Venom (Ruben Fleischer, 2018)

 Symbiote meets guy. Guy hates symbiote. Cue fun n games. They fall in love. Credits.

My God, they had no idea what they were making.

Before it came out, I had no interest in watching Venom. After its release, the movie began to get a second life and I started reading reviews. 

Venom dropped on Netflix the other day - probably to get people interested ahead of the release of Let There Be Carnage - and I finally got to see what all the fuss was about.

Off the bat, Venom is a bad movie. The script is boilerplate, the characterisation is hard to grasp, and the movie looks like an incredibly generic blockbuster. What saves the movie is that all of these ‘missteps’ work in turning the movie into something way more interesting. 

This movie is purely designed to be read against the grain - people have referred to Venom as a romance and I completely agree with them. 

What is fascinating about the movie is how generic it is, and yet that lack of depth - enables obvious readings.

If Venom is not in love with Eddie, then this movie is terrible - because that is the only way the movie makes any sense. 

The movie only starts to get going when the two main characters get together. Before that, the movie is a formulaic blockbuster without any real texture, emotion or atmosphere.

But once Eddie and Venom are combined, the movie gets personality.

Venom is so silly. Every time he talked, I laughed - it felt like a spin on Little Shop of Horrors, with Venom as Audrey Two to Eddie’s hapless Seymour.

Tom Hardy’s performance is on its own course. Initially it felt like a collection of tics - he has worked out a voice and posture, and he is sticking to it. But once he is possessed, Hardy’s performance is juiced to 11.

 

He even makes the cliched one-liners funny - not in the way the screenwriters intended, but Hardy’s delivery highlights their staleness, and pushes them over the line.

 A success in spite of itself, Venom is a movie you cannot watch the way its makers intended.

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Leviathan (George Pan Cosmatos, 1989)

 At the bottom of the sea, the crew of an undersea station discover a shipwreck containing a secret biological weapon.

This weapon is an entity which assimilates every organism it comes into contact with. Will the crew destroy the creature before it destroys them?

I am not afraid of water, but for some reason it is a massive phobia when it comes to movies. It is a common joke among my family that I gave up swimming because I thought there were sharks in the pool. Bodies of water, particularly oceans, are fascinating. In movies though, they might as well be the seventh circle of hell for me. This is why I did not watch Jaws until a couple years ago (it was great).

Water is a great vehicle for suspense. If a filmmaker knows what they are doing, viewers can imagine all sorts of ghoulish things gliding beneath the surface. Even a sloppy execution can get past me, if the filmmakers know how to use water.

And if said filmmaker can combine the hidden terrors of the deep with the existential dread of body horror? Welcome to Leviathan. 

One of several underwater sci-fi horror movies released in 1989 (the ‘winner’ of the bunch would be James Cameron’s flawed The Abyss), Leviathan feels like a grabbag of Eighties sci fi and horror cliches: 

• a group of blue collars and scientists in a technologically advanced environment that becomes a nightmarish maze (Alien)

• A hidden alien antagonist hunting our heroes down (The Thing, Alien)

• An evil corporation looking to monetise this antagonist (Alien/s) 

That patchwork quality is part of Leviathan’s charm. 

The cast are solid - Peter Weller, Ernie Hudson, Richard Crenna, Meg Foster, Daniel Stern, Hector Elizondo, Lisa Eilbacher and Michael Carmine do not get a lot to do, but they have good chemistry, and they each bring a sliver of personality to their roles. Stern and Hudson are the easy standouts - the former plays the resident sleazeball, while Hudson is a voice of reason (he also gets the film’s best one-liner).

This movie is cheesy, and is pretty shameless in ripping off better movies, but every time I watch it, by the last 15 minutes I am sweating bullets. Even on this occasion, when I watched a good portion of it on my phone. 

As our heroes try to escape the collapsing station, it is pretty tense - less so if you have seen Alien, but it works. Leviathan may not have an original idea in its helmet but the filmmakers behind it know how to keep its titular beasty in the shadows or blocked by pieces of the claustrophobic sets. 

This is important because the creature is a bit of a mess. It is meant to be an amalgamation of various sea creatures, but there is something underwhelming about the design.

The Thing boasted distinctive forms - the creature in Leviathan always felt like a random mash of different creatures, and they do not have the visceral quality of the earlier film. This might have something to do with the way that these creatures are lit and shot. They always feel like puppets not living entities.

The effects are the movie’s selling point and the fact that they do not quite come off are a good representation of the movie as a whole. Like the creature at its heart, Leviathan feels like a facsimile of a bunch of different components. 

While it boasts a big budget, a recognisable cast and technical credits (Stan Winston’s team designed the creatures), at its core, this movie feels like an Italian ripoff of The Thing underwater. 

Switch out the Antarctic tundra for the ocean floor and it is basically the same movie. It is nowhere near as good.

There is entertainment to be had, but for me I always have to reframe my expectations.Ultimately, Leviathan is a slasher movie - the characters are developed just enough so you care when they die, and they die in spectacularly gore-y fashion. It is blunt and a little clumsy in execution, but it ends up succeeding in its modest aim.

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The Black Belly of the Tarantula (Paolo Cavara, 1971)

Someone is blackmailing the clients at a local health spa. Someone else is killing them.

It is up to jaded police officer Tellini (Giancarlo GIanini) to find the murderer before they can get their next victim.

Every year or so, I get back into giallo. These Italian thrillers were popular from the late sixties through to the late seventies. While not all of them included these features, the genre is based around a murder mystery plot, vivid colours and graphic violence. 

While they are associated with the later slasher genre, I always liked gailli. There is something about the clash between ugliness and beauty. I generally not a fan of style but this genre’s impact is so tied up in its aesthetic.

The Black Belly of the Tarantula has gained a latter-day recognition mostly down to its cast, which features a large number of James Bond alumnus.

Lead player Giancarlo GIanini later played Bond’s ally Rene Mathis in Casino Royale, while Claudine Auger (Thunderball), Barbara Bach (The Spy Who Loved Me) and Barbara Bouchet (Casino Royale ‘67) are potential victims.

The Black Belly of the Tarantula is not the worst gaillo I have seen but it might be the most generic. The most unique element is his killing method - he paralyses his victims with a needle to the back of the neck so that they are immobilised but conscious as he stabs them with a knife. There is probably some licence with the science but it is a creepy set up. While we get a few splashes of red paint, the violence is mostly conveyed through editing, contrasting  between the plunging blade and the victim’s frozen features.

There is a vague attempt to give the film some pathos by making Tellini disenchanted with his work, but it never quite pays off. The climax veers toward a Seven-style downer, but it does not quite fit.

Other than that, the movie is pretty familiar - there is a blackmail subplot involving the clients at a health club; a whiff of sexual hypocrisy as a theme; a downbeat ending. Despite his killing method, if you have seen any other giallo, the killer is familiar: kitted out in a dark coat and slouch hat.

If I have a gripe with the movie, it is the execution. I am not familiar with Cavara's other work, but there is a lack of directorial control to the suspense sequences that is detrimental. 

In one standout example, the film intercuts between a woman standing in the entrance to her apartment while the killer waits for her behind a closed door. Now according to the 180* rule, these two scenes would be shot in a way that would convey that the characters are on either side of the door (killer on the left, victim on the right). In this way, the viewer is able to put it together in their mind, which generates tension as she prepares to open the door. 

What ruins this scene is that both scenes are shot from the same angle, so your sense of geography is thrown and so is the build of suspense.

While the murder sequences are eerie, the suspense sequences before them are all fudged in similarly frustrating ways.

This undermines the movie because it is not that interested in being anything other than a murder mystery with scary murder sequences. 

If you want to watch it, The Black Belly of the Tarantula might work best as one half of a double bill with another Gallo, to give you taste of the genre.

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OUT NOW: Army of Thieves

Stuck in a dead-end job, amateur safecracker Ludwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) gets a chance at the big time when he is approached by a group of high-end thieves (Nathalie Emmanuel, Ruby O. Fee, Stuart Martin and Guz Khan) for an operation to rob three safes which rumoured to be un-crackable.

I can barely remember what happened in Army of the Dead, which is not much of an issue for this prequel. 

Based around Matthias Schweighöfer’s oddball safecracker from Snyder’s film, Army of Thieves is a somewhat different beast from its predecessor. I was kind of excited by the idea of it, particularly since the movie would not be directed by Zack Snyder (Schweighöfer himself takes over those duties).

While the lure of Army was a heist during a zombie apocalypse, I think it lost focus on the potential excitement of that premise. With the focus on a heist, I was hoping that Army of Thieves would be a correction.

The first thing it gets right is aesthetically. Army of Thieves does not look like the previous instalment. Gone is the constant shallow focus. Gone also is the relentless grimness. 

Instead, you have more of a traditional heist movie, with a lighter tone and a more romantic focus. While the ‘army of theives’ (only four people) are not on the straight and narrow, they are not seeking redemption. Some want money, some want excitement and some want the reputation of breaking three of the toughest safes in the world.

If you are looking for zombies, you might be disappointed - they almost entirely absent. You get glimpses of the outbreak in a few TV broadcasts and our hero has a couple of nightmares about them, but those moments are so compartmentalised that you could remove them and be left with the same movie.

Thieves is over two hours long, but unlike Army it does not feel padded. 

I wish I liked it. 

The heist component is fairly straightforward, but these sequences lack the satisfaction of watching our heroes overcome obstacles to achieve their goals.

But the movie wants to be about our hero’s arc. Which would be fine if the characters were not drawn as archetypes. Or had anything resembling a motivation. Becoming good at something is not good enough by itself - this movie lacks any kind of real stakes which makes the whole experience feel flat.

The movie wants to be more lighthearted, and tries to turn the film into a romance - but humour requires jokes, and romance requires chemistry.

The cast are not the problem. I am sure with a better script and creative vision they could work.  

I left Army of Thieves feeling like I had watched a 20 page treatment of a story. All the character and narrative beats are there, but everything needs to be fleshed out and given some specificity.

While the movie is more tactile than Snyder’s effort, Thieves never feels immersive. We go through multiple locations but you never feel a sense of place. The buildings all look the same and the exteriors could be anywhere.

That is my ultimate frustration with the movie. It feels like a generic version of a European heist caper. It’s never bad or great - it just exists in this middle way of banality, which makes it worse. 

Army of Thieves is better than its sequel. But that is about it.

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The Forever Purge (Everardo Gout, 2021)

Eight years after they were thrown out of power, The New Founding Fathers have returned to power. And with their return the Purge is reinstated - the yearly slaughter is back.

Illegal immigrants Adela (Ana de la Reguera) and Juan (Tenoch Huerta) have come to America to build new lives for themselves. They have prepared for the Purge.

What no one has prepared for is that Purgers are no longer satisfied with one night of mayhem. They never want it to end.

While the government struggles to battle the Purgers, our heroes will have to fight their way over the border.

Horror has always been a great vehicle for social commentary. The Purge franchise stands out for how unsubtle it has been. 

One of the selling points for me has been watching the convergence of the franchise’s messaging with the real-time collapse of the American project. And as real world events escalate, the films have leaned harder into the potential of its premise.

Somehow, despite their generic narratives and flashy aesthetic, there was a strange blunt power to these movies. They were obvious and unsubtle, verging on didactic - but there was something underneath it all - I think what I like about the Purge franchise is that it tears away all the pageantry and shines a light on the roots of American society and its institutions. There is no innuendo to The Purge - it is about what it is about. 

 There was always a sense that franchise creator James DeMonaco was using each installment to refine why the Purge could exist, who would benefit from it, and who would suffer. The scariest aspect of the Purge is that every movie operated on the idea that America was set up for something like the Purge to happen. 

Around the time of Purge: Anarchy, I thought the franchise was setting itself up for endless sequels. By focusing on the titular event rather than characters, The Purge could be a series of ‘What Ifs’: what if the Purge took place on a plane? A Highrise building? In the middle of the sea? Outer space? 

As the movies grew more ambitious and direct in drawing parallels with developments in American society (particularly during the 2016 election and presidency of Donald Trump), that path felt unnecessary. These movies were more unique than that - almost like reflections of contemporary reality. They were becoming… important?

The Forever Purge is the first of the installments where it felt like the series could benefit from focusing on those kinds of contrived premises - this movie lacks a strong dramatic structure. We get a ticking clock eventually, but the movie takes forever to get going.

This is also the first movie where the political messaging is so blatant and poorly integrated it is genuinely annoying. Obvious commentary is a mainstay of the series, but the previous entries always found a way to (at least) staple it to something dramatically interesting. Or they kept it brief.

Here, the dialogue is so leaden that it feels like a student film about the evils of US history. The characters never feel real, or like archetypes - de la Reguera and Huerta do their best, but they do not have a lot to work with. Josh Lucas is the racist white guy who learns the error of his ways after he and his pregnant wife are saved by the Mexican men who work on his ranch. It is so basic and obvious it comes across as insulting to the audience.

What makes it worse is that the movie also lacks interesting setpieces and the sheer weirdness of previous entries - there is nothing here to match the shock of the family shoot-out in Anarchy or the Candy Bar gang in Election Year. The movie ends up being  boring.

Aside from a poor script, it also lacks a sense of directorial control - the previous movies were not masterpieces, but the filmmakers had a working understanding of camera movement and using space within frame to draw the viewer’s attention. The most obvious example is a one-take scene in which our heroes sneak through El Paso. The scene is more concerned with an extended take with using that time and camera movement to build tension and reveal threats.

Throughout the movie, the filmmaking works against the suspense - the camerawork lacks any sense of dramatic intent, making it difficult to work up a sweat.

There is a genuinely terrifying idea at the heart of this movie, one that continues the series’ tradition of reflecting (or predicting?) where American society is going.

At the end of Election Year, an anti-Purge presidential candidate wins election and ends the Purge. But that movie ends on a montage of news reports of people re-starting the Purge on their own. It is the unsettling moment in the movie, and feels more so now, post-January 6. Election Year’s apocalyptic ending points out that even if they lose the election, Purge supporters are still out there.

The Forever Purge is even more pessimistic - after eight years, the Purge’s creators, the fascistic New Founding Fathers, were returned to power and brought the Purge back. However the Purge’s followers are impatient with the idea of a single controlled event, and take matters into their own hands. The movie ends with the New Found Fathers brought down by their own creation. It could almost be a metaphor for the Republican Party in 2021.

Stripped from the movie’s context, this idea is great. But a great idea is not a story. And that is the frustrating thing about The Forever Purge.

A great premise. Timely political themes. These are great ingredients if you know how to cook them right. The Forever Purge fails to create a story and characters that serves its themes.

I always liked The Purge’s willingness to be blunt and obvious in showing off America’s bloody underbelly - it is a rare quality in mainstream Hollywood, and I did find myself taken in by the films’ righteous fury.

But in The Forever Purge, the rage is missing. And so is the filmmaking.

Apparently, there is a sixth installment on the way. Hopefully, the filmmakers take the right lessons from this one. 

Related reviews

Anarchy

Election Year

The First Purge

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OUT NOW: The Guilty (Antoine Fuqua, 2021)

Joe Baylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a frontline officer who has been relegated to a desk job after an incident in his backstory. When he receives a call from a woman claiming to be kidnapped, he leaps into action.

As the case grows more complicated, Joe uses all of his skills (including a few dubious ones) that cause the situation to escalate even further.

A remake of the Danish thriller, The Guilty will be pretty engrossing if you have never seen the original. If you have seen the original, I am not so sure.

The film is a fairly close adaptation. 

I had rewatched the original again, a couple of weeks ago, so it is still pretty fresh in my mind. Initially I had no intention of watching the remake but lockdown has been long and I ran out of other things to watch.

There are some original touches - the film’s action takes place during a raging fire - but overall, I found it hard to separate this movie from the original. 

The acting throughout is solid (Gyllenhaal makes a good fist of highlighting Joe's bullheaded self-centredness), and Fuqua does a decent job of creating a sense of claustrophobia. He does include a couple of external shots but they are framed to obscure and maintain a sense of distance. While they technically break the film’s unity of place, they do not detract from the tension.

If I have any issue with the movie, it is the climax, which clarifies the central character’s redemption AND alters one of the film’s key revelations (which further feeds into that redemptive arc). While it is not egregious, it does feel like the original text has been softened for a more mainstream audience. 

I do not feel comfortable panning The Guilty. I think it is an effective thriller, but in my case it was too close to the original for me to be fully engrossed.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

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