Smile

Cheese
Reflex

Smile
USA 2022
Directed by Parker Finn
Paramount Pictures
UK Cinema release print.

Warning: Very light spoilers.

So there’s a moment in the trailer of Smile which really got me to take a trek out to a preview screening of this in the UK (although, by the time this review sees the light of day, it will have just come out on general release). I dunno, preview windows seem to be getting smaller.

Anyway, the scene in question... and I don’t mind talking about it because it’s technically not a spoiler, as it’s included in most (possibly all) of the various Smile trailers... is when the lead protagonist is sitting in her car and somebody comes up to her window and taps on it. As she looks up, the head of the person outside the car dangles down like it’s been released from a bungee cord, a smile on its face. It’s a nice piece of imagery and, it’s a shame that surprise moment in the film is given away in the trailer but, it’s a heck of an image to sell it to people.

Smile stars Sosie Bacon as psychiatrist Dr. Rose Cotter and, one of her emergency patients is terrified out of her wits. She tells Rose about a smiling demon that’s been following her since somebody killed themselves in front of her and, when she clearly starts to see it in the room with them, Rose turns to the phone to call for security. By the time she’s turned around the patient has a big, rictus grin on her face and is staring straight at Rose as she cuts through part of her own face and then her throat with a shard of broken china. And, of course, from that point on, Rose starts getting hassled by the demon.

So, yeah, it’s yet another one of those pass the curse films but, that’s okay, I love those. They can trace back their roots at least as far as M. R. James’ short story Casting The Runes, which was adapted into a great movie called Night/Curse Of The Demon (reviewed here), a TV play (reviewed here) and, of course, many popular, unofficial modern variants such as the Ringu (aka Ring) films, Drag Me To Hell, It Follows (reviewed here) and Truth Or Dare (reviewed here)... among many others.

Like most of those films I just mentioned, the central curse or demon has no real origin story made clear (Ringu is a big exception to this rule, obviously) and, like many a zombie apocalypse film, the main protagonists are usually in the dark as to the why and who of the situation, in terms of said demonic entity. This film, then, follows the standard formula of the main ‘cursed’ individual trying to figure out the pattern and rules of the game in order to be able to stop it. Luckily for Rose (and the audience, for that matter), her ex-boyfriend is a cop and so she calls on him to help her in terms of bringing to light certain aspects of the case and to identify the presence of a ‘chain’ linking her to all the other victims... all but one of whom ended up taking their own life in a spectacular fashion in front of somebody, passing the curse on.

Two things which give this story credibility in terms of the way the Rose character is treated are quite clever. One is that they set up her character as somebody who does 80 hour working weeks and doesn’t really rest that much. So when she starts acting a little loopy, people assume this is just because she’s not getting enough down time. The other thing this movie does is give Rose and her sister a back story of a mother who suicided when Rose was a little girl... Rose choosing to run in fear rather than help save her from an overdose (which she didn’t realise was happening at the time)... so we also have a big dollop of guilt to throw into the mix and give the demonic entity something else to play with, which is nice.

My one slight criticism of the film is that it doesn’t really land the ending for me. These kinds of stories either end with disaster for the recipient of the demonic spirit or said recipient finds a way to pass the curse on (rarely can they break the chain)... and in this film the modus operandi of the demonic entity is that you either have to kill yourself, or somebody else, in front of someone to pass the curse. So, obviously, it’s not going to end well for anyone. And, although some misdirection is deliberately set up with one of those two rules... yeah, you’re probably going to see the ending of this one coming, for sure.

But, it’s a really fun ride, it has to be said. And there are some nice moments to be had. One is the head dangle scene I described earlier and the other, without giving too much away, is a nicely surreal special effect when you see just how the demon comes to inhabit its victims near the end of the movie.

Oh, and the score by Cristobel Tapia de Veer... it’s amazing. Like the best kind of modern horror meets sound design but with a decidedly strong ‘musique concrète’ vibe to it. And it really goes for it in terms of assaulting the audience in the audio space and being mixed in to the foreground of the movie loud and clear (as movie music should be). Such a shame there’s no CD of this one as I’m sure I would play it to death.

And that’s me done on Smile. It’s a fun little horror flick which is aided by some lovely cinematography, a great score and a wonderful central performance by Sosie Bacon. I would definitely recommend this to all the horror fans out there and I’ll definitely be trying to pick up a Blu Ray of this thing at some point soon. Fingers crossed it gets a proper physical release.

Countdown

Appy Death Day

Countdown
2019 USA Directed by Justin Dec
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Slight spoilers as to the set up of the movie.

Well this is a fun little movie. It’s not out and out brilliant but it is entertaining and it has a nice premise which the writer/director Justin Dec uses to riff on a mish mash of old genre tropes.

The plot is simple. A bunch of friends at a party download an app called Countdown which predicts and counts down to the end of your life in Years, Weeks, Days, Hours, Minutes and Seconds. Since nobody believes in such things being possible with an app (obviously), they are not worried about that proposition and the reason they download it in the first place is to use it as a drinking game... the one who has the nearest death prediction has to drink everybody’s shots. Well, of course, one of them gets a time which is only a couple of hours away and both she and, a few days later, her boyfriend, die from being killed by some kind of demon at their predicted second.

This is when the main protagonist of our story, Quinn (played by Elizabeth Lail), a recently graduated nurse, comes in. She witnesses the emotional impact on the boyfriend and figures he’ll soon be fine once he realises he’s not going to die so, of course, when he does die at the alloted time, in the hospital she works in, she starts getting very worried. Especially since her and another load of hospital staff also downloaded the app the previous day and, you guessed it, Quinn has little more than two days left to live. So yeah, before you know it she is trying to outwit the demon who is obviously taking up all her waking thoughts, especially since her new ally (played by Jordan Calloway) and her own sister have even less time to live than her.

Simple set up and the director is basically just riffing with it. As you can see, it’s pretty much a common or garden ‘demon curse that follows you around until your untimely death’ movie, following in the footsteps of such treasures as Drag Me To Hell, It Follows (reviewed here), Ringu (review coming sooner or later), Truth or Dare (reviewed here) and, of course, the grand daddy template and chief influencer of all supernatural curse stories Night Of The Demon (aka Curse Of The Demon, reviewed here), which was of course an adaptation of M. R. James’ short story Casting The Runes (you can find my review of the TV adaptation of this one here). That being said, in this one you can’t actually rid yourself of the curse or stall it by passing it on like those just mentioned... just get more people hurt, so it’s also probably very much like the Final Destination movies but, as I’ve never seen any of those, that’s only my best guess.

Now I never really get tired of these viral curse movies anyway but the pacing and writing on this is all pretty good. The director has thrown in lots of little strands of things he can pull on at the appropriate time such as the turbulent but healing relationship between Quinn and her younger sister (played here by Talitha Bateman from Annabelle Creation - reviewed by me here), Quinn’s guilt over the death of her mother and a male villain who is definitely put in to highlight the current ‘me too’ movement... although, to be fair, the director uses this character as a clever way of short cutting to a possible solution to Quinn and her friends’ problem, using this to deliberately crush her hopes at the eleventh hour.

Also, though, as I said in my first paragraph, the director happily cross pollinates varying horror sub-genres here by, for example, going the ‘full Dennis Wheatley’ at one point with salted circles harbouring protection symbols, used to shield the main characters from a visit by the demon (which you just know is going to go wrong). There’s even a moment in this which is a dead steal from what is probably the most memorable scare moment in The Haunting (reviewed by me here). All I shall say about this is that there’s a definitive ‘the horror thing already happened but you didn’t notice’ realisation where the writer/director parodies the “Oh my gawd. Whose hand was I holding?” moment done in, really much the same way.

There are also some great comical characters in the movie too. For example, the IT expert who manages the local phone store, played by Tom Segura, who is quite hilariously rude (and therefore true to life when it comes to people working in IT?) to almost everyone he spends time with, representing one of the ‘solutions’ of the movie when he tries to hacks Countdown App and reset all the clocks (if you want to find out the final fate of his character, stay behind for a bit after the credits have started rolling). Or the brilliant ‘rock and roll exorcism priest’ played by P.J. Byrne, who unfortunately drops clean out of the movie after his failed attempt at saving the life of one of the main protagonists. I don’t know why he’s just not referred to again, at least, later on in the picture.

In all honesty, the film isn’t really all that scary but it does have the occasional effective jump moments along the way. One of the smart things the writer/director does to ratchet up the tension in certain scenes is to have the Countdown App giving notifications every minute for the last five minutes or so of the victim’s life, which come in the form of irritating screams... which the director uses to full advantage. So perhaps it isn’t the scariest movie out there but, frankly, the same can be said for a lot of modern horror movies and this one, at least, is nicely put together and short enough so it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

All in all, then, what we have here is a genre piece where the emphasis is on fun rather than scares but, honestly, it works fine on that level for me. Well, I say it’s not scary but, I noticed the app is now available on the app store and I’m certainly not brave enough to download that one just yet. If you are into horror films and want to watch something which is done competently and possibly using some of the most clichéd styles of the genre in the most entertaining way possible then Countdown is probably something you’ll want to take a look at. The only real downside is the somewhat rather blatant set up for Countdown 2... it’s not subtle and grates a bit... although I suspect, judging from the amount of people in the cinema when I saw it, the box office on this one may not be enough to green light a sequel on, unless it does well on DVD and Blu Ray rentals.

The Darkness

Five Little Indians

The Darkness
2016 USA Directed by Greg McLean
UK cinema release print.

Okay. Yeah... kinda liked this one.

The Darkness is one of those entertainments that you can add to the recent list of horror films which are not absolutely great movies or classics of the genre but, at the same time, are skilled enough with the clichés and shorthand of their archetype to be able to deliver an enjoyable and competent addition to the list of similar films being made. Where The Darkness really wins some respect from me is with the addition of the Native American demons and their hostile attempt to return from the dimension that they were trapped in many years ago by their own people. Don’t quite remember that kind of mythology being tapped before (although I’m sure somebody must have already covered it at some point).

The film starts off with Peter and Bonny, played as well as you would expect by Kevin Bacon and Radha Mitchell, and their two children, on a vacation with their friends near the Grand Canyon. The youngest of the two, the boy, is autistic and, when he’s left alone for a minute by his sister who’s supposed to be watching him, he falls through into a cavern and finds five pebbles inscribed with icons and which he removes from their specific, ritualistic place in the cave, taking them home in his ruck sack. This, of course, opens the household up to various ‘haunting’ phenomena, which the boy is usually blamed for, as this has allowed the all powerful demons something to anchor themselves onto, so they can begin to free themselves from the confines of their prison. Of course, because the boy Michael (played by Gotham’s young Bruce Wayne, David Mazouz), is autistic, he can see what ‘the sky people’ are doing and even tries to help them for most of the picture.

It’s nothing particularly special as a movie, for sure, but it does have that mythological edge to it in the Indian legend. In terms of the story and the eventual ‘final solution’ of the movie, it does at least stick with the rules and back story it sets up for itself... something which some horror movies seem to have trouble doing, these days, for some reason. So I was pretty glad when we had some follow through on this stuff beyond the point of... this is how the spooky, sinister force came to be here and now we’re just going to do our own thing with it, without referring to the origins again.

The film is fairly well shot and, though it doesn’t exactly go nuts on the intensity of the scares along the way, it does get quite suspenseful at some points in the movie. The use of black dirt handprints as a signature that a ghostly and demonic presence is at work is used quite well a lot of the time and these are used to build tension throughout as they are manifested in various places, including being imprinted on a couple of the characters themselves, when they face their supernatural opposition.

The performances in this are all pretty good, too. Bacon is always cool, as is Radha Mitchell... who really needs to get more lead roles. David Mazouz is very good as the autistic son and his character’s sister, Stephanie, played by Lucy Fry, also does well at portraying an angry and troubled teenager. It was nice seeing Paul Reiser back on the big screen, playing an even bigger and annoying idiot than he did in ALIENS but it was the character of his wife who I really sat up and took note of. She’s not in it that much but it was nice seeing the beautiful Ming-Na Wen, aka Agent May from Marvel’s Agents Of SHIELD on the big screen. We need more of her in Hollywoodland too, me thinks.

So not much more to say about this one except we have another nice touch in the fact that the person (or people) who the family go to in order to fight back against their supernatural threat are actually of some help in this case (as those kinds of ‘Van Helsing’ figures were in the Insidious series too, I guess)... although, at the end of the day, any salvation in the final act comes from a different avenue. In fact that, for me, was the one weak point of the film... in the last ten minutes I was at a place where I started thinking... “Oh, really. They’re going to do that, now?” However, it does at least fit in with the stuff we know about the antagonist demons from their back story so, I wasn’t too upset by the place the ending went to. Although, it did feel a little anti-climactic, if truth be told.

And that’s about all I’ve got to say on this one. The score by Johnny Klimek was pretty good and perhaps just a little more subtle and less ‘stinger led’ than a lot of modern horrors have been. I’d probably buy the score if it was available but... so far, there seems to be nothing released on CD for this one. Maybe we’ll get something released later, though, if the film does well enough at the box office?

So there you have it. A pretty short review and, for some reason, I don’t have much to say about this one. If you’re into horror movies then you probably won’t be blown away by The Darkness but it’s certainly well put together and good enough to go on your ‘to watch’ list, I would have thought. If you’re not that used to horror movies then this will probably scare you enough into watching some more of them... or avoiding them. Not sure which but it is fairly effective in certain sequences, at any rate. Not one I’d go out of my way for but certainly worth spending a little time with, I think. So maybe give this one a go.

Paranormal Activity - The Ghost Dimension 3D

Wheatley Hell’s 
Going On Here?

Paranormal Activity - The Ghost Dimension 3D
2015 USA
Directed by Gregory Plotkin
UK cinema release print.

Regular readers will know that I have a soft spot for the Paranormal Activity films. The first of these (reviewed here) was not really all that scary but fits into my realm of 'comfort horror'. Paranormal Activity 2 - 4 (reviewed here, here and here)  were pretty scary and, as each new film was released, they added another compelling puzzle piece to an overall  back story arc that has been used to drive the franchise on, pretty successfully, since the first installment. At this point I should probably point out that I don’t include the original sequel to the first Paranormal Activity film, the Japanese horror movie Paranormal Activity 2 - Tokyo Nights because, amazingly, the producers have done a really good job at suppressing a release of that, now unofficial, sequel over here or in the US and I still haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy with English subtitles. it follows a completely different plot avenue from the US Paranormal Activity 2 and I really want to see what the Japanese did with it. I shall keep looking out for it though.

The US films are not set in a chronological order but, as the story unfolds, you realise that there's a good reason why this is so, especially with the inclusion in the fifth installment, the dreadful Paranormal Activity - The Marked Ones (reviewed here) of the concept that various characters in the Paranormal Activity universe can travel back and forth in time. Now this is interesting because, as far as I can remember, the release of Paranormal Activity - The Ghost Dimension was stalled for a couple of years to make way for the shooting and release of The Marked Ones and it seems to me now that the only reason this could be so, was that test audiences (be they members of the public or part of private studio screenings back in 2013) may have been confused by the time travel element in this movie but, honestly, although I originally assumed that this was why that fifth film was needed, I can honestly say that you’d have to be... well...  really not very smart if you couldn’t work that out for yourself by the things which are happening in this one, since the film straddles mostly just two realities (or three if you count the titular plain of existence) - that of the year when Katie and her sister were taken in by ‘the coven’ in the past and also the current part of the story playing out, the year 2013... which gives me further circumstantial evidence that this was, at least in part but probably in whole, in the can by the original projected 2013 release date.

Now, the thing which was driving me nuts about this one before I went to see it was that it’s being presented in 3D. What the heck? Now you have to think about this. The movies are found footage horror films making use of whatever camera technology they are purportedly being recorded on... mostly VHS in this one because it includes the identity of the finders of the tapes which you saw being discovered in the opening of one of the former episodes... I forget which one. So how do you get away with justifying a 3D release of a Paranormal Activity film when the whole point of these things is they’re supposed to look like they are documentary style found footage recorded on the hoof?

Well, as it happens, I forgave them almost immediately because, like the majority of the series, this film brings in a slightly newer element which elevates proceedings just a little more than the last one and, in this one, it’s the discovery of a souped up camera which has twice as much innards as it’s supposed to have and which seems to have been specifically created to capture things happening in a spirit realm, invisible to the naked eye or a normal camera, superimposed over the real world images as they manifest themselves. So think shots of eerie ectoplasm beings appearing whenever the films ‘star demon’ Toby comes out to play, so to speak. So most of the footage in the movie is still flat but, whenever The Ghost Dimension starts manifesting whenever it’s this particular camera picking up the footage, the ghost parts are actually projected on a 3D layer... accompanied by some appropriate sound design to heighten the audiences awareness that something spooky is about to happen while simultaneously conditioning the audience, Pavlov style, that whenever they hear these sounds or see these ectoplasmic 3D black shapes... something awful could happen, so be afraid! Of course, all this would have gone down a lot better if it had made its original 2013 release date, when 3D hadn’t totally lost the popularity Hollywood wants it to have, in order to justify the ticket price hike but... at least the team behind the film have gone to some lengths to find a decent spin on the gimmick for this movie... which I think lets it off the hook somewhat.

It doesn’t hurt, either, that this is a real return to form for the series after that last, plug in installment. This one has a group of characters consisting of people who you really can sympathise with again and who you can hope make it through the film fairly unscathed... rather than the bunch of foul mouthed  street thugs you just don’t care about in The Marked Ones. Of course, I’m not going to tell you if everyone or, indeed, anyone survives this installment but... it’s a Paranormal Activity film. What do you think? You need to go find out.

The film is somewhat formulaic, it has to be said, following the slow burn format of the previous installments with the scares getting increasingly more alarming and violent as Toby and the gang ramp up to a finale where all hell breaks loose... almost literally in this case. There’s also a nice return, in this one, to the old Dennis Wheatley school of horror... which manifests itself when a local priest gets involved with the family and friends who are trying to protect their Toby-obsessed daughter. So, yeah, you get the old chalk symbol circle sequence where everybody has to stand in said circle and must not... whatever they hear or see... leave the circle which protects them from the demonic forces at work.

Okay... so how do you think that ones going to work out in a Paranormal Activity movie? Someone always leaves the circle of protection in a horror tale, right?

Let’s just say that the final confrontation between the priest and Toby, kickstarts the usual chaotic and scary concluding sequences of the film and, I have to tell you, the writers/producers/director goes way past the level they usually do at this point in these movies. You will, finally, get some good glimpses of Toby and the demonic deaths of any/all/some of the characters in this one (like I’m going to tell you) are all done in a much more over-the-top fashion which, in a lot of cases, makes full use of the 3D format. It possibly gets a little silly in this final pièce de résistance of the movie but it’s swings and roundabouts averaging out between the “blimey, that scared the pants off me, I did not expect that” moments and the “okay, 3D demonic impaling... whatever” moments and I can really forgive the film-makers any indulgences with the last quarter of an hour of this movie because it’s just so much scary fun.

The creator of the franchise, Oren Peli, has gone on record that this will be the last in the series but... hang on, you can’t stop it here! The final message we take away from this one is pretty grim and I really do want to see more of this franchise. I don’t think the story is done here and I would so much like to see a good guy/gal ‘anti-coven’ group of heroes go into a final showdown with Toby, the coven and, presumably, the devil made flesh etc. This is like where they left it at the end of The Last Exorcism Part 2 (reviewed by me here) and I was pumped up to see where the next one would go... which didn’t materialise. I want to see this series’ equivalent of the original Omen trilogy’s The Final Conflict (reviewed by me here) where there’s a huge showdown between the forces of darkness and light, over one or two movies. I don’t even care who wins... I just want to see it. I think this film needs to maybe make a heck of a lot of money and wipe out the bad box office of the unnecessary fifth installment to somehow give the studio a hand in reconsidering their options at this point.

The one thing that I found maybe dissapointing is that this is the first of the movies not to feature an adult version of the Katie character and played by the original actress. We certainly hear about what she’s been up to in 2013 and we certainly see a lot of her as a young ‘un... but no actual appearances in her adult guise in this one, I’m afraid to say. Which would have been a nice touch when all hell starts breaking loose in this one, I feel.

Regardless, my final words on Paranormal Activity - The Ghost Dimension are... this is another great entry into a seriously cool set of movies which actually make full use of the, possibly overused, modern cliché of the ‘found footage horror’ movie. It’s scary, heart racing fun for people who like to go to see these kinds of films and if you’re a fan of the Paranormal Activity series... essential viewing. If you got disheartened after that last movie in the series, you don’t have anything to worry about here... it’s back on track and is especially well worth a watch at the cinema in 3D because it’s used to enhance a plot point. And, like I said, I really hope this one does the numbers because I really want to see another sequel. A truly great movie, too, to spend this Halloween at the cinema with. Go see it soonest.