Tag: Don't Breathe

Broadcast Signal Intrusion (2021)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick Synopsis: In the late 1990s, a video archivist unearths a series of sinister pirate broadcasts and becomes obsessed with uncovering the conspiracy behind them.

To start, I should clarify the title, it refers to when someone hijacks a television or radio signal to broadcast something. So when I refer to an intrusion, that’s what I mean. For a real life instance of it, look up the Max Headroom incident. I mentioned that to both explain the concept of signal intrusions, and also to explain the “Max Headf*ck” excerpt I used. It wasn’t just me being crude, it was actually a super pretentious reference.

That’s not better is it?

These reviews are personal opinion. They always have been, and I’ve made no attempt to hide or deny that. That’s why some films which aren’t technically great get worse reviews than others. It’s why stuff like Table 19 (Rotten Tomatoes Score: 26%) receives a more positive review than Don’t Breathe (Rotten Tomatoes: 88%). There are some films which I just don’t gel with. Movies are all about preference, there’s no point in me recommending a film to someone if I know they won’t like it, just because “it’s directed really well”. I say all of that to preface this: there are some people who absolutely love this film and consider it one of the best horror films of the year, but I’m not among those people.

I get what the film is going for, and it has moments of true greatness. Everybody involved is obviously incredibly talented, it does a lot of things better than most horror films. I particularly like how it displays the film title on colour bars on-screen within the film. I don’t know why but I like when films make the title card exist within the film itself. I’m also a fan of how it used sound, particularly in the intrusions themselves, where there’s almost a wall of sound that the audience is banging its head against. The intrusions themselves are genuinely creepy and disturbing, which is always good. This film also creates a really compelling story and mystery that you want to find out.

That’s where it let me down. It is so concerned with being mysterious and asking questions, that it doesn’t answer those questions. You can get away with that if it’s a weird and esoteric film, but this is mostly normal (with the exception of intrusions). If it went into weirdness more then the lack of a cohesive narrative would have been acceptable. I’ll clarify what I mean by “lack of cohesive narrative”, it’s possible to describe this plot in a way that makes sense, but it involves missing out on a lot of the details. Details like “who made that phone call?”, “Where did that character go?” etc. So the synopsis makes sense, but the plot does not. I know some people like mystery, and I do at times, but not when it’s like this. Mysteries should enhance a film, not be used as an excuse to not answer questions. I recently watched the rerelease of the classic John Carpenter version of The Thing. That ends with an unanswered question: are both the characters still human? That’s a question that people have discussed for years. But if the film started with that question, and had a spooky voice stop the characters from making progress in answering it, then it would be annoying.

It’s not helped by how reminiscent it is of last year’s Censor. It’s not close enough that it feels like the same movie, but it is close enough that comparisons are inevitable. It’s a bit like someone took the script of Censor, played Chinese Whispers with it, and then made a film of the resultant script. It’s bad luck as I think they were developed around the same time, so there’s no way they influenced each other, it’s just bad timing on my part to have seen that first. I do feel bad about comparing the two, but I think part of that is due to how disappointed I am with this film in general. I love the unique idea of it, and the performances are all fantastic. Harry Shum Jr will get the plaudits, and rightfully so, but I feel you can’t ignore how talented Kelley Mack and Jennifer Jelsema are when they’re on screen. Mack, in particular, has a very bright future if she can pull off more performances like this. That’s what this film is to me, a possible footnote in a future favourite film. Jacob Gentry directs it wonderfully, and his choice of jazz music for a lot of it instead of a more traditional horror movie score is inspired.

If you’re a fan of more esoteric, dreamlike cinema, then you’ll appreciate this. If you prefer more straightforward watching, then I’d say avoid this as you’ll find it frustrating.

X (2022)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick synopsis: A group of people try to film a porn movie at a cabin belonging to an old couple, who strongly oppose the idea and decide to show their thoughts on the matter by writing a strongly worded letter to the local council. No wait, they murder them.

If you are thinking of watching this, go see it at the cinema. Not because it’s particularly great and you need to watch it immediately, but because the title means it’s going to be a bitch to find on a streaming site.

Let’s get one thing out of the way; this is not for everybody. It’s heavily focused on sex and violence, so unless you’re comfortable with both of those things, you won’t like this. It doesn’t shy away from the violence, and it doesn’t shy away from the sex. The whole thing feels slightly grubby, which is something that works in its favour. This isn’t a modern film, it’s a 70’s throwback in terms of style. It does work a lot of the time, and Ti West is a talented enough director that you never forget the time period that it’s set in. Now, as anybody who read my review of Censor knows, I love my throwback films. Especially when it comes to horror. And I don’t shy away from films about sex and killing people (I mean, one of those things is my favourite thing to do on weekends). I also like films about film-making, and am not afraid to see them going weird, as seen in Black Bear). So in some ways, this film was designed for me, yet I’m not that fond of it.

Part of that is because of how it sometimes utilises the throwback style in terms of film-making. The gimmick of “it’s edited like a 70s film” actually kind of gets in the way sometimes. There are far-away shots that don’t really tell us anything, and moments where it cuts to something for a second and then cuts back. It’s jarring, but not in a “horror movie making me feel unsettled” way, but in a way “this was edited manually and they botched it”. So it feels less like a throwback love letter to a genre, and more, just incredibly dated.

My main issue though? The same issue I have with a lot of modern horror films. The same issue I had with The Gallows, Unfriended, Don’t Breathe, Escape Room 2, Fantasy Island: I don’t like the characters. They’re annoying, selfish, not that likeable. So when they die, you’re not sad, or emotionally affected at all. If anything, you’re relieved.

The only slightly sympathetic character is one of the killers. She has a tragic backstory and her motivations do kind of make sense, although it’s never clarified exactly why that drives her to murder. She doesn’t get as much focus as the other characters though. The film spends so much time developing doomed characters, and not the location. At one point one of the characters finds the rotting corpses of a naked man in the basement, and someone else finds (presumably) his car in the lake (in a delightful shout-out to Psycho). Those things are glossed over really quickly. Was that person the only one? Or do they have a long history of this? The film comes close to answering this. One of the characters escaped the couple, and overheard them talking about throwing a body in the river. The actual ending of this is in the trailer, one of the cops finding a camera, “what’s on there?” “probably some fucked up horror movie”, END!

So, is she the reason the police are there? If so, why aren’t they draining the lake? If not, then why are they there? There are no houses nearby for people to have overheard the commotion. Really, they’re there to bookend the story, but it’s done quite poorly. Just full-on ape the ending of Psycho and show the car being retrieved, and then news footage of the discovery of bodies, to let us know this wasn’t a one-time thing, they’ve been doing it for years. I mean, think of the shot that ends From Dusk Till Dawn, where the camera pulls out and you realise the bar is not only built on an Aztec temple, but there are hundreds of vehicles there, all of them belonging to drivers who didn’t survive previous nights there. It’s not talked about often but it’s one of my favourite ending shots because it provides a history to everything, it shows that this has happened a lot before, and we’re just lucky enough to see the ending of a story that’s been being told for years. It hints at hundreds of untold stories just like the one we witnessed, only with unhappier endings. As opposed to this, which ends with nothing of substance.

I think it tried substance, there’s a preacher being shown on the television throughout, and at the end, it’s revealed that the main character is his daughter, who ran away to star in porn. A reveal that changes………..absolutely nothing. It doesn’t change what we think of her, or the situation, or anybody else in the film. It adds absolutely nothing outside of irrelevant backstory. It might as well have ended with “And that house where all the murders happened? It used to be a slave ranch”. It’s like, “yeah, and? Who gives a shit, that’s not relevant. Stop padding your word count”.

None of this takes away from the unarguable talent of everybody involved. Mia Goth continues to usually be the best thing in every film she stars in. Jenna Ortega has a great “final girl” quality (as anybody who watched the new Scream can testify), Martin Henderson has a strange, slightly Matthew McConaughey-esque quality to his performance.

So in summary? Maybe see this, some of you will like this a lot more than I did, and some of you won’t. It just wasn’t for me.