Raptor reaches Godspeed

Charlie Sheppard (Joseph Mckelheer) is a faith healer, praise the Lord! He once had the Mojo and of late he has been trying to find it again but the Faith healing Mojo is gone. Then to make matters really suck his family is murdered by two hooded guys while he is out humping some woman. Praise the Lord!

Let us make colour on this picture like garish butterflies and wallah! Le craptacular poster.

This obviously messes him up big time. Fast forward six months or so and he’s living a hermits life and being visited by the local sheriff who’s still looking for leads on the killings. Charlie has lost his faith now and hates God and is editing out everything he disagrees with in a bible which is most of it. Then comes in Sarah Roberts (a very cute Courtney Halverson) who asks for Charlies help and leads him back to her family farm. This is where he meets her fanatical brother Luke Roberts(Cory Knauf) and his family friend Tim. Aside from working on a blossoming cult were involved in the death of Charlies family. So the settings is right for a bonfire of kaboom.

Godspeed is set in the Alaska twilight and movie has that slow burn build. You know by the end of it the shits going to hit the fan but your just not sure who is going to survive or not. Joseph Mckelheer plays Charlie as bitter man who wants to forget the past unfortunately for him the past doesn’t want him to forget. Who is this past I’m talking about, well that’s Courtney Halversons’ Sarah who seems quite innocent but still manages to seduce Charlie into helping her out. Then we meet Luke, Cory Knauf has done a pretty good job of brining out the crazy in this guy although I did think it was a little over the top at times. Charlies past has had a direct affect on his view of the world and Charlie is oblivious to it. The one character who I though was surplus in this was the Sheriff. It seemed the only reason he was there was to end up being killed in the end and having accomplished nothing. Woops spoiler, meh it was a suck ass character anyway.

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Courtney Halverson - She's so cuuute

There is violence in this and it is visceral due to the realism the permeates the movie. The two scenes I’m talking about are the stabbing of Charlies wife and a guy(wont say who) getting his beaten in with a rock.  Probably not the worst you’ll ever see but they do stand out. The setting is quite stunning at times and haunting at others with the Alaska wilds and the low light giving the some of the scenes a washed out gray.

I did like Godspeed. It wasn’t really about faith at all but about loss, revenge and the seemingly irrelevant situation that may causes it. I give this movie a 7/10. Note: needed more boobage.

Martyrs (2008)

For some reason I hesitate to watch movies described as dark, depraved and cruel. I guess I know subconsciously that depravity isn't my thing. It therefore took a few days after getting it to finally watch Martyrs - a movie either praised quite vaguely and held up for it's surprising ending, or reviled for being pointlessly sick and hard to watch. I'd like to forward another review, but first some plot.

A young girl, Lucie, is running away from something and obviously something unpleasant judging by the state of her - bruised, bloody and terrified. Lucie has been tortured and locked away for reasons unknown and this is shown through little flashbacks as the movie progresses. While in an orphanage she's befriended by Anna and this friendship continues when the movie flashes 15 years into the future. Lucie is now crazy as a loon and guns down a family as they sit eating breakfast, claiming these are the people who held and tortured her all those years ago. This is also the point where a decent movie could have become a great thriller and instead...well...goes in a different direction. In a nutshell, Anna turns up to help bury the bodies and Lucie is tormented by a demon who cuts and beats her - a demon Lucie had been tormented by since childhood and thought she would purge by killing her tormentors.

Not this phylum of demon, unfortunately

So that's a pretty good start. Lucie is obviously crazy, and not the disco crazy everyone loves, oh no, she's imaginary demon crazy. Homicide crazy. Cutting yourself crazy. It's pretty obvious the demon is in her head and the cutting/beating thing is self-inflicted. Although obvious, I thought that was a good idea and had to wait until later in the movie before I was 100% sure. Anna on the other hand isn't so sure that Lucie is right about these people being monsters, in fact she isn't sure Lucie was even tortured. As a viewer I was left pondering whether the whole thing was a construct in Lucie's mind - perhaps she was abused as a child and built a fantasy over the years then latched onto a couple who superficially resembled the people she remembered from childhood and used them for revenge to 'purge her demons'. Oh, if only the movie had gone that way this would have been something worth watching.

A note on the gore and torture. It's pretty mild. I expected everything laid bare, no punches pulled, right in your face gore and horror. Nope. A lot was done off camera or obscured by something else. Horrific stuff was glimpsed or filmed from an extreme angle to mask what was being shown. Only twice did I wince a little, and that was Lucie cutting herself. It wasn't extreme, I just don't like scenes of people openly cutting themselves. The torture at the end, though overly long and unpleasant, wasn't hardcore or graphic. Just pointless. Perhaps when the girl is skinned you could make a claim for extreme, if muscles and a little blood freaks you out. I've seen worse, a lot worse..and I don't even watch movies like Hostel or Saw.


So, what really happens in the second act is weird and disappointing. Lucie kills herself. Anna finds a torture chamber under the house. A bunch of people rock up and talk about martyrs and creating martyrs so they can gather information about the afterlife. Apparently extreme torture can make someone a martyr and push them into glimpsing the afterlife. Or something. Obviously this is bad news for Anna and her hope of a full and rich life. Which I'm sure she'd have lived after 15 years with crazy Lucie and witnessing a bunch of gruesome murders.

The future of virtual reality isn't quite what they promised

The bad guys go on to torture the fuck out of her, which we get to watch for 20 minutes or more, then skin her. The skinning works a treat though and Anna apparently sees the afterlife. A gathering of people participating in the program (mostly rich older people, because rich old people have lots of time for crazy) is called at the house to have Anna's words related to them by the old woman who heard her testimony. The old woman kills herself instead so I guess Anna told her they don't have chocolate eclairs in the afterlife. The end.

But they do have trifle in the afterlife. Lots and lots of trifle.

Martyrs, therefore, was not a very good movie. The first half had potential but the rest was unpleasant claptrap. I can only assume that the people who describe it as extreme are more familiar with the works of Disney and those who praised the ending are under the age of 16. Or have received a large blow to the head recently.

Now you're ready to watch Martyrs, here's your ticket

3/10

Summary: Martyrs is shithouse, don't believe the hype.

Raptor uses some Ink

So what do Story Tellers, Path finders and Incubi have to do with a father and a little girl? Well they all come together in the movie Ink.  The scene is set at the begging with sleeping folk being visited initially by Story Tellers who appear in flashes of light and bring good dreams to those they touch. Then shortly after we see the incubi emerge out of shadows, they bring nightmares to those they touch.  Finally a hooded twisted and monstrous figure emerges named Ink who steals the soul of a little girl called Emma. He wants to join the Incubi and the payment is Emma. So starts a battle with the story tellers, and after Ink escapes, a search with a quirky Path Finder named Jacob to locate him. Leiv a rogue Story Teller gets to him first but surrenders to him to save the child. Mean while Emmas estranged father John seems to be the lynch pin to all of this but unfortunately was involved in a car accident.

I know what it looks like but I'm only stealing the girls soul.

There, an interesting start to a bizarre quirky film. Ink is at it’s core a movie about redemption and a metaphor for the subconscious battle of Ego over Id or even good versus evil or what ever the hell you call it. Doing the right thing or continuing to take the selfish path. This is where John (Christopher Soren Kellys) character and the character of Ink come into play. Meanwhile the interaction between these two forces is given physical meaning by the Story tellers and the Incubi.

Jacob: Looks like the guy was hit by a car. Girl: It's a dog you blind idiot!

Ink was directed by Jamin Winans and, considering it low budget, has done quite a brilliant job. The story harkens back to a Donnie Darko feel which you may note by the end. The movie is stylish, fast paced and the characters are solid. You want the Story Tellers to succeed. You want Ink to find his humanity again. I did sympathise with Inks character, as we find out more about him, seems to be a product of his own past actions. Jessica Duffy was quite endearing as Liev, portraying her bravely yet without an ounce of animosity to Ink in which she sees the pains of his past and sets an example to Emma who starts off frightened but with coaxing from Leiv brings out the “fierce lioness” in her. Also a worthy note was the Path Finder Jacob played by Jeremy Make. The quirky nature of this character really appealed to me. He walks around with tape across his eyes, counting out an obscure beat but as his name he sees paths and as he states “the flow must be stopped”.  Of course everyone who doesn’t see the path is an idiot, of course.

I'm happy...in my pants!

It’s rare that you see something cool in a movie now days but the story tellers and Incubi were awesome. I mentioned that the story tellers appeared in flashes of light.  It’s simple yet it did perk up your WTF meter at the begging of the movie. Now the Incubi are something and bizarre at that. Dressed in black, their sinister grinning faces are projected on screens held in front of their faces. Thing is this is the only emotion they show. They reminded me of the future world in 12 Monkeys. The fights held in this out of phase world were quite spectacular. Anything that is broken by them will instantly reform since they the combatants are not affecting the physical object but just the projection of it. Chairs, banisters, windows, anything will reform.

Overacting death aaaand scene. Thats a wrap!

Now it still is a low budget film, while the acting is good and the movie looks far more polished than it’s low budget beginnings, there are the occasional scenes where it does stand out. Not that this matters too much as the story is strong enough to carry it through.

Ha-row Jessica Duffy]

Ink has an underlying emotional urgency running through it, some people may not like this. I did and I was impressed. Sounds obscure? Good. I give it 8/10.

[REC] (both versions)

Spanish jazz-hands

Watching the American version of REC (I'll be dispensing with the [] from this point on) was a bit like eating cheap easter eggs. They look the same, weigh the same and feel the same - but the taste is just short of chocolate. Sometimes disastrously short. Both versions are about a surprise zombie outbreak (is there any other kind?) in an apartment building as documented by a pretty girl and her camera man as they follow a fire fighting unit and record their shift (at night of course). Be warned, this movie is of the first-person cam style like Cloverfield or Diary of the Dead. Personally I love the first-person style when done right, but it's not for everyone.

Over the course of the movie, various of the residents are bitten and infected or torn apart by ravenous zombies. Then the other characters are killed off and finally it's all down to the girl and her camera man. Turns out someone was running experiments in the attic, which became infection ground zero when the subject escaped.

I watched the original Spanish version a couple of years ago and loved it. Naturally, if you dislike first-person movies you shouldn't bother to begin with, otherwise I'm confident horror and zombie fans will agree with me. The characters were interesting enough but more importantly the action and suspense carried this flick all the way through. Doing a first-person movie is like doing a first-person novel, rather than being used as a cheap gimmick, the style must suit the story and not be shoehorned in. The things you can do with first-person - such as only show what the person could see - must be used to further the story and add to the tension or doubt.  Since we can't always see what's happening and we only know what the protagonist knows it sometimes forces us to use our imagination and thus fill in the gaps. Plenty happens off-camera in REC, with lots more being shown in flashes or glimpses, adding to the value of re-watching later. As a matter of fact, I feel like watching it right now.

The remade American version is pretty much the same as the original, except in English and with a different cast. For some reason it's also not as good. I can't put my finger on it and perhaps it's simply because the American lead actress wasn't as good as the Spanish one, or maybe because I'd already seen REC and the remake was literally a carbon copy. I should probably mention at this point that the American remake is called Quarantine, not REC.



REC the original gets 8/10 from me, the remake maybe 6.5/10.