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Unleashed, Nature Inspires the EVIL in All of Us! “In The Earth” reviewed (Neon / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

A deadly virus has ravaged the world, placing the inhabitants on a high alert edge of incessant sanitation and relentless paranoia. Martin, a scientist from the city, ventures to an ecological nature preserve to convey equipment for tests being conducted deep in the forest. Park Ranger, Alma, guides him on a two day trek toward a camp in total isolation supervised by Dr. Olivia Wendle, but during the second day of the journey, Martin and Alma are attacked in the middle of the night, left with no gear and a vague sense of what happened. The virus has yet to stake a claim on those living within the woods, but another malicious-driven presence, entombed by superstition and mental manipulation, enacts the forest to come alive around them, forcing them into a direction that presents a summoning of nature’s folkloric revenant.

COVID-19 has brought a tremendous amount of sorrow and an unforgiving plight upon the world, but for a few filmmakers, a global pandemic has been a source of inspiration that been a silver lining amongst the Earth’s population upheaval. Director Ben Wheatley tapped into that filament, you could say ,with his man versus nature mystery horror “In The Earth.” The filmmaker of “U is for Unearthed” short from the “ABCs of Death” and soon-to-be helming the follow up big screen sequel to novelist’s Steve Alten’s widely popular monster shark book series with “Meg 2: The Trench,” Wheatley writes and directs a quarantine start-to-finish feature that also incorporates the pandemic into the story, much to the same likes as Rob Savage’s “Host” that uses the virus as a means to drive the characters into doing something they normally wouldn’t be doing. The UK production is from Wheatley’s founded Rook Films and Neon, who last co-produced Brandon Cronenberg’s violent sci-fi thriller, “Possessor.”

With the pandemic resulting quarantine and a story set in the thicket of woods, “In The Earth” is innately slim around the casting waistline that concentrates the performance zest amongst a few, beginning with the introduction of Martin the scientist walking up to the sentry lodge located at the forest edge. Played by Joel Fry (“Game of Thrones”), the London born actor must endure as a hapless city boy taking woodland shots on the chin without much complaint, but definitely a grimace, a whimper, and a pass out. Guiding Martin through the woods is Alma, a seasoned park ranger under the eye of “Midsommar’s” Ellora Torchia who balances out her travel companion’s near ill-equipped, yet hazardously attempting, roughing the outdoors. Martin and Alma are nearly mirrored by the only other two people they come across in the forest – Zach and Dr. Wendle. Yet, Zach and Dr. Wendle’s similarities channel through how they instrument a link to the forest being, known as Parnag Fegg, that calls them to release it from the timber and foliage prison. Zach (Reece Shearsmith of “Shaun of the Dead”) honors Parnag Fegg with ritualistic images and symbols while Dr. Wendle (Hayley Squires) uses a combination of technological lights and experimental music to speak with the powerfully alluring presence. Shearsmith is devilishly certifiable with Squires backing up his character craziness with her own version that never places Martin and Alma into a safe haven’s circle. “In The Earth” rounds out the cast with Mark Monero and John Hollingworth.

“In The Earth’s” binary coding of nature versus urban, plus sublets of traditions versus technology, runs as a seamless motif to a bigger theme that nature has a global network web of personified communication and reason. I imagine Wheatley succeeded in what M. Night Shyamalan tried to accomplish in the Mark Walhberg’s headlining “The Happening” with bringing nature to the forefront stand against man who continuously seeks to destroy themselves and the world, forcing nature’s hand to take drastic measures, but Wheatley’s film more so tells not the story of a worldwide assault on mankind but rather as the resurrection of a single entity, an archaic necromancer of local legend, eager to walk the Earth once again after being driven to disembody their spirit to the forest. “In The Earth” also provokes a literal meaning toward an age old saying of “nature calling” by using the aforesaid network to unconsciously lure specific individuals into the woods and gather near a gateway relic or stone,. This act of intention calls for a sacrifice of purity and so one of the four individuals – Alma, Martin, Zach, and Olivia – will involuntary be the vessel of Parnag Fegg’s return while the others, under the persuasion of forest spirit, due it’s song-and-dance bidding. Ben Wheatley taps into a very John Carpenter archetype of people on the cusp of unleashing certain doom upon the world, invoking not only a spirit but also that very sense of last stand against damnation as epitomized in “The Thing” and “The Prince of Darkness.” “In The Earth,” however, isn’t so easy to see the forest through the trees with an first act setup that zips through the situation that leads Martin and Alma trekking through the woods and Parnag Fegg is only briefly dappled to be a dangled carrot for bigger things to come.

A chiseled, fey story with a dark, ominous cloud of impending doom lingering overhead, “In The Earth” is transcendence horror at it’s finest. Neon is set to release the R-rated, 107 minute film, “In The Earth,” in theaters on April 30th. The scaled down budget didn’t hinder Wheatley’s grand platform and with Nick Gillespie’s sophomore credit as feature film cinematographer, the playbook was unwritten for Gillespie to rework how to shoot a film under the confines of a pandemic with limited cast, a living forest, and still maintain safe social distant practices under strict mandated guidelines. Gillespie formulated wide-angles to capture an expanse of trees diminutively enshrouding the characters, almost like the forest was going to gulp them at any moment. A composition of artful imagery compiled together in a collage of intoxicating colors and feverish styles interprets nothing concrete in the heroines journey of an nearly unknowable presence only knowledgeable by world of mouth, leaving also the audience induced with a psychedelic vision at the whims of Wheatley’s direction. There were no bonus scenes during or after the credits and the perfunctory ending opens the door for interpretation that can be more impacting than a firm resolution. Born and bred from the depths of the coronavirus pandemic, “In The Earth” dispatches a diversion from the immediate, the real world, and the tumult of a virus with a bewilderingly diversion of troubling folk horror sown directly into Mother Nature herself.

How Far Will Three Detectives Go to Stop Evil? “Memories of Murder” (Neon / Digital Screener)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Two impractical detectives of the Gyunggi province of South Korea investigate a pair of rape and murder cases involving two beautiful and unrelated women found with their hands bound behind their backs, gagged with a rock tied into their mouth, and with their panties covering their heads.  Known around the province for their torturous interrogation tactics, the detectives bully a mentally handicap young man and the local pervert into confessing to the heinous crimes, but when a Seoul investigator arrives into the village, drawn in by the curiosity and coincidence of the murders, a larger scale serial rapist and murderer, calculating his every move, is unearthed, connected by series of events leading the small police force to reevaluate their handling of the murders that have become more gruesome than the next with every victim. 

Before his inevitable recognition from the 2019 Academy Awards for his socially skewed hierarchy thriller, “Parasite,” that historically won Best Picture, Directing, International Film Feature, and Original Screenplay categories, even before his breakout success amongst fans of the horror genre with the creature feature, “The Host,” and an introduction into the American film market with another social class commentary, the dystopian standoff that was “Snowpiercer,” starring the Captain America portrayer himself, Chris Evans, filmmaker Bong Joon-ho had an eye for crafting his vision on camera and a knack for nerve-shredding storytelling as a writer in the early 2000’s with his 2003 sophomore feature, a crime drama entitled “Memories of Murder.” Originally known as “Salinui chueok” and written by director, the film is an encryption of a murder mystery encoded from the real life serial crimes in the Hwaeseong province in the 1980’s, Bong Joon-ho’s film takes place in 1986, and renders an engrossing story structured like a modern day Jack the Ripper emerging out of the unpleasant anecdotes of Korea lore stirred with themes of consequences as a result of careless failures and the inadequacy of effort no matter the analyzed angle.  CJ Entertainment, Muhan Investment, and Sidus serve as production companies of this somber sleuth mystery.

Despite their different methods of interrogations and investigation pursuits, the story hammers down on the three detectives’ across the board search for a methodical killer rather than a killer’s betokening perception of events as the detectives, individually flawed with ill repute and personally challenged, separately come unglued, make mistakes, and suffer the consequences of their public inanity, but when they click in harmony and rally on the same page, the truth almost hops into their laps rather than at a snail’s pace stemmed from internal competition for apprehension success. Song Kang-ho has played the constant, the unparalleled keystone, in Bong’s two decades of film credits, beginning his collaboration with the acclaimed director in “Memories of Murder” as the province’s ineffectual blowhard detective, Park Doo-man. With a deadpan stare, Song Kang-ho debones the Park Doo-man to his rudimentary base, a waggish con artist in an officer’s casual attire, and the actor defines Park’s arc so clearly, distinctly, and with ease that you can actually see Park Doo-man’s soul just become utterly crushed by not only the tough case but also when it’s clear that he must separate himself from his partner Cho Yong-koo (Kim Roe-ha) after a foolish bar fight of steadfast conviction and begin to accept his counterpart rival Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung) to no longer be the buffoon when bodies continues to pile up. “Memories of Murder” round out with Song Jae-ho, Byun Hee-Bong, Ko Seo-hie, Park No-shik, and Ryu Tae-ho.

In the battle to be top cop that nabs the worst criminal the province has ever seen, a disastrous paradox thwarts their oath to protect and serve the community as the two detectives, in their haste for swift justice, don’t see eye-to-eye on issues of evidence and actual detective work with a levelheaded outside investigator putting his foot forward delivering a working, if not more rational, model of a killer’s mind.  The innate detective, Park Doo-man, relies heavily on the circumstantial from gossip, relayed by the province investigator’s soothing nurse who he’s also seeing romantically, to superstition, visiting expensive shamans and claiming to have supernatural sleuth abilities himself, in order to cheat corners in hoping the information will present itself like an elegantly wrapped gift with a bow on top.  At the other end is the outsider, detective Seo Tae-yoon, from the metropolis area of Seoul and the big city detective, who sees more of these types of crime in his urban backyard, conducts a factual investigation based off research and relying on experience that gives him intuition into how the killer thinks.  Clarity in the contrast concedes more so when the third detective, another province resident, Cho Yong-koo, refuses to change his ways of brutal violence and torture as he continues his flying kicks right into the chests of suspects whereas his partner, Park Doo-man, relaxes his greed for admiration when the number of deceased women becomes unnerving and public trust in law enforcement rapidly diminishes; the reality sets when his counterpart, Seo Tae-yoon, produces results closer to an arrest based on fact.  Bong Joon-ho’s approach at the beginning would not be a conventional one that mingles rape and murder with the bumbling antics of a small town police force that’s outrageously zany at times.  The zaniness comedy subsides and is replaced with an air-letting dismal outlook of vulnerability and powerlessness in making little-to-no headway into a case that keeps getting grislier and grislier with the killer not inserting objects into his female victim’s vagina.  Trusting the system is even more disquieted so when the most latest and reliable crime solving techniques in the mid-1980s, from America none-the-less, proves to be astonishingly inconclusive, making the case seem like a no-win situation that then reverts back to the idea that sometimes even the most careful and meticulously handled cases, without the use of force, are not solvable. 

The powerful knuckle-biter “Memories of Murder” rattles with anxious tension and is chartered gracefully through the unrivaled eye of Bong Joon-ho.  Now making it’s grand return exclusively to theaters nationwide October 19th and 20th, “Memories of Murder” will be exhibited digitally remastered for U.S. audience for the first time since it’s initial release since 2003 courtesy of a partnership between Neon and Fathom Events.  The limited theatrical running with include exclusive content and a post-screening conversation between Bong Joon-Ho and “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” director, Edgar Wright.  Since I’m unable to compare the digitally remastered with the initial release, all I can say is that the film presentation appears steady, tight, and clean with Bong’s sepia tone to incept a memory fragment of the past and shot to entice an unfathomable crime drama captured as beautiful gaslit dissonance between background societal unrest, the case at hand, and the audiences’ unsuspecting role as the potential suspect. The screener provided is a digital screening link and might appear different in a theater sitting. The English subtitles were clearly visible with some minor errors in spelling. Again, this might vary in theaters. There were no bonus material on this screener, but, remember, that the limited run event on October 19th and 20th will have the exclusive bonus content and the Wright and Bong conversation. Unforgettably wrung with wraith-like anecdotal properties, “Memories of Murder” can be labeled as Bong Joon-Ho’s exemplary film, even better than his current work that won him an Oscar.

EVIL Gets Schooled! “Slaughterhouse Rulez!” Review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on


Slaughterhouse boarding school is an aristocratic playground housing some of the children of Britain’s most elite families. Alongside institutional studies, a long list of leisure activities are available, such as junior military, golf, and chess just to name a few. For new pupil Don Wallace, attending Slaughterhouse was just to please his mom’s persistence that soon sparked mixed feelings about his new surroundings between finding his place in the student vicious hierarchy and being in the company of the girl of his dreams: Clemsie Lawrence. The school also has a new headmaster, one who has made lucrative dealings with a fracking company for the extraction of natural gas at the outer rim of school grounds, but the seismic tremors caused by fracking result in large sinkhole, unleashing a horde of underground dwelling beasts that run rampant on campus grounds hungry for a meaty school lunch. It’s up to Don Wallace and his misfit school chums, plus one miserable school educator, to fight back in order to escape with their lives.

Boarding schools, especially the British ones, inherently have an intimidating nature about them and if the comfort decimating idea of being housed away from your parents isn’t frightening enough, the upper-crust cliques and sovereign clubs are an assumed terrorizing, foreboding thought – just look at all the paranormal and murderous boarding school incidents that happened to Jennifer Connolly’s character in “Phenomena” (aka “Creepers”). In Crispian Mills’ sophomore written and directed feature, also co-written with Henry Fitzherbert, “Slaughterhouse Rulez” is another boarding school that can be chalked up as being a killer institution adding big ugly beasts shredding through the student body as the antagonistic creature in this feature. The 2018 comedy-action-horror is produced in the UK as the first film from the Simon Pegg and Nick Frost production company, Stolen Picture. Pegg and Frost have a long and hilarious history together, breaking out internationally with the modern classic “Shaun of the Dead” and continuously worked together on various projects throughout the last 19 years since their George A Romero inspired success. The usually buddy comedy duo have reunited once again for Mills “Slaughterhouse Rulez” as supporting, yet memorable, characters that do steal the show.

“Slaughterhouse Rulez” mainly focuses around Don Wallace, the new teen on the scene who tries to live up to this standards his deceased father’s worked hard for, and Wallace, played by “Peaky Blinders” regular Finn Cole, goes through the motions of being the new kid in school that quickly discovers who his enemies are, as an outsider forced to be friend with the school black sheep, and falls heads over heels for the most popular girl on campus. Cole’s especially charming for most of the performance, but can flip his character to being weak in the knees and want to be reclusive when pushed too hard. Opposite love interest, Clemsie Lawrence (Hermione Corfield of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”), provides little insight into her perceptions of Wallace as the character does a 180 degree regarding her feelings for him, but Clemsie sure does have reason to withhold how she really feels by being a Goddess and being under surveillance by Clegg, a legacy God who takes his title literally as a divinity itself and has a sadistic iron fist for those who buy their way into Slaughterhouse. Clegg is a stone-faced psychopath performed very blunt by Tom Rhys Harries Wallace’s friend by roommate association, Willoughby Blake, is a social outcast who loves to live in isolation. Asa Butterfield, from “The Wolfman” remake and “Ender’s Game,” sizes up Willoughby crutched by depression and drugs as the most complex character with a dreadful secret. “Slaughterhouse Rulez” continues with an amazing lineup of talent that include Michael Sheen (“Underworld” franchise), Margot Robbie (“Suicide Squad”), Isabella Laughland (“Harry Potter” franchise), Kit Connor, Jamie Blackley (“Vampyr”), and, of course, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

Mills’ anti-fracking and subterranean monster flick isn’t all action and blood. For the first 2/3 of “Slaughterhouse Rules,” the filmmaker initially barely hints at a creature feature and harnesses to express his inner John Hughes with his attempt at a coming-to-age horror-comedy bursting with adolescent complexities, such as drug use, depression, suicide, bullying, love, adult and peer pressure, social differences, and so forth, that becomes heavily cloaked in humor and horror in the same vein as “Shaun of the Dead.” All the buildup of the teen dynamic comes to a screeching halt; literally, a bloodthirsty monster screeching when unearthed from the fracking folly killed, in a whole bunch of various degrees of the term, all the pre-apocalyptic adolescent shrapnel and turned it on its head as a means of overcoming the difficulties of the Slaughterhouse boarding school, relinquishing the difficulties into a honky-dory finale.

PER CAEDES AD ASTRA! “Through adversity to the stars” does the Stolen Picture produced “Slaughterhouse Rulez” find itself on DVD courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Presented in an anamorphic widescreen, 2.39:1 aspect ratio, the digital picture maintains a rather seamless presentation though I though there could have been a little more pop in the coloring. Director of photography, John De Borman, did a phenomenal job with the lighting through the woods, the school grounds, and the labyrinth maze under the school; a reminiscing aspect from his earlier work in Stephen Norrington’s “Death Machine.” The English 5.1 Dolby Digital audio track caters to every whim. Range and depth were good, especially with the beasts’ roars/howls. Dialogue is prominent, yet I still have a hard time with the English accent. Also available is an English Audio Description Track, French (PAR), Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, and English, English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles for a film that runs 104 minutes. Unfortunately, there is no bonus material. “Slaughterhouse Rulez” has the Pegg/Frost humor that we’re all now familiar with and still retains the funny, even if some of it is British-ly dry! With that said, Crispian Mills’ film observes adolescent behavior while also being blood splattering entertainment through the razor sharps jaws of the hounds from fracking hell!

Now available on DVD!

Evil Bikers Take On Unstoppable and Unthinkable Savior! “All Hell Breaks Loose” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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The spawned from hell biker gang, Satan’s Sinners, ride the dusty roads of west coast America in search of pure virgin women for their master’s ever growing domain. As they wreak hellish havoc along the way, they ride upon newly wed couple Nick and Bobby Sue, stealing the beautiful bride away from her loving husband and leaving him for dead on the side of the road. However, the Lord works in mysterious ways as divine intervention in a form of a boorish Cowboy, who may or may not be God himself, resurrects Nick from the dead again and again to save his wife from the ultimate damnation – Satan’s beautiful virgin slave. Armed and clueless, Nick finds help wherever he can, whether by the prideful local sheriff or the alcoholic priest who performed Nick’s marriage, to stop the bikers and to reclaim Bobby Sue.
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“All Hell Breaks Loose” is one of those indie films that’ll fly under the radar of the indie film circuit, scraping and clawing at the surface and trying to create a name for itself. At face value, “All Hell Breaks Loose” is a hell of fun, devilishly entertaining, and so relaxed that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Unfortunately, those film’s qualities are the complete antonym to a box office money maker or a breakthrough independent golden nugget. I get why money won’t just flow in, though. Director Jeremy Garner’s name won’t ring any bells and has dabbled more in the special effects field than the director’s chair, which I thought his 2009 special effects work on “Melvin” was fantastic, and the screenwriter Jacy Morris, under the pen name The Vocabularist, is also an unknown with only this film under his belt. There’s strike one. Secondly, the lead actor isn’t a big name; Nick Forrest name might seem similar to “Shaun of the Dead’s” Nick Frost, but, sadly, no. But Nick Forrest plays his character of the dimwitted, pee-wee hero character well enough for be recognized and respected. The last, and final strike, is film’s recognizable headliner – “Danger” Ehren McGhehey from “Jackass” fame.
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Garner’s film doesn’t need to prove one damn thing to anybody. The horror-comedy story is simplicity thats surrounded itself with undying love, badass demon bikers, and God’s wish-washy methodology; there’s no symbolism or underlining message that suggest otherwise and there’s not much explanation here or there about the particulars of the Satan’s Sinner’s mission or why in that particular region they choose to run amok. Viewers looking for an untamed experience will just want to see the Bikers dish out violence and pain and see Nick die a horrible death over and over again. Even though Garner didn’t dip his hands into conducting the effects for his Sophomore film, Izzy Combs, Ray Kelley, and Steven Strop team up to pull off some amazing lunacy with the limited budget effects that get gory without being over-the-top and ridiculous.
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Aside from a pipsqueak-to-a partial demi-god hero in Nick Forrest and “Danger” Ehren portraying a demon biker with an Elvis Presley obsession, the rest of the cast, like the Satan’s Sinners, is a motley crew of talent ranging from twenty years of B-movie experience in Todd Robinson to a slew of undiscovered actors, especially in the biker gang with Hunter O’Guinn, Joshua Lee Frazier, and Tommy Hestmark with leading lady Sarah Kobel Marquette as the damsel in distress while being undressed.
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Wild Eye Releasing summons from the underworld “All Hell Breaks Loose.” The unrated, 92 minute feature might have cheesy and cheap DVD cover art, but the entertainment value speaks volumes. The release contains bonus features that contains an informative director’s commentary, a couple of deleted scenes, and trailers. Overall, give “All Hell Breaks Loose” a chance or two or three, just to be completely sure that you understand that what you’re about to see will be utter chaos that’ll make the Waco, Texas shooting look like a little girl’s tea party with her favorite stuffed animals.