15, 2022 by ashleymanningwriter

Director: Buntarō Futagawa

Starring: Tsumasaburō Bandō, Misao Seki, Utako Tamaki, Kensaku Haruji

Rating: ★★★★

Orochi is one of the earliest surviving Japanese films from 1925. At almost a hundred years old the film is significant as a piece of history. The film is directed by Buntarō Futagawa and stars Tsumasaburō Bandō, as a disgraced samurai who is shunned from society and seen as a villain. The film was originally called ‘Outlaw’, which was blocked by censors due to not wanting to make an outlaw seem like a hero and then changed to Orochi, meaning Serpent. Thankfully the moral ambiguity of the characters is still evident in the final film.

While Orochi is a silent film it’s accompanied by a narrator, known as a Benshi. A Benshi would narrate the film in the theatre while the film is played and would be backed by a score of traditional kabuki instruments. In the years since the film was first shown a Benshi has recorded the narration to go alongside the film for home viewing, while there are still films from the era still shown in cinemas occasionally with actual Benshi’s narrating it. Watching the film now, it’s quite strange at first to have the story narrated to you, while watching it play out on screen. It’s almost like listening to an audiobook with moving pictures. It’s a little strange at first, even if you’re used to western silent films where it would just be text on screen and music, but once it gets going you completely forget about it and it just becomes part of the story.  

Orochi starts and ends with the narrator explaining how not every villain is completely evil and not all noblemen are worthy of the name. The film explores the grey area of morality and how nothing is as simple as we would like it to be. Heisaburo Kuritomi (Bandō) is disgraced after not accepting a drink from a superior, which starts a fight, and no one takes his side. Bit by bit his social standing is ruined through a series of unfortunate events that mostly aren’t his fault. Heisaburo takes the blame for everything and ends up going to jail. The film gets very dark at points, where Heisaburo starts to act like the villain he’s been labelled as.

The best moment of the film is the long fight sequence towards the end where Tsumasaburō Bandō gets to show his full skill as a swordsman. The footage is speed-up slightly which can make it slightly difficult to make out what’s going on, but the rawness of the fight still shines through. This is a man that’s desperate to survive, who knows that the world doesn’t understand him and has painted him as a villain. It’s a last ditched effort and it’s just as gripping now as it would have been almost a century ago.

At one of the darkest moments in the film and Heisaburo’s story, he is tempted to sexually assault a woman who has been abducted and brought to him. While he manages to overcome his ‘temptations’, as the narration puts it, the film still brands him as a hero, despite having the temptation in the first place. It’s an interesting look at how far he’s been pushed and marginalised by society, but his redemption still sits uncomfortably from a modern viewpoint, especially with how it’s brushed off in the film. The scene itself though is shot with a darkness in the visuals as well as the tone and it’s very striking and sinister to watch.

Orochi is an important piece of history and one of the most influential films in Japanese cinema. It set a standard of how you could tell a morality story and films from Japan wouldn’t have been the same without it.

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