Tag: Prevenge

Three horrific short movies

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

The first short film of this horror triptych by British filmmaker Neville Pierce is the psychological terror Lock In (2016, pictured above). It boasts a clever little script concerning a gangster Jimmy (Nicholas Pinnock) visiting a pub just after closing time ostensibly to ask Richard the landlord (Tim McInnerny) for protection money. Richard, meanwhile, is soon to be a granddad: his pregnant daughter Lucy (Sing Street’s Lucy Boynton) is working behind the bar and hits Jimmy over the head with a bottle, knocking him out. Unbeknownst to Lucy, Richard and James have a history as former school teacher and difficult pupil.

Aside from some in car shots and a few exterior pub moments, the whole thing takes place inside the pub. The script packs in a lot in its 10 minutes and is a real gift for a director. Pierce responds with some fantastic casting: McInnerny, a prolific actor who deserves much wider recognition, plays a character who seems to change as revelations alter our perception of him. The catalytic Pinnock lends the whole thing an edge while Boynton is terrific as the daughter confronted with unpleasant home truths (or are they lies?) about her father. Pierce also has a striking feel for pace: the whole thing never lets up and moves along very nicely.

The second short Bricks (2015) adapts Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Cask Of Amontillado in which one nobleman lures another to his wine cellar to exact a cruel revenge. The Russell/Pierce adaptation shifts the tale to the present day and the two characters to stockbroker William (Blake Ritson), the owner of the wine cellar, and builder Clive (Jason Flemyng), his unsuspecting victim. Which means that the script has the virtue of consisting of just two characters on one set, which makes it reasonably easy to produce as a film. But that virtue could so easily be the film’s downfall: hard to imagine anything potentially more boring than two people in a room.

Fortunately for us viewers, as the two characters from their very different worlds talk, Russell avoids that pitfall and delivers a taut sparring, a game of cat and mouse. Pierce again demonstrates astute casting skills and elicits from both actors performances among the most memorable of their considerable careers. Flemyng claims this film is one of the few times a director has actually given him direction – and you can feel it as you watch. The short has also been championed by no less a director than David Fincher (who directed Flemyng in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 2008).

For this writer, however, the best of the three films here is the black and white photographed Ghosted (2016). Again, Russell’s script posits a deceptively simple idea. A widow in search of love and romance visits a restaurant on a series of five dates (the fifth is a man who happens to be at the next table when date number four goes wrong) accompanied by the ghost of her late husband whom she alone can see. It’s an excuse to explore male foibles – narcissism, personal baggage, obsession with tech, earnest intellectualism.

The five dates are beautifully cast, among them Jason Flemyng as a man unable to forget the woman who left him, a very different but arguably equally impressive performance to the one he gave in Bricks. Christien Anholt projects just the right amount of wry observation and world weariness as the dead husband, but the actor who really brings the tale to life is leading lady and comedienne Alice Lowe (Prevenge/2016, Sightseers/2012) who is as good here as she’s ever been (which is saying something). Pierce pulls his various elements together brilliantly: comedy is a notoriously difficult genre to do well, and this one is very funny indeed.

So, an intriguing horror story adaptation, a tense gangster genre outing underpinned by relationships and an hilarious romantic comedy with supernatural overtones. Quite an impressive range of material and all three well executed which makes me, for one, want to see more by this writer-director team. I have no idea what Russell and Pierce will do next (the latter has already made another short with a different writer, unseen at the time of writing) but if they can come up between them with a feature length piece as good as these shorts, we want to see them make it. Meanwhile, the three shorts just released are something of dirty treat.

The Three Neville Pierce Shorts are available to view on Vimeo from Monday, February 5th. Find them here.

The films will also screen on YouTube channel Tall Tales, the new online home for indie films. Lock In will play on Tall Tales from February 6th, Ghosted from February 13th and Bricks later in 2018.

2017 is a VERY BAD year for motherhood… well, at least in cinema!

Posted on by victorfraga

The largest film festival in the UK has finally drawn to a close, and we have unearthed nearly 40 dirty gems exclusively for you. They are guaranteed to keep your film schedule busy for the next 12 months or so. Just make sure you follow us on Twitter or Facebook for the latest updates, theatrical releases and of course… the dirtiest thoughts on what’s happening in the cinema world in the UK and elsewhere.

Andrey Zvyagentsyev’s tender and yet extremely disturbing drama Loveless has just snatched the top prize at the BFI London Film Festival. Our editor Victor Fraga thought that the film was an allegory of modern Russia, a country that does not look after its own children. His previous films The Return (2003) and Leviathan (2014) achieve a similarly bleak result, although the use the subjects of corruption and of fatherhood (respectively) in order to do so.

We soon realised that a number of films released in 2017 painted a very strange portrait of motherhood, even if their language was entirely different and so were their objectives. There were bloodthirsty unborn babies in at least two films, two stolen children and plenty of comparisons to Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968). What connects all of these films is an unusual pregnancy and a very unorthodox motherly bond. You might want to avoid this list in case you are feeling a little broody this year!

Don’t forget to click on the film titles in order to accede to its respective dirty review.

1. Loveless (Andrey Zvyagentsev):

Mother Russia has failed it children. It has neglected and relegated them to a life without hope and love. The latest movie by Andrey Zvyagintsev, possibly the biggest exponent in Russia cinema right now, is a bleak allegory of life in Russia. People carry on with their existences in a robotic and dehumanised fashion, without any regard for their neighbours, family and other citizens. Not even their own offspring. Yet, who’s to blame them? They are too busy searching for a purpose and a solution for their very own loveless predicament.

And Zhenya’s description of motherhood and hate for her own son is shocking. She despises him for nearly cleaving her in twain at birth, and she simply cannot stand his very sight. It is no exaggeration to claim that Loveless is a metaphor of a failed Mother Russia. Andrey Zvyagintsev has dotted the film with political reports coming from the radio, conveniently reminding viewers that our private life is an extension of the public sphere.

2. mother! (Darren Aronofsky):

Maverick visionary Aronofsky’s psychological horror has a spoonful of Polanski, a dash of Hitchcock, a pinch of Kubrick and even a squeeze of Ken Russell, all topped with a sterling cast. His house burned up in a fire. Then he (Javier Bardem) found her (Jennifer Lawrence) and as he began to rebuild his life, so she began to rebuild the house. Her work is well on its way to completion. Outside the house lie tranquil, golden fields. He is an acclaimed poet and hasn’t written anything for a long time. The couple live in an hermetic bubble. At least she does.

The film divides neatly into three acts which could be labelled: home building, pregnancy, motherhood. Yet each section follows roughly the same path: her idyllic existence is upset as more and more people arrive and she becomes more and more agitated. This very creative cinematic experiment has been very divisive: many simply loved it, and others found it entirely pointless.

3. Prevenge (Alice Lowe):

The female experience of pregnancy in film is something not known for its jovial depictions. Simply viewing Rosemary Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968) one can see that child bearing is a painful endeavour, regardless of whether it’s the Devil’s child or not. Akin to Polanski’s film, Alice Lowe’s directorial and writing debut uses the horror genre as a vice to explore femininity and isolation. Unlike numerous egotistical star driven directorial debuts, Prevenge is a strange concoction of the slasher horror and comedy – making for a truly original recipe of British independent filmmaking.

Notably Lowe’s breakout performance came in Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers (2012) and her comic chops are again discovered in her debut. Yet, behind this comedic veneer, the film revels in its sadistic presentations of gore. Although not overt in its comedic tone, the film and Lowe’s performance are highly deadpan. Comparable to the films of Wheatley, Lowe’s debut is chilling and ruthless in its execution (no pun intended).

Surprisingly filmed over a tight 11-day schedule, Prevenge does not fail on its innovative title and narrative. Its focus on femininity and pregnancy’s isolation are relatively untested waters when it comes British cinema.

4. The Eyes of my Mother (Nicolas Pesce):

A mother (Diana Agostini), who was previously an eye surgeon in Portugal, lives with her husband and their young daughter Francisca (Kika Magalhães) in a secluded farm somewhere in the remote American countryside. She gives her daughter anatomy lessons from a very young age, probably unaware that Francisca would soon use her acquired skills in the most unorthodox ways imaginable. One day an intruder named Charlie breaks into their house and kills her mother, but the criminal is soon subdued and becomes a prisoner and guinea pig for the little girl’s morbid experiments. Francisca soon grows up, and the intensity of the anatomic and psychological escalates to the highest level imaginable, as she recruits new victims to submit to her sadistic ordeals.

The Eyes of my Mother skillfully blends interrupted motherhood (twice, but you must watch the film in order to understand why), female psychosis, isolation and religion in one big pan. The sharp black and white photography renders the grueling scenes more watchable and gives the film an eerie veneer, in a way similar to Hitchcock Psycho(1960) – the director opted for black and white because he wanted to spare audiences from the violence of the colour red in the famous shower sequence.

5. Good Manners (Marco Dutra/Juliana Rojas):

This dirtylicious Brazilian horror also premiered during the BFI London Film Festival.

It starts out as an awkward domestic drama, as the gorgeous, upper-class, white and pregnant Ana (Marjorie Estiano) hires the black babysitter Clara (Isabél Zuaa). At first, Ana is reluctant to take Clara on board because she lacks credentials: she did not finish nursing school and she has never looked after babies. To boot, one of her referees doesn’t quite sing her praises. Yet, there is something soothing and comforting about the very beautiful and polite stranger. The Black Portuguese actress (Zuaa was born in Lisbon, yet she has a perfect Brazilian accent in the movie) exudes charm, talent and charisma, and I have absolutely no doubt that she has a bright future ahead.

The subject of interrupted motherhood and isolation from society become central to the story, which takes a very unexpected twist roughly in the middle of the 127-minute narrative. Good Manners then incorporates easily recognisable devices from a number of horror films, such as Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981) and the more recent French cannibal flick Raw (Julia Ducournau, 2017). Oh, and there is a giant creature that looks a lot like a meerkat. Derivative elements are deftly combined in order to create a film with a singular identity, extraordinarily original in its format. Violence here acquires a fantastic dimension. Blood isn’t repulsive; it’s instead the ultimate maternal link. Meet is not murder.

Prevenge

Posted on by victorfraga

The female experience of pregnancy in film is something not known for its jovial depictions. Simply viewing Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968) one can see that child bearing is a painful endeavour, regardless of whether it’s the Devil’s child or not. Akin to Polanski’s film, Alice Lowe’s directorial and writing debut uses the horror genre as a vice to explore femininity and isolation. Unlike numerous egotistical star driven directorial debuts, Prevenge is a strange concoction of the slasher horror and comedy – making for a truly original recipe of British independent filmmaking.

Notably Lowe’s breakout performance came in Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers (2012) and her comic chops are again discovered in her debut. Yet, behind this comedic veneer, the film revels in its sadistic presentations of gore. Although not overt in its comedic tone, the film and Lowe’s performance are highly deadpan. Comparable to the films of Wheatley, Lowe’s debut is chilling and ruthless in its execution (no pun intended).

Opening in a reptile shop filled with spiders, lizards and centipedes, the diegetic sounds of animals reflect the twisted mind of the protagonist Ruth, alongside her womb’s cries for blood. Requested by her omnipotent womb, she mercilessly kills the pervy shop owner Mr. Zabek.

Continuing her spree at a 1970s disco, Ruth, like a black widow, seduces the misogynist DJ – ultimately leading to his glorious and hilarious emasculating death. As the kill list mounts and Ruth seeks further targets, its becomes clear that her unborn child’s calls for blood are related to an incident involving her partner. Spliced between these murders, Ruth regularly visits her midwife who instructs her that nature has taken over her body and she is powerless to the powers of the baby. Unbeknownst to this figure of governance, the faetus has polluted the mind of its mother.

Alongside the stunningly grotesque murders, the electronic score elevates the visceral and mesmeric quality of the film’s atmosphere. Pablo Clements, James Griffith and Toydrum’s synth based score adds a nuanced layer to the psychopathic tendencies of Ruth and her malevolent womb. Clearly referencing the music of the Goblins and their association with giallo auteur Dario Argento, the dark and melodic sounds, as any well-constructed horror genre piece should, are a vital competent to the film’s success. Audiences who share an interest with electronic music as myself will see similarities between this score and the melancholic sounds of techno Berlin based DJs as Ame, Steffi and DVS1.

Lowe’s straight-faced performance is all the more impressive when considering the actor was seven months pregnant when filming the role. Her ability to create awkwardness in a scene lends itself well to her script-writing. Though some critics could see the film as a series of killings, without any emotion or character, this would ignore the nuanced portrayal of a women isolated from society and clearly suffering from severe grief and depression.

Drawing out the best from her fellow actors also benefits Lowe’s material. Blending comedic and dramatic actors together creates clear divisions in their characters. In the example of the misogynist 1970s DJ, portrayed by Tom Davis, his comic background in television lends itself well to his and Lowe’s on screen interaction.

On the reverse side of the coin, casting Kate Dickie, known for Andrea Arnold’s Red Road (2006) and Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2015) as a lonely company executive emphasises Ruth’s sinister vengeance. In this sequence, cinematographer Ryan Eddleston uses a longshot to frame their conversation, depicting the isolating that pregnant women are given from big commercial business.

Surprisingly filmed over a tight 11-day schedule, Prevenge does not fail on its innovative title and narrative. Its focus on femininity and pregnancy’s isolation are relatively untested waters when it comes British cinema. Like her colleague Ben Wheatley constantly produces, Alice Lowe has orchestrated an original and inventive piece of film behind and in front of the camera. With recent releases as The Falling (Carol Morley, 2014) and The Levelling (Hope Dickson Leach, 2017) written and directed by female British directors, Alice Lowe’s directorial debut is a welcomed edition to this new wave of British independent cinema.

Prevenge was out in cinemas in March, and it has now been made available on DVD and Blu-ray.