February/The Blackcoat's Daughter

Half Term

February/
The Blackcoat's Daughter
Canada 2015
Directed by Oz Perkins
A24 Films

Okay, so February (aka The Blackcoat’s Daughter) is going to be a tricky film to talk about because there’s something about the movie which will dawn on a fair percentage of the audience maybe 20 minutes into the movie, when a third character is introduced... but I’m still going to try and shuffle around this element and attempt to not reveal anything, even though, as I implied, many people will reach a conclusion about a certain aspect of the movie fairly early on. 

Okay, so the basic set up is we have three girls who the narrative follows. The film is set in February, in what must be half term week. Two thirds of the action of the film takes place in a remote, snow surrounded, boarding school where two girls in their late teens, Katherine and Rose played by Kiernan Shipka and Lucy Boynton are left behind, when all the other girls are picked up by their parents for the holiday. So they have to stay there for a day or two with two, un-costumed nuns who work there while they are waiting for their parents to show up. However, something is happening in the school and there are rumours of satanic worship. Meanwhile, the third woman, Joan, played by Emma Roberts, has escaped from somewhere but a kindly gentleman and his wife pick her up and offer to drive her to where she’s going. 

And that’s really all I’m going to say about the plot because... well, because it’s actually a very simple story but the way the story is structured is fragmented and elliptical. This does two things... one, it makes the story more interesting to discover, simple as it is and two, it stops a certain trick of the story being detected by the audience until... well like I said... twenty minutes or so into it. 

The film is written and directed by Oz Perkins, who is the son of actor Anthony Perkins (who has recently, since I saw this and wrote this review, become quite a succesful presence in the modern cinematic landscape). And, it turns out he’s not a bad director. I don’t know if I’d go as far as calling this a horror film because I think a certain element of the plot depends on your point of view. I think it’s similar to Saint Maud (reviewed here) in terms of how the audience perceives or believes certain things, which will affect how you categorise this as either a horror or a thriller. But it does, at least, tend to use some of the tension of the horror film and it does get quite gory towards the end. Certainly, the director knows how to squeeze a large amount of dread from what was probably a small budget, delivering a film which manages to maintain a fairly creepy atmosphere, even in the parts of the movie which are unscored... there’s a scene where Katherine is gazing out of a window with no music but with a smile playing on her face which, once you’ve seen the movie, I think will be something you would remember. 

To accomplish this kind of atmosphere, the director mostly eschews camera movement, I noticed. Sure there’s a little but not much and he seems content to just place the camera in a static position for the most part and let the scenes play out just cutting from one point of view to another. It slows the pacing of the film considerably but, that’s okay, it’s what gives it the edge it has and I have to say it works very well when, really, the story perhaps doesn’t feel like it could hold up if the movie were sped up and, more pertinently, edited in a different manner to the way it’s presented here. 

Although it could be dismissed as a simplistic variant of an exorcist story... and I’d maybe have a hard time defending even that... the way in which the film is structured helps relieve the inherent malaise that many modern movies dipping their toes into that kind of territory seem to generate and, even though this is the director’s first feature, I’d have to say he really knows what he’s doing here.

Another element of the film, the sparsely spotted score by another member of the show business family, Elvis Perkins, is extremely effective when it is called upon to contribute, maintain or even generate the quite palpable tension inherent in a simple scene... like a girl walking slowly down a corridor. Also, the odd non-sequitur images such as one of a shadowy figure in a basement energetically pursuing some kind of ritual are pretty effective and are one of the things which help build the atmosphere where the audience, or at least me, are on the edge of their seat. 

And, for fear of accidentally including spoilers, that’s as much as I’ll say about February/The Blackcoat’s Daughter. Whether it’s a horror film or not is for you to decide but I think it would play well to those of you who enjoy the horror genre. The central element on which a certain part of the movie hinges on was perhaps less effective on me because of the way I clumsily perceive certain things but, yeah, I’d be curious to see what people think of the plot on this one, so I’ll recommend it to a couple of friends and see if they had a common experience. Either way, a well directed movie which is very much worth a look if you’re into movies which build a strong, slow burn atmosphere. Give it a go. 

Nerve

Snitch Of The Def Nerve

Nerve
2016 USA
Directed by  Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman
UK cinema release print.

Okay... so I have many grumbles about this new film Nerve but most of them are unimportant for what, ultimately, turns out to be a fairly entertaining movie.There are a few things which kinda grate though so... if you're interested, read on.

First up... this is something like the fifth movie made in just the last few years with this title. Sure, it’s based on an original novel but perhaps a title change might have helped ensure there’s no confusion in the marketplace as to which movie is which? I’m sick of producers and directors calling their movies, ones which aren’t even a remake, the same title as various others. They really need to sort themselves out.

Secondly... what the heck are the BBFC up to now?

Nerve has, quite bizarrely, been given a 15 certificate by those fiendish moral guardians, so what can this be about? Is it for extended scenes of nudity or sex? Nope, nothing like that here. Is it for excessive violence, perhaps? Nah, not much of anything to be seen here. Excessive swearing perhaps? Nope, not that I can recall, Anything which is said is certainly well within the remit of the ‘young teenage’ audience this has obviously been made for and I certainly hear far stronger stuff from 7 - 8 year olds on the bus on their way back from school. Oh, wait... here’s the clue in the description underneath the certification before the film starts...

This film has been given a 15 rating for... 'Risky Imitable Behaviour.' What the f***? Seriously BBFC? Seriously? Gee... I was watching a Western a while back and in that movie, which could be shown on television during the day, men in funny hats were firing six shooters at each other and killing their enemies. Some of them might even have been smoking. Surely that’s all pretty much even worse imitable behaviour than what you see in this movie? This is just another example of how completely screwed in the head our ratings system is over here. Don’t buy into it folks! Also, if I were to make a guess as to which scenes the BBFC were talking about... well they’re in every trailer for the movie that I’ve seen. Don’t remember getting any warnings about watching the trailer to this thing though.

Okay, so Nerve is not a bad movie but it’s definitely a film aimed specifically at the teenage audience. A teenage audience of whom only half will be allowed to legally watch it in this country because of the insistence of the BBFC. So what we have is a bunch of teenagers talking on their various social media devices and some dizzying fast camerawork and some badly inappropriate songs. All in all, this makes the first 15 - 20 minutes of this movie almost unwatchable. It’s been a long time since I was tempted to walk out of a cinema because of how bad a movie was up to a certain point and, I won’t beat around the bush here... this one did tempt me.

However, once the plot of a secret society and virtually untraceable reality game show called Nerve, which asks their players to risk certain things on dares to win cash, kicks in properly, we have something which does settle down to become a little more watchable and, dare I say it, fairly  suspenseful. It does help that we have an extremely charismatic pair of actors in the lead roles... Emma Roberts from 4.3.2.1. (reviewed very briefly here) as Vee and Dave Franco from the Now You See Me films (reviewed here and here) as Ian. Despite some full on camera movement acrobatics and lots of short shots which make things sometimes hard to follow, these two and their relationship as they team up to play the game, risking it all as they ultimately try to beat the ‘Snitches get stitches’ rule as the game empties your bank account and steals your identity to take you to a death match, is the glue which solidly holds the film in place. You find yourself really caring about these characters because their on screen chemistry is so good. So that’s a surprisingly big positive in the way you may perceive this film, I think. If you can actually get through the breathtakingly shallow, teenage angst of the introductory character set ups, that is.

Another thing that doesn’t harm the movie is the way the technology is used and shown as infographic overlays on the screen. I recently reviewed The Shallows (here) where it really hurt the movie to the point where it was something I found myself focusing on again and again in a negative manner. Here, though, it works really well and part of that is because the context of the story actually means that it makes sense for the directors to be doing this sort of thing. It’s almost essential, actually, and saves a lot of otherwise inane dialogue from being inserted into the movie about ‘how many followers do you have’ and ‘how many watchers are in the area’. To be sure, the dialogue does hit that level too at a couple of points but only when they need to be specifically highlighted in context of advancing the story... otherwise the visual shorthand is handled just right here and it works like a dream, despite the excessive energy of the constantly moving camera operator and the people in the editing suite.

Something that really doesn’t work is the inane musical choices. Don’t get me wrong... Rob Simonsen’s electronica score is actually pretty good and I look forward to picking up a CD when it’s hopefully released in September. However, it does seem to be overshadowed by the sound mix in a lot of places and, worse, the inevitable batch of totally inappropriate, just awful, kiddy pop songs which also seem to pop up to populate the movie and render the sometimes seductive visuals at their most banal. I hate songtracks and this is one of the worst I’ve had to sit through at the cinema, for sure. Yeah, I know I’m far from the target audience to this stuff but... I know bad kid-pop music when I hear it.

Having said all that, though, Nerve does manage to be somewhat intense at certain points... there are a few beyond the edge of your seat moments in this. It’s also, as I said earlier, somewhat entertaining and, although I don’t think I could ever sit through it again, it’s certainly not a bad choice for a movie to see on a Saturday night at your local cinema. I suspect, if you are younger than the actual certification age of this movie, you will probably enjoy it a lot more than anyone else but, you know, if you do watch it... make sure you don’t end up killing yourself due to all that excessively ‘risky imitable behaviour’... or the BBFC might come and arrest you, or something.