The Call Up (UK 2016: Dir Charles Barker)

Maybe it's me, but by the time I saw The Call Up on the final day of the Fantastiq Film Festival in Derby, I was in the mood for a film that wasn't particularly tricksy or overambitious, and had enough visual flair to hold my interest. And Charles Barker's debut feature delivered. Almost.

The films of Paul W.S. Anderson are guilty pleasures of mine, and it was that director's ability to make a film look far richer than its budget that came to mind while watching this story of a group of advanced gamers trapped in a VR nightmare within the confines of a commercial tower block. A bunch of young people (and one slightly older guy - uh oh!) are summoned to an anonymous downtown office having all previously proved themselves versatile gamers. They're invited to try out a state-of-the-art immersive experience, putting them at the heart of some shoot 'em up action, with the aim of working their way down the building without being 'shot'. The twist here is that when wounded in the VR world, they suffer in the real one too - shot twice and they're a goner in real life, which the group discover as they realise that their VR suits, once donned, can't be removed.

Much of the movie is concerned with building up tension as the disparate group discover the (virtual) reality of the situation and try to survive. There's little plot but it doesn't really matter as the movie never sets itself up to be sophisticated or involving in a narrative way - in fact the twist at the end jars in its detail and casts a bit of a pall over what we've seen before. Content wise the obvious comparison here is a scaled down version of The Raid movies of Gareth Evans but without the chop socky.

The Anderson reference is particularly pertinent in the cash restricted claustrophobia of the action (you know each floor of the office block is actually the same set slightly redressed but it doesn't put you off), the shiny hardware on display and the utterly two dimensional cast. Yet The Call Up is never less than watchable: the switching between created VR world and reality, glimpsed as the gamers occasionally take off their helmets, is both effective and disorientating, and there's little let up on the gun play once those helmets are in place.

This is also pleasingly retro stuff. VR is a subject pretty much untouched by filmmakers since CGI turned the fantasy into reality, but the director proves there's still some dramatic mileage in it. The shiny suits and masks recall the stormtroopers of the Star Wars films, and the very 1980s synth score by Tom Raybould complements the look of the thing really well.

The Call Up is by no means a masterpiece - at the screening I attended the audience was decidedly mixed in its response - but it's an assured debut from Charles Barker and one which, until the rather unconvincing final scenes, is happy to deliver its thrills without complexity but with some finesse.

Aaaaaaaah! (UK 2015: Dir Steve Oram)

A few weeks ago I witnessed Ben Wheatley's take on the breakdown of civilised society in this year's High Rise. In Aaaaaaaah! director Steve Oram (who's also a cast member) offers us a different view of societal change, where humans, who have mysteriously become simian in language and gesture (but not hirsuteness) wage territorial war with each other in the suburbs of south London (East Dulwich and Denmark Hill, location spotters).

I have to credit an imdb reviewer who accurately described this film as Quest for Fire meets Shameless. It also has elements of Claude Farado's anarchistic movie Themroc (1973) and Lars von Trier's The Idiots (1998). If this were a sketch (and it is undoubtedly a one gag movie), it would be passed off as a slight idea with some comic merit. Stretched to a 75 minute film, the repetition of the basic setup - people as apes squabbling with each other in domestic situations while indulging in the gamut of ape like behavior (eating, fighting and fornicating basically with a side order of preening and vacant stares) - should be tiresome, but the energy of the cast and the sheer oddness of what's on screen prevents that. The feature length also invites the viewer to suspect that there might be some darker directorial purpose to these shenanigans, which I personally doubt. While clearly in some way a satire of modern life and families, I think Oram just wanted to have some rather surreal fun with a lot of his comedy mates and make an 'out there' movie.

And surreal it most definitely is. Thank goodness that television comedy, from Chris Morris's output to The Mighty Boosh, has educated our collective visual palates for this kind of thing. From the bare breasted Nigella-alike celebrity cook the family watch on TV,  to the scrotum dangling rituals of the males, this takes the great British obsession with body parts to a whole new level.

Cast wise the director makes some fairly obvious decisions. Oram as Steve is reunited with Alice Lowe (who were so good together as Chris and Tina the killer holidaymakers in Ben Wheatley's 2012 movie Sightseers), and the Booshers Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt both show up. Less successful is the casting of newcomer Lucy Honigman as a more refined member of the simian community whose role is a bit underdeveloped, and Toyah Willcox, as the mother of the family, may have been up for the challenge but always looks like she's a second away from laughing.

This clearly isn't a film for everyone. It's not a horror film as such but there are horrific elements and as a comedy whether you find it funny depends on how much you 'get' the central gag. It's not a film I'd rush to see again, but it's bold, crude, occasionally very funny, and despite the subject matter well filmed, utilising the old 4:3 ratio very effectively - Oram's nod to the video generation or Tarkovsky? Probably both, the wag.  

Fare (US 2016: Dir Thomas Torrey)

Thomas Torrey - Fare’s director – is one of the more gifted short movie makers working in America at the moment: both Not Forgotten, his 2014 piece for the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, and Old Henry, his 2013 meditation on old age, are extremely moving short films (watch them on Vimeo).  So when I heard the premise for his first full length movie – a film shot entirely within the confines of a taxi cab – my initial thought was to suspect it of being rather too similar to the 2013 British film Locke, where Tom Hardy was the only actor in a film set entirely within a car. Well how wrong I was. Whereas Locke was perhaps more an exercise in cinematic possibilities – testing whether tension could be created with just one character and a (very) limited set - Fare is the real deal with a strong emotional core.

Eric is a part time cab driver, earning extra money while his real job – as an estate agent – is going through a dry patch. Eric’s wife Audrey is also in real estate, but doing much better working in the commercial sector: as a result their marriage seems to be on the rocks, and you get the sense that he’s not doing the cabbing because he needs the money, but more to stay away from Audrey.

One of Eric’s more interesting fares (and the only one to sit up front with him) is a clever, older Irish man (credited enigmatically as ‘The Foreigner’) who questions Eric constantly and quotes marital philosophy at him courtesy of a writer called Wormwood.  Through his interrogations we get a clear understanding of Eric’s problems - including suspecting his wife of infidelity. As they get to the end of the ride The Foreigner tells him ominously “your night’s just beginning then.” And indeed it is, for the next fare he picks up, smooth talking Patrick, could just be the very slimeball with whom his wife is having an affair. With The Foreigner’s wise words about having to fight for your marriage echoing in his head, Eric drives into the dark with his captive fare, intent on getting his life back on track.

As usual I won’t give away any more of the plot, except to mention that there’s a major plot shift about two thirds of the way through that initially appears incongruous but makes sense by the time the final credits roll.  A lot of Fare’s success is down to its ambiguity – are the events in it chance or causality, and to what extent is The Foreigner responsible for what happens? Is he actually Wormwood? And if so is it coincidence that the word Wormwood has a Biblical context? And that ‘foreigner’ is interchangeable with ‘devil’ when translated into Chinese?

These are intriguing ideas, but they don’t get in the way of the film’s growing tension, generated via a great script (by Torrey), some sharp acting from the director himself as down on his luck Eric, Katherine Drew as Audrey and J.R. Adduci as Patrick. A running time of 75 minutes that doesn’t squander a second also keeps things on track, and the movie’s gradual progression from day to night gives the movie a very noirish feel. Fare really is a stunning debut feature from the very talented Thomas Torrey, and it will be very interesting to see what he does next. Strongly recommended.

Narcopolis (UK 2015: Dir Justin Trefgarne)

The future is clearly not very bright, and you only need to wear shades to avoid detection in newcomer Justin Trefgarne's murky but not totally unenjoyable sci-fi/time travel thriller.

The director has created a world set largely in 2024 which doesn't look too different from our own, except that all recreational drugs have been legalised, so that large swathes of the city (unnamed, but filmed in Swansea, Wales) population remain either blissed out or criminally desperate for their next fix.The city is policed by 'drecks' - so named because they clear up all the messes others don't want to. Narcopolis focuses its story on one of these cops, Frank Grieves - an embittered ex druggie with a messy family life and the accidental shooting of his boss haunting his past - who we first meet investigating a corpse with half its face missing, whose records don't show up on the police databases.

As the film widens out it takes in time travel elements, corrupt cops, an evil drugs corporation called Ambro (presumably short for Ambrosia) who have cornered the market in drug supply while testing a new strain on unwilling victims, and family drama. It's difficult to explain much more without giving some key parts of the plot away, but it's safe to say that while it doesn't end happily there is at least a drawing together of these strands.

Trefgarne holds off pulling these elements together for most of the film's running time which can make it a bit of a headscratcher (although if you've seen any time travel movies you'll probably guess one of the plot reveals quite early). This is a bold move, but the confusing events are anchored by some good if downplayed acting (Elliot Cowan as Grieves is suitably world weary) and the director's decision to render the world not as a CGI dominated futuropolis but rather a noirish network of alleys and roadways - with empty warehouse locations kept to a minimum - is a sensible one within the limits of budget. However at times, with its I-know-it-didn't-cost-much-but-here's-some-fast-editing-and-extreme-close-ups-to-compensate look, this makes Narcopolis look like a slightly more expensive version of an episode of Spooks.

Dystopian sci fi is not new and technically there isn't anything particularly innovative in Narcopolis. It also has an at times rather shaky script and some of the support acting is a little underdone. But it's good to see a reasonably convincing world of the future produced on a minuscule budget, and let's face it good to see any Brit sci-fi on our screens. Not bad.

The VVitch (US 2015: Dir Robert Eggers)

It's over a week since I saw The VVitch. I'm usually much quicker at applying finger to keyboard when reviewing films, but lots of things have conspired to prevent this piece appearing before now. So I'm writing this with some week old memories of the movie and a few notes I jotted down at the time, but it doesn't really matter because The VVitch is still firmly imprinted in my mind and probably will be for weeks to come. It's an extraordinary film.

Subtitled A New-England Folktale, the movie is that rare thing, a genuinely gripping slow burner. William and Katherine, two devout Puritans living in America in the early 17th century, are exiled from a community who cannot tolerate their levels of religious fanaticism. Forced into the wilderness to be closer to God, they set up a homestead in the middle of the country at the edge of a large forest and eke out their existence with their five children, often living at near starvation levels. When the youngest child Sam mysteriously goes missing (the initial belief is that the child has been abducted by a wolf but the audience know different) the family, steeped in grief and with their crops failing, gradually turn their suspicions on each other and then to Thomasin, the oldest child, suspecting her of being a witch. Their concerns are misdirected, but the truth is much closer to reality than they think.

If you haven't seen the film yet, it's best not to read on. One of the clever things about The VVitch is how it subverts our accepted understanding of history, which tells us that the witch trials which followed in the US later in the century were about the subjugation of uneducated women by male dominated authority figures rather than anything supernatural. This film defies that understanding by showing us that the things these women were accused of were real. That first time feature director Robert Eggars achieves this without any of it seeming silly is in part due to the script being written using authentic dialogue of the 17th century - the awkward verbosity requires the audience to listen closely but never to be comfortable with what they're hearing. There is some fine acting here too. Ralph Ineson's performance - and his sonorous, portentous voice - makes us easily forget his roles in TV comedies and voice overs for adverts. Kate Dickie as his wife Katherine has less to do but is convincingly distressed (she has one scene, towards the end of the film, that will haunt you for days), and the children, particularly Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasin, are all very effective.

But it's the visuals that elevate The VVitch above the usual genre fare. The forest that is the backdrop to their homestead - actually filmed in Ontario, Canada - is one of the most frightening uses of exteriors I've seen in a movie, and the sense of isolation and the threat of what might lie in those woods is palpable. The small details of farm life leap from woodcuts of the time and the horror, when it arrives, is very well handled by being glimpsed rather than overtly shown. The final scene, which in most other directors' hands would appear perhaps clumsy and obvious, provides a strange almost optimistic coda to a film which spends most of its time mired in pessimism.

Yes I loved The VVitch. It's slow, sometimes dangerously so, and although critics have generally loved it it's perhaps too niche for commercial success. But in its way this is a Haxan for our times, and I can't give it a bigger compliment than that.

10 Cloverfield Lane (US 2016: Dir Dan Trachtenberg)

All the way through 10 Cloverfield Lane I was attempting to establish links with the 2008 movie Cloverfield, albeit rather fruitlessly - doubtless detail hounds may disagree. In interview producer J.J. Abrams has mentioned that the only connection between the two is in the feel of both films and the subject matter - and the fact that both were launched on an unsuspecting public with very little commercial fanfare. The story doing the rounds of course is that there was no connection - 10CL was originally intended as a stand alone movie, but men in suits intervened to force a title change and a few other subtle amendments to link it with the original film, with a view to increased box office takings.

However now that the original surprise of the film's announcement and teaser trailer has been replaced with the opportunity to see what the (brief) fuss was about, 10CL emerges as an ok movie which is interesting for most of its running time but misfires once the sci-fi shows itself.

Michelle is a young woman driving away from a failed relationship when her car is involved in an accident. She wakes up, injured but having received medical attention, in an underground facility, which we discover is beneath a Louisiana farm. She has apparently been rescued by Howard, a larger than life sinister figure who is keeping her isolated from the outside world following a supposed chemical outbreak. Also in the bunker is Emmett, who broke in when the event kicked off and has been allowed to stay. The three maintain an uneasy alliance, with Michelle making periodic attempts to escape, being unsure whether the outbreak has actually happened or whether she and Emmett have simply been drugged and imprisoned by the clearly less than balanced Howard.

For about two thirds of the film the drama centres on the three characters and their bunker existence. There's good acting from all involved, with a great script to work from, but the claustrophobia and tension of the situation has limited dramatic possibilities so it's left to the overbearing score and fidgety camera to convince us that this is something more than three people in a room having a bad time. As Howard, John Goodman is a past master of the grumpy blue collar worker, an actor who can do a lot with a single raised eyebrow (I always felt that his role as Dan Connor in Roseanne contained layers of suppressed violence) . Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Gallagher Jr, as Michelle and Emmett, portray their frustrations convincingly, although Michelle's resourcefulness in a crisis suggests she was probably top of her Girl Guide class with a Lara Croft merit badge.

It's when the film leaves the bunker that it all falls apart, abandoning the is-the-threat-real-or-not scenario, which had fuelled a lot of the film's tension, in favour of some big CGI set pieces which gratingly change the pace of the film and aren't on screen long enough to make the adjustment from chamber piece to action movie.

Although we should congratulate Dan Trachtenberg in pulling off a watchable first movie, to what extent this assured if not fault free debut is largely attributable to him is questionable: with J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves as producer and executive producer respectively, and the assistance of co-scriptwriter Damien Chazelle (who also wrote the smart Whiplash a couple of years ago), it's more likely that this was a solid team effort, if not a particularly substantial one.

The Other Side of the Door (UK/India 2015: Dir Johannes Roberts)

Johannes Roberts' last film, Storage 24, although low budget and only mildly diverting, was a distinct improvement on his previous films which have ranged from the occasionally interesting to borderline unwatchable. The Other Side of the Door is such a progression from Storage 24 in terms of casting, production values and money spent it's hard to believe we're watching the work of the same director.

The Other Side of the Door borrows heavily from Pet Sematary and its literary antecedent 'The Monkey's Paw' to tell the story of an American family in India, trying to piece their lives back together after the tragic death of their young son following a car accident. Mum Maria blames herself as she was driving the car when it left the road and plunged into a river, and had to choose between saving the life of her daughter or her son. Her Indian nanny tells Maria about an ancient temple where the scattered ashes of a loved one can summon up the spirit of the departed, giving grieving people the chance to have one final conversation with them. But the conversation must happen through the locked doors of the temple, and on no account should the person summoning the spirit open the door to try and see their lost loved one...

That Maria does open the door to get a final look at her dead son you can probably predict. From here on in we're plunged head on into evil spirit territory which, with its plentiful supply of actually quite effective 'boo' moments could easily just be business as usual for this type of movie. But two things elevate The Other Side of the Door above the rest of the pack. One is the solid acting from leads Sarah Wayne Callies - best known for her roles in The Walking Dead and Prison Break - and Jeremy (Law & Order) Sisto. Both actors play their roles absolutely straight, resist over-egging the terror, and help disguise any inadequacies in the script. The other factor is the Mumbai setting, which adds a richness to the tone of the movie. To be fair the actual location scenes are a classic bit of second unit filming - the actors only ever appear on an Indian dressed set, which is itself an impressive colonial house mock up. But the Indian setting gives a much needed break from the urban surroundings normally utilised in films like this, and horror regular Maxime Alexandre's photography makes the most of some beautifully lit scenes.

I also liked the climax's refusal to go over the top, which meant that Maria's plight in tussling with evil entities for the safe passing of her son retains its emotional core rather than being simply a noisy final reel.

So Johannes has pulled it off, after quite a few years of trying but failing. Well done, although I suspect he had quite a bit of help. But keep the team together Jo, they're a winning bunch.