Happiness by Shuzo Oshimi is a horror manga about Makoto Okazaki, a sheepish teenager who suffers from bullying at school. Every day there’s a group who make him buy their lunch for them and have turned him into their errand boy. That all changes after he’s attacked by a vampire during the night.
Happiness is a really muted and downbeat manga. Unlike a lot of vampire stories, this isn’t glamorised or full of action. It’s an understated coming of age story, similar to the film Let the Right One In. The story has a really subdued tone throughout, that’s reflected in the art style that’s used. You can really feel Okazaki’s struggle with being bullied along with fighting the urge to drink blood, something that he doesn’t understand.
Okazaki is attacked by a girl in the middle of the night, who drinks his blood and gives him the option to die or continue living, he chooses to live, and wakes up in a hospital not really know what’s going on. Even by the end of volume one he’s not sure what’s happening to him, only that he’s acting differently and people are treating him differently because of it. A girl in his year takes notice of him for the first time, he stands up for himself in a random outburst of violence. It’s essentially going through puberty.
Vampires are presented in an interesting way in Happiness. Okazaki is sensitive to the light, but not overly so, as he’s able to travel to school. The urge to drink blood is very evident, but the transformation seems to be minimal compared to other stories, or maybe it will pick up more in the future. The story is quite slow paced, but that lets you have more time to really get into it. Not a lot really happens in this volume, but you’re hooked the entire way through it, and when the it ends, you just want to pick up volume two straight away to continue reading.
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Starring: Zach Hanner, Ryan O’Flanagan, Nate Panning, Sydney Penny, Jamie Lane, Richard Wenz
Rating: ★★★★
Birdies is an infectious feel-good golf movie that lands comfortably on the green. Ryan O’Flanagan stars as Jake Baxter, the new pro for Twin Pines. The club, run by Charlie Conroy (Zach Hanner), is struggling for money and needs to win the next tournament. The arrival of Jake brings brings everyone together as the tournament approaches.
While Birdies is what you’d expect from this kind of film, what makes it special is the amount of heart that’s behind it. You can feel that everyone is giving it their all and the passion really shines through. It feels like a very personal film, and while the stakes are high, it’s not a world championship and the whole world isn’t watching, it feels more focused and that makes it so much more engaging than the formulaic underdog films we expect. It’s also genuinely funny, with a lot of laugh our loud moments.
There are a lot of characters, with each and every one of them feeling distinct and different. You completely understand who they all are and the way they play off each other is great. There’s a lot of strange and bizarre moments that only work because the cast and characters are so great. Jake and Nick (Nate Panning) are excellent on screen, as are everyone else. It’s the type of film that you’ll pick up on more and more little moments every time you watch it.
Some of the funniest moments come from when Jake is talking to his girlfriend, Brandy (Aerli Austen), who has forbidden Jake from ever playing golf after an incident in college. Their arguments when Sarah finds out are hilarious. Jake telling his new colleagues that sometimes in a seven-year relationship you have to sleep in the rain is one of the highlights of the film, which O’Flannagan delivers perfectly.
There are a couple of jokes and moments that don’t feel natural and don’t quite land, but there’s so much more to love about Birdies. It’s the perfect film to watch to put a smile on your face and forget about the real world. It’s simply great. Â
Birdies will be available online & on VOD on the 22nd February 2022
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Starring: Zoë Kravitz, Betsy Brantley, Rita Wilson, India de Beaufort, Emily Kuroda, Bryon Bowers, Alex Dobrenko, and Jaime Camil
Rating: ★★½
Zoë Kravitz stars as Angela Childs in Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi, a Rear Window/Blow Out style film for the 21st Century. Angela suffers from agoraphobia, which has been made worse by the pandemic. She doesn’t leave her flat at all and works from home as a call analyst for Amygdala, a big tech organisation that has just released it’s new Alexa style product, Kimi. What makes Kimi different is that people listen to the conversations and requests to manually improve the responses and algorithm. It’s while listening to a recording, Angela hears a violent attack and starts to uncover a murder plot.
Stories like this, where it centres around a character uncovering a conspiracy and feeling paranoid that they’re next, are a dime a dozen. When done well, they have you hooked and on the edge of your seat. Films like Blow Out are timeless with the tension they create. Sadly, Kimi, isn’t destined to be a modern classic. It never delivers in the way it should, it doesn’t come close to keeping you hooked with bated breath. It feels like it’s just going through the motions.
The set up feels similar to last years underrated The Woman in the Window. An agoraphobic woman witnesses a murder and tries to convince people that it happened, while also feeling under threat by the conspirators. It just feels more rushed with Kimi. Angela’s agoraphobia is extreme, until she has to leave her house to continue the plot, and then she gets over it quickly. When one person doesn’t help her in the way Angela needs, other’s step up very quickly. There’s no question as to whether this is real or not, and before we know it Angela is uncovering a conspiracy that goes right to the top of the company.
Zoë Kravitz is very good in the film, giving a strong performance. Steven Soderbergh’s direction is great. There’s an incredibly tense scene where Angela is kidnapped into the back of a van during a protest while protestors try to free her. It’s visceral and is the closest the film gets to being excellent. There’s a moment when Angela first leaves her flat where everything feels slightly distorted and it really captures the feelings that she must be going through, the pure panic of being outside after spending so much time inside is something a lot of us can relate to over the last couple of years, even if it’s quickly left to the side to move the plot along faster.
Overall, Kimi is very formulaic and largely forgettable. There are better films in the genre, but it’ll do if you want something quick and easy to watch.
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Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre from 1974 is one of the best horror films ever made, almost fifty years on and it still holds up with one of the creepiest and unsettling atmospheres ever. The new Texas Chainsaw Massacre, out now on Netflix, fails to deliver anything close to the original. Instead, it’s a hollow gore fest which somehow makes it’s under seventy-five-minute run time (if you don’t include the almost ten minutes of credits and a short post-credit scene) feel like three hours. It’s absolute trash.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre starts off well, with a quick catch up by narration from John Larroquette, who did the opening narration for the original and remake. It tries to recapture the feel and style that the original had, with a group of young people travelling to a place they are less than welcome. The first ten minutes or so are promising, setting up the scene and victims of Leatherface’s next massacre. Then Leatherface starts killing, first by snapping someone’s wrist and using their bone to stab them in the throat and it just gets sillier from there.
The people don’t act like humans. One of the newcomers travels with Mrs. Mc to the hospital after her heart attack. Why? Because otherwise she wouldn’t witness Leatherface snap. There’s a scene in a bus where a group of influencers instantly get their phones out to threaten to ‘cancel’ Leatherface, because that’s how the youths of today would act. Sally reappears in a poor imitation of Laurie Strode from Halloween (2018), after being haunted by Leatherface in the half a century since. She has a chance to shoot him, but instead asks him to say her name, and lets him walk off. She’s then almost instantly butchered herself. It’s just dumb people getting killed for an hour and a quarter.
The original didn’t show much gore, letting you imagine the worst of what was happening. The new one instead goes full force, there’s heads being caved in, people being sliced up. There are some inventive and fun violence, with some reasonable effects. Sadly, the violence doesn’t feel meaty, for lack of a better word. The chainsaw slices through everything as if it was butter, it doesn’t feel like people are actually being sliced up.
What’s worse than that is that there is absolutely nothing scary in the entire film. The characters aren’t engaging enough for you to care that they’re going to die. There’s no overwhelming atmosphere of dread or tension that puts you on edge. Even the killings, as inventive as they are, don’t feel real enough to make you squirm. It doesn’t work as a horror film, and the moments of attempted humour don’t work either.
Something more of a pet peeve, but the title of the film continues the trend of making a sequel to the original, and yet calling it the same or a very similar name.  Halloween, Scream, Candyman; they’re all guilty of the same thing and it just feels lazy. At one point this was going to get a cinema release, but due to delays and the pandemic it was moved to Netflix, which is probably where it belongs. Something that will be forgotten about in a week’s time. Overall Texas Chainsaw Massacre is awful and not a patch on the original. Â
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Starring: Sandra Peabody, Lucy Grantham, David A. Hess, Fred Lincoln, Jeramie Rain, Marc Sheffler, Marshall Anker and Martin Kove
Rating: ★★★★
The Last House on the Left celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year. In the years since its release the film has been upstaged by the controversy that it’s caused. The film involves the graphic torture, rape, and murder of two teenage girls, Mari (Sandra Peabody) and Phyllis (Lucy Grantham). Right from when the film was first released it received a polarising reception from horror fans and critics. It’s only relatively recently that the uncut version has been widely available in the UK. It received a ton of cuts throughout the years to the point that due to how many censors cuts the film received, there are some scenes that are lost to history.
Watching the film fifty years on and it does not live up to the hype surrounding it. At the time this must have been incredibly shocking and grotesque, but there is a lot worse out there now. The violence is a lot tamer than the reputation would lead you to believe. It also holds a significant place in the history of horror films. It inspired countless films, such as Mother’s Day and I Spit on your Grave. More importantly it’s the directorial debut of horror mastermind Wes Craven, who would go on to direct The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and the first four Scream films. The film was also produced by Sean S. Cunningham who would later go on to create the Friday the 13thseries. The film should deserve a lot of respect for kickstarting both of their careers.
While the film is tame compared to modern horror films, it’s still not for the faint hearted. It’s incredibly low budget, even for the time, which makes it feel very raw and real. It’s gruesome at points and the abuse is still stomach churning and hard to watch. It’s not just a ninety-minute torture flick, instead, there are well written characters and one of the better moments is when the villains realise the heinous acts they’ve committed and clean themselves in a river as if to give themselves a second chance. It’s a strange turn of events that isn’t typical of the genre.
The stranger part of the film is the second half, after the two girls are murdered and the brutality is paused while the villains find themselves seeking shelter in a house, that happens to be Mari’s home. Her parents discover that their guests have murdered their daughter and get their revenge. They set up traps, in almost Home Alone style sequence, and proceed to murder the group as revenge. The final sequence involves a chainsaw, and it looks like the shot was incredibly dangerous and something that wouldn’t be made in the same way today.Â
Running alongside the main events is a pair of bumbling police officers, who act as comic relief, played by Marshall Anker and Martin Kove, who would later star as the villain of The Karate Kid and Cobra Kai. It’s a strange tonal shift that does give you a few moments to catch your breath before the horror starts again. Again, the fact that there’s some funny scenes in the film is something that isn’t as well known about the film.
While it may be diluted by half a century of horror being pushed to the extreme, Craven’s film, which was inspired by The Virgin Spring, as well as a reaction to the Vietnam war, is still shocking. It works as a horrific story, and while it won’t be loved by all, it’s significance can’t be ignored.
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Ashley Manning 