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Posted on January 25, 2016

The Boy (2016) Review

Dawn Keetley

Summary: The Boy brilliantly weaves together two very different sub-genres to show how crucial loss and grief are to the horror tradition.

Directed by William Brent Bell (of The Devil Inside [2012]) and written by Stacey Menear, The Boy follows Greta Evans (Lauren Cohan—known to most of us as Maggie from AMC’s The Walking Dead) as she travels to England from the US to take a nanny position at an isolated house in the country. She finds herself in a strange position, to say the least, when she is introduced to her new charge. Brahms is a doll. After his parents (the Heelshires) leave for their first “holiday” in years (which turns out to be not quite a holiday), Greta is left alone with Brahms—told she must adhere strictly to a list of rules. She must assist Brahms through a daily schedule of eating, school work, music, bedtime reading and kisses goodnight; she must never cover his face, never take him out of the house, and never leave him alone. Needless to say, as soon as the Heelshires leave, Greta chucks Brahms on a chair, throws a blanket over him, drinks a bottle of wine, reads a magazine, and falls asleep. Before long, she’s planning a date. After all, she’s not crazy and Brahms is only a doll . . . right?

Posted on January 22, 2016

Short Cuts: Ex Machina and Dracula?

Dawn Keetley

Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015) has obvious gothic roots. The eccentric Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac), who creates artificially intelligent female “robots” in his isolated compound is a clear descendent of both Frankenstein and Doctor Moreau. A less obvious forebear for the film, though, is Dracula (both Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel and Tod Browning’s 1931 film).

The frame above is centered on programmer Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson), who has been whisked by helicopter to Nathan’s compound after supposedly winning a competition. In actuality, he’s there to perform the Turing test on Nathan’s latest creation.

The opening of the film is replete with references to Dracula. As the helicopter pilot drops Caleb seemingly in the middle of nowhere, Caleb protests, “You’re leaving me here?” The pilot replies, “This is as close as I’m allowed to get to the building”—which evokes Renfield’s unceremonious abandonment at the Borgo Pass in Browning’s film, as the driver refuses to get any closer to Count Dracula’s castle.

Posted on January 14, 2016

Silent Retreat (2016) Review

Dawn Keetley

Summary: Silent Retreat is worth watching. Great cinematography and suspenseful, well-told story, as well as its exploration of the double, elevate this film a bit above the average.

Silent Retreat is directed by Ace Jordan, written by Jordan and Heather Smith, produced by Starko Entertainment, and was released to VOD and DVD on January 12, 2016.

Shot in a beautiful location on Big Bear Lake in California, Silent Retreat follows a group of media employees who head into the woods for a weekend retreat. They soon discover that the lodge they’re staying in was, not too long ago, a psychiatric hospital. And then the retreat participants start unaccountably disappearing.

I was definitely engaged by Silent Retreat, but I have to say up front that it has some significant problems. The writing (specifically the dialogue) was not great and neither, unfortunately, was the acting, which seemed generally to be of daytime-soap-opera quality. And as much as the story itself was one of the film’s strengths, I did see the big reveal (that is, the identity of the killer) coming from at least the middle of the film.

Posted on January 8, 2016

5 Things You Should Know About Punke’s The Revenant Before Seeing the Film

Dawn Keetley

Published in 2002, The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge was written by Michael Punke, a lawyer, western historian and, currently, U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.

Punke was not involved in the creation of the film. In fact, as a Washington Post article reported in late December, 2015, he cannot even talk about it due to laws prohibiting federal employees from earning money on the side.[i]

I have purposefully stayed away from most news about the film, so I have no idea if I’m offering plot spoilers for the film in what follows. If I am, it’s done unknowingly. But I thought I’d offer five crucial things to know about the novel (for those who don’t have time to read it!), so you can measure what the film has done with its source material.

Posted on January 4, 2016

Body (2015): The Many Faces of Satan

Dawn Keetley

An independent film that premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in January 2015, Body is written and directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen and produced by Last Pictures. Body was released to Video on Demand on December 29 and is definitely worth watching.

Body traces a rather familiar plot—reminiscent of Shallow Grave (Danny Boyle, 1994) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (Jim Gillespie, 1997)—but it utterly transcends and transforms that plot in its development of character, its superb acting (by all four main characters), its allegorical depth, and the beauty of its ending.

Three twentysomething friends—Holly (Helen Rogers), Cali (Alexandra Turshen), and Mel (Lauren Molina)—are hanging out on Christmas Eve playing Scrabble, drinking, and smoking pot when Cali comes up with the idea of crashing her “uncle’s” house. Once the friends are there, reveling in its wealth, it comes out that the house isn’t Cali’s uncle’s house after all but the home of a family she used to babysit for. As the friends are about to leave (Mel and Holly aren’t happy about Cali’s deception), a man (Larry Fessenden) comes in, alerted to something’s being amiss by the many blazing lights. As the friends rush past him to get out, Holly inadvertently knocks him down the stairs. The friends’ elaborate plan to explain his dead body to the police goes awry when they realize he is not, in fact, dead—merely paralyzed. As they struggle with what to do, deep and finally deadly rifts emerge among the friends.