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This Toyish EVIL is Definitely Not a Toy! “The Monkey” reviewed! (Neon / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Own “The Monkey” on Blu-ray from Neon!

When twin brothers Hal and Bill, who personably couldn’t be more different, come across their deadbeat father’s windup toy grinding monkey amongst his left behind things, every time they wind up the monkey’s rat-tat-tat tune, at the last stroke someone close them dies a gruesome, horrible, seemingly accidental death.  As the deaths hit closer to home, such as the violent aneurism that takes their loving mother, the boys decide to toss the sinister toy into a deep well to stop it’s dooming of another soul.  The boys diverging personalities drive them apart and for many years they don’t speak until Bill calls Hal about the accidental death of their aunt.  A new string of death begins as the toy resurfaces to play its portentous tuneful rattling once again.  Hal, who’s now trying to connect with a son he’s kept at arm’s length in fear of the monkey’s return, must reunite with Bill to stop the carnage before it’s too late for them all.

Stephen King is so hot right now.  Hell, Stephen King has been hot for decades as one of the still living novelists to have numerous film and television series adaptations.  This year alone proves how influential and craved King’s work is amongst filmmakers and fans with “The Long Walk” and “The Running Man” feature films being released in the months to come.  There’s even the upcoming film rendition of “The Stand,” a novel that’s been adapted twice already set to receive a third account.   Since 1976 with his first adapted novel “Carrie,” King has been the king of having his work reimagined for visual scares and entertainment.  Earlier this year’s “The Monkey” is another example of the prolific author’s short story of the same title from his “Skeleton Crew” collection, coming to life on the big screen being helmed by one of the hottest new directors in modern horror, Osgood Perkins (“Longlegs”).  The horror-comedy is written and directed by Perkins in British Columbia, Canada and produced by “Saw’s” James Wan as well as Chris Ferguson, Dave Caplan, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, and Marlaina Mah.  “The Monkey” is a company collaboration between Atomic Monster, The Safran Company, Oddfellows, Stars Collective, and C2 Motion Picture Corp. with Neon presenting theatrical distribution.

English actor Theo James is also no stranger to films adapted from literary works as The Divergent Series film star steps into “The Monkey’s” killing sphere by playing not one but two roles as the Hal and Bill Shelburn, twins with a tragic history that runs integrated with the windup, grinder monkey.  James caters to both personalities with mild-mannered energy that does transition exactly from the children counterparts (Christian Convery, “Cocaine Bear”) in the first half of the 30-year time span. Older Hal is joined by his son, lightheartedly named Petey, played by “Wonka’s” Colin O’Brien with the same deadpan deliveries as Theo James that greatly adds to their combined relationship and antagonism.  There’s plenty of self-deprecating and bullying upon Hal who, amongst the monkey’s supernatural selection-for-death drumming, is fashioned to be a loser but the narrator of the story in his slow burn rise to overcome the blood splattering challenges ahead, turning one-half of the twin duo into a lead principal and the feeble hero of the tale mostly setup by the character’s voiceover of the past and his action of the present.  In a rare showing amongst conventional character work, there is no love interest to note to either Hal or Bill other than possibly the Shelburn mother Lois in a doing in the best with what I got single mothering act by Tatiana Maslany (“Diary of the Dead” ).  Lois’s rough around the edges attitude is more shaved down by her airline pilot husband who left her and the boys and comes across as a guiding light for her twins on the rough, diverging path.  Once she’s removed from the picture, whatever threadbare connection between the twin boys had was severed that day, creating underlining turmoil and bloodshed decades later.  The cast fills in with Rohan Campbell (“Halloween Ends”) a teen obsessed with the monkey since his first encounter, Osgood Perkins as the blunt uncle, Sarah Levy as the unfortunate aunt, and a couple of powerhouse names with cameo appearances in Elijah Wood (“The Toxic Avenger”)  as Petey’s soon-to-be stepfather and Adam Scott (“Krampus”) as the Shelburn deadbeat dad.

Through the mysterious monkey business of randomized, accidental deaths is this dark theme of everybody dies and everybody dies at different times in various ways.  Through Theo James’s Hal narration and a few character jawing harps upon a zero set expiration date for people and really nails the head on the lack of preconceived set of parameters and time span of how long a person should be alive before they die, setting a concentrated focus on the way a person dies, as mentioned in Lois’s post funeral service monologue while holding her two boys that some die screaming in blood curdling agony and some parish peacefully without a blip of hoopla.  The grinding monkey toy (never call it a toy!) represents the sardonically absurd aspects and happenstances of death with its selective process and imminency; in essence, the grinder monkey is a materialized grim reaper.  Stephen King wrote “The Monkey” 45-years ago in 1980 but the film shares similarities to the modern-day horror of the “Final Destination” franchise that provides ominous premonitions precipitating subsequent deaths of those who weren’t supposed to survive a major mass causality event.  Yet, what the two entities possess is their love for the absurd, Mouse Trap ways those in the crosshairs come to end with “The Monkey” rivaling the exploding of gore, gruesomeness, and ferocity that’s made the “Final Destination” franchise rocket with cult fandom. 

Beyond bananas, “The Monkey” shines as an adept and agreeable anarchial Stephen King adaptation.  Neon brings the blood with a standard Blu-ray with an AVC encoded, 1080p high definition, BD25, presented in a widescreen 2:00:1 aspect ratio.  Technically, “The Monkey’s” a sound example of competent compression on a lower capacity format with no evident artefacts of any size.  “Witch Hunt’s” Nico Aguilar’s semi-dark gloss adds a sheen to the elements inside a middle-of-the-road contrast.  Coloring is diffused distinctively into the well-lit scene, providing separation and delineation amongst objects, while the lower lit, more obscure moments, are sprawled by a mellower shadow that is inky or just a void but a stylistic choice to create atmosphere rather than be a menacing presence or a gape of mystery.  The English DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio equates much of the same caliber with a clean, clear, and robust dialogue layer with a step down for the ambience, accentuated by range and depth where necessary, and a soundtrack that’s not engrossingly ear-catching but is still full-bodied and present from Edo Van Breeman (“Afflicted”).  Also listed is a Descriptive Audio 2.0 Stereo and there are English and Spanish subtitles optionally available.  Encoded bonus features are a condensed cut of behind-the-scenes featurettes, including Becoming Hal and Billi with Theo James conversing about getting into the mindsets of two completely personalities of twin brothers, Funeral Gallery provides insight on the funeral programs for the multiple services of accident deaths, Outrageously Gory and Thoroughly Gratuitous takes a dive into the cartoon-like graphic violence full of blood – lots of blood and body parts, and The Cast of The Monkey rounds out with in-depth look at the cast playing the cast of eclectic characters.  An assortment of trailers is also in the mix with an included announcement teaser, teaser, and the full theatrical trailer.  Neon’s Blu-ray is standard fare with a conventional Blu-ray case from Viva Elite housed inside a delicate slipcover with a hard detailed look at the grinder toy monkey (again, don’t call it a toy!) in full smile and ready to rap his drum, the same image of stark red and black contrast that’s also on the front cover of the Blu-ray cover art.  The insert section does not contain any physical supplements nor are there any other physical supplements included.  Locked in a region A playback, Neon’s release has a runtime of 98 minutes and is rated R for strong bloody violent content, gore, language throughout, and some sexual references. 

Last Rites: Banging away as a harbinger of death, ‘The Monkey” drums up an honest day’s work as a solid Stephen King adaptation twisted by Oz Perkins’s black comedy and high-level gore only the filmmaker could devise.

Own “The Monkey” on Blu-ray from Neon!

EVIL Drugs Are Bad, Mmkay? “Beyond Hell” reviewed (Indican Pictures / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on


A lowkey party experiments into a new drug called Changa, brought back from South America by one the friends but is no ordinary narcotic. After inhaled, Changa opens a conduit to an infernal dimension oppressively reigned by Belial, a trickster demon seeking to rule the world of man. Channeling his dark energy through the utterly wholesome Maryssa, Belial exploits her innocence to reach her friends and one-by-one their hallucinogenic and horrible deaths give way to releasing their souls to him. Once he obtains enough souls, Belial will be able to freely walk the Earth and damn everyone on the planet into servitude. Its up to Maryssa and her remaining friends to thwart Belial diabolical plans and send him back to Hell.

Is seeing disembodied, outreaching arms and shape-shifting demons covered in broken glass and tentacles to the effect of a gateway drug!? The invasively surreal and drug repercussion-themed “Beyond Hell” is the 2019, pre-apocalyptic. doom and damnation, survival thriller from writer-director Alan Murray in his first feature film production. The Cambridge, Ontario born filmmaker shoots in his home country to entertain and scare audiences with a version of religious text’s prime opposition to God, the Devil, in the form of the heavily prosthetic and dastardly theatrical Belial. “Beyond Hell” is a co-produced by Murray alongside Gavin Downes under the Dark Spirits Films banner with Don Smith, Jacqui Smith, and Christopher Lane serving as the film’s capital investments of executive producers.

“Beyond Hell” plays considerably into the slasher blueprint that aims to off, one-by-one, inept school students, whether they’re the self-stated part of the college body or, in a slight of confusion, sit in on classes and have row lockers like high schoolers, who stumble with defensives against a much darker scheme of soul extracting exploitation and world domination. Murray takes a full-on female primacy with strong heroine-performances by introducing Kearston Johansson and Natalie Jane to set aside their characters’ at-odds, find security in their flaws, and battle it out against an ancient evil. The respective roles in the goody two-shoes Maryssa and wildly eye-cutting Brook’s backgrounds are kept in a palpable line by Johansson and Jane’s drive to roleplay one-upping the other despite a petite background for character support and they’re anchored by Sebastian Deery (“Bad Dose”). The UK-born Deery plays the pursued rake, Jake, in a triangular love interest with Johansson and Jane’s characters. While Deery seemingly attempts to rein back his English accent without much success through his satisfactory presence as a level-headed, good-lookin’ guy, Jake’s acutely transforms into a wily coquet by initially buttering up Maryssa with good intentions and verbally loathe Brook for her derogatory attitude toward Maryssa only to then switch quickly to desiring a distraught Brook when Maryssa winds up in a mental institute for the criminally insane after the gruesome death of one of their friends. The off-putting dynamic pens a promiscuous casualness about these group of friends. Dominique Smith, Sean Rey, Chris Kapeleris, Shahrad Fredotti, Richard Collier, and Gavin Downes as the profaner Belial.

“Beyond Hell” conjures a sassy-mouth, wise-cracking demon, Belial, adorned in a black and white molten-rock shape skin with curved horns and rows of beaded sharp teeth, but the makeup effects, though strong in prosthetic effort, appear extremely rubbery to the point that even Belial’s teeth bend and flap when Gavin Downes tosses out sarcastic quips when ripping the souls from his victims.  This awkward stance of where our eyes and brains struggle to compute what make sense from the worst-of-the-worst of hell bound fiends is where “Beyond Hell” becomes forehead-rubbing frustrating because of how much time and application goes into the overall look of the creature that, in the end, just dips into disbelief.   The gory, but crude practical effects trend into the visual effects territory, going beyond the gates of hell to where Belial himself would be frightened by the sheer shock of shoddiness.  In one frantic scene where Brook attempts to escape Belial’s brimstone breath, decrepit arms breach a stairwell wall to grab her, but the arms, which are all of the same cut and move in the same motion, float like ghosts without ever puncturing through the drywall, or even breaking through that plane of narrative reality for that matter, that’s reminiscent of the horrendous flock of CGI birds, hovering autonomously as survivors try to whack at them in an awful reaction in James Nguyen’s “Birdemic:  Shock and Terror.”  Now, I’m not saying that “Beyond Hell” is as rough as intangible birdies behaving badly as Murray avails in manufacturing a stable low-spirited atmosphere of plague youth in between the real world and the underworld with their innocent lives hanging in the balance in a sordid enterprise off ill-will.

More laic than spiritual, “Beyond Hell” scratches the surface of narrative depth in a modest clash of “Hellraiser” meets “A Nightmare on Elm Street” from the celluloid plunging distributor, Indican Pictures. The 89 minute supernatural thriller has entered the digital platform realm, at least in the U.S., this December. “Beyond Hell” is Rhys Jones’ first director of photography venture filmed in 5K Raw on a RED Dragon that’s uninhibited in the illuminating details. While the shots are mostly natural, clearly capturing the pimples on the young actress’ foreheads, Belial is always casted in a semi-harsh blue tint to hide any part of the latex inflections and imperfections that might expose Downes even more as a man in a monochromic rubber suit. Dan Eisen and Norman Orenstein (“Diary of the Dead”) team-up to compose a single note and pennywise synth blended score that plays into a cleaved pop-glazing and survival horror video game and, can at times, be on the precipice of one of John Carpenter’s Lost Themes without evoking a soul-binding tension. Though the depth isn’t spectacularly precise and the dialogue disperses with echo at times, the range of audible effects is vast in echoing the unsettling cacophonies of a shrilling Hell, making the feature’s soundtrack and score a highlight in the rest of the mediocre quality. I applaud “Beyond Hell’s” ambitious, no holds barred concept, but the indie picture malnourishes a healthy dose of unconfined horror with bastardized acting and a haphazard flank of effects that make this Alan Murray film so bad it’s good to the very cringed tone ending.

 

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Evil Thoughts: Out with the Old, In with the New?

Posted by Steven Lewis on

MOH

Masters of horror. You know. Those legendary filmmakers that become iconic in our beloved genre. The monumental men who made history by evolving the monsters, killers, and madmen to the very monsters, killers, and madmen we see today on the big and small screen. These giants of horror are household names to ordinary film fans and Gods to those who dedicate their lives just to live in a moment in a very small portion of their foot heel shadow. You, reading this op-ed, know the very names of these directors without even me mentioning their names. For those who are virgin to horror, however,…

George A. Romero
John Carpenter
Wes Craven
Stuart Gordon
Tobe Hooper
Joe Dante
Clive Barker

The list could go on with more familiar names. Familiar. That seems like a term for old people now, like myself, the thirty-years of living on this planet. Why is ‘familiar’ now for the old fogies? For one, I don’t think much of the younger generation are aware, or even respect, the above list of names. And why should they? Because, secondly, those listed about have done squat in, I don’t know, how many years? Think about. The Masters of Horror are no longer producing any great horror films and there seems to be no clear cut answer to why. A couple of theories swirl in my clustered little mind.

Theory one
They’re old. Getting elderly is tough and when you’re youth runs dry, you’re energy goes right along with it. Take Romero for example. The man is 74 years old. Wes Craven is even older than Romero by one year. Could their old school imaginations keep a generation, doped up on ADD medication, entertained for more than 10 minutes. Much of today’s horror is about the blood and the tits and the “how scary you can make a CGI monster.” Creativity has gone out the window and I think that “Saw 7” and the soon to be fifth sequel to “Paranormal Activity” have proven just that.

Rhauer

Theory two
Old school horror has run out of ideas. Can you remember the last time Romero, Carpenter, Stuart has made a good movie? Romero’s last film was “Survival of the Dead” back in 2009 which flopped. Before that “Diary of the dead” and that was another flop. Since the turn of the century, the king of the zombies has only directed four films with Land of the Dead being the more successful. Take a look at “Halloween” director John Carpenter. “Halloween” is the highest grossing independent film ever, yet also in the last decade, nothing spectacular from Carpenter. His vision of “The Thing” is classic, his character Snake Plissken is iconic in “Escape from New York”, “Big Trouble in Little China” is timeless cut, but “The Ward” and “Ghost of Mars” have been absolute below the bar with audiences. This theory doesn’t exclude international directors because we can also examine, point in case, Italian director Dario Argento. Argento famous for his colorful, psychedelic intense films such as “Suspiria”, “Phenomena”, and “Don’t Torture the Duckling”, has been reduced to direct a “Dracula 3D” movie starring Rutger Hauer. Freaking RUTGER HAUER!?!? Don’t get me wrong, I love Rutger Hauer – “Blind Fury” and “The Hitcher” are some favorites – but you can’t have a strawberry haired Van Helsing. Maybe you can – I don’t know. Let’s not forget poor Wes Craven who can’t seem to get off the “Scream” franchise train and everything else he touches turns into a limp, floppy mess.

Now that we’ve gone over my theories, there lies another question to be discussed. Who are the NEW masters of horror? Today’s films rely on blood and guts and not so much suspense and story. Would Eli Roth be my first example of a more current master? His films seemed to be well criticized – “Cabin Fever” with a fresh 63% and “Hostel” with a fresh 61% respectively on Rotten tomatoes. Also, his latest project “The Green Inferno” held promise until it’s untimely indefinite on hold status declared a few weeks ago. Who else? Alexandre Aja? More shock than schlock but hasn’t really produced anything original as he’s banked on remakes – “The Hills Have Eyes”, “Piranha 2” – but with his breakthrough hit “High Tension” and his upcoming release “Horns” starring Daniel Radcliffe, we could be watching a master in the making.
dradcliffe
I want to hear from you. Who do you think will step in the shoes of a master? Lucky McKee? Adam Wingard? Let me hear your choices and your thoughts on these!