J*A*S*M

A very realistic and minimalist survival flick, the script can’t have been more than five pages long. I think that’s what it must look like when two people get lost while camping in the wilderness and get attacked by a bear on their way back. The level of credibility and crudeness is very high in Backcountry, including those “main” scenes when the bear attacks. It’s on a completely different level (in conception and ambition) that this year’s Grizzly, fortunately so, I must say. My only quibbles are the self-serving and pointless episodes with the foreigner and that the survival part “proper” begins rather late. Edit: I sometimes think about this film, even a year later, and that main attack scene still remains very much alive. Quality.

Compared to its sequel, the first Monsters (4*) is proper popcorn fun. Anyone expecting a more action packed and viewer friendlier film after watching the trailer couldn’t be more mistaken. Really, it’s not possible to describe in words how awfully boring it is.

The first half: a confused search of sense and order, with a well made atmospheric scene here and there. The second half: no sense and order found, utter disinterest.

While watching I wasn’t sure whether I was enjoying the film or not. It has nice visuals, a pretty good concept and quality gore going on for it. The problem is the music: the main score is fine, yes, thumbs up for it, but the creators push other “scary” melodies way too often, even in scenes that would actually be more effective without any music, sometimes it feels ridiculous, in fact. Another problem are the characters, who are incredibly unlikeable. This, of course, can be justified given the concept, but the reward (the horror action) comes too late for the viewer to not become irritated by them. At the beginning they speak a lot, then hints of relatively brutal violence start showing up, reaching their peak with the appearance of the maniac with the shotgun from the poster. At some point, the overall impression from the film the leant towards the good.

As Krnáčová would say, probably an idiot is behind this project. I try not to use the Boo! rating too often, but here it was solidly deserved. A cheap and pointless murder-fest (and by cheap I don’t mean only in terms of money) that unnecessarily jumps back and forth and the characters have nothing better to do other than showing boobs and bums (in the case of the girls) or bare chests (in the case of the boys). The humour has some hints of self-awareness, but it’s dominated by toxicity. I don’t know what else to say. It wasn’t fun, it was painful. If the author wants to dedicate two more films to this, I admire his effort and perseverance, but IMHO it’s not worth it, really.

When I saw the first trailer of The Pyramid a couple of months ago, I got very excited and hoped it would be good. I would happily welcome a quality brutal horror movie in the setting of archaeology, Egyptian historical monuments, the awakening of ancient demons, Pharaoh curses, mummies. Now that I’ve watched it… I’m not fully disappointed nor disgusted, it has a couple of good things, but it’s a sad shame that someone didn’t make a better use of this opportunity. The titular pyramid itself is one of the good things, the actors have also been fairly well chosen, it’s a pity that they don’t have much to do. The mythology with the god Anubis isn’t completely worthless, either. But then you have the negatives, which are unfortunately more. To begin with, it’s very similar to last year’s As Above So Below (anyone watching this film will remember it). The script. The script never lets the characters react convincingly to what is happening around them. Everyone is very quick to believe that they are being chased by something supernatural (even after one of the girls was scratched in the dark by, well, a cat). They switch at the speed of light from sadness, despair and hopelessness, all dominated by an attitude of “whatever, let’s move on”. The second problem: why the fuck did they put a digi-cat and a digi-Anubis when it’s clear they didn’t have the money for those monsters to look realistic, let alone scary. And it’s so unnecessary, for God’s sake! If they had used some normal skinny dude wrapped in dirty bandages, they could have sold it as a mummy, would have saved a lot of money and would have been a lot more effective than the digital crap that crawls up in the end and makes the audience burst in laughter – really, I tried not to, but it wasn’t possible. When things are not seen but only heard, it works pretty well and a couple of those scenes do have an atmosphere, but then the lights turn on and it goes to hell. And I also wonder why did it have to be another found-footage, especially when in this film, this format has a terrible effect on the credibility of the characters’ behaviour (really, at least in the last half hour, they would no longer be carrying the cameras), and the creators don’t even properly stick to it during the film but interrupt it with normally shot takes. So, the format doesn’t help in anything, on the contrary, it hurts things, so another unnecessary minus point of choice. Although I didn’t get bored – I liked some of the atmospheric scenes, the interiors, and the jump-scares – the aforementioned complaints force to give it one star less than I gave As Above So Below, which avoided the digital mess and stuck to its format.

It was supposed to be a renaissance of summer camp slashers in the tradition of Friday the 13th, where boy-scouts are threatened by a redneck murderer and his young masked apprentice. Well, the renaissance is not quite happening after all. In its craftsmanship, Welp fulfils the most strict criteria - such a nicely shot horror film is not something you see every day. A nicely captured beautiful forest setting, torch lights flashing among the trees, the small villain has an original mask and the home of the big villain is properly dark and dirty. But what is all that any good for when you have a slasher-fest without a single likeable character? We don’t get to know much about the villains, only that they have an ingenious underground shelter (how did it get there and what is it exactly?), that they have set bizarre traps in the woods (MacGyver would be green with envy), and that they have the entire area secured with sophisticated sensors that warn them when someone has entered it. It feels as if the main villain should have at least a doctorate in some technical field, even though he actually looks like a redneck who can’t count to five. The murders aren’t too shabby, but they are not many and certainly nothing special, either. And on top of that, the film never exploits the fact that most of the potential meat for the butcher counter are kids – endangered kids would arouse a lot more fear an tension in the viewer (especially if they were cute and nice, but that would probably be too much to ask already) – but they are never really in danger, the murderers are happy picking the adult camp supervisors and random passer-bys. Overall, it was passable horror fun, the ending is quite tense, but given the first-class technical quality, the film should have been better than just passable. The final twist also felt rather unconvincing, which served to reinforce my tentative impression. 6/10

A few tweaks in the script and it could be perfect. It needs to get rid of some of the filler, expand and develop more deeply the final moral dilemma and a more uniform atmosphere. What bothers me the most about Clown is how many times the mood changes from one scene to the other: from laughter to depression, from oppressive tension to horror fun. But even then it’s fine. There hasn’t been such an effective monster for quite some time and his final form is especially cool. I can’t remember a better horror film with a clown as a character. It had more potential, but I’m satisfied.

For a slasher, it’s good. It has well portrayed and likeable characters, good craftsmanship, a psychopath that demands some respect and murders that, well, aren’t very creative, but I’ve seen much worse. From the name, the poster and the blurb I was expecting some amateur trash relying only on those girls, but in the end it actually works really well as a solid film murder-fest. One of the surprises of the year.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a film that so accurately reflected teenage mentality. In some of its details, Kingsman is excellent and breathtaking, in others, I found it awful. Overall, I had fun with it, thought rather reluctantly. Many people value its attempt at being constantly entertaining, tough, controversial, fierce and refreshing, but, unlike with Kick-Ass, for instance, Vaughn here doesn’t keep a measure on things and in some places he falls into a cesspool of a category I can call spoilt brat. That’s what bothers me the most about a film that’s supposed to be about gentlemanhood. The brutal violence against bystanders is here portrayed and presented as cool fun. That not only goes against my moral principles, but also brings up another internal conflict: how are we supposed root for the heroes to thwart the villain’s plan, if it is only when villain wins that we can get another serving of eye-candy brutal action, as in the church (which is the most talked about, not only here)? And what skills of the candidates was the last task of the admission process supposed to reveal? The ability to follow even the most stupid orders without question? Thanks very much for that. Maybe if I was a bigger fan of the old Bond films, my feelings towards Kingsman would be more positive. Or probably not.