Tag: Horror Reviews

The Rule Of Jenny Pen (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

Quick synopsis: Recovering from a stroke at an assisted living facility, a judge encounters a psychopathic patient who uses a hand puppet to abuse fellow residents.

There are not many horror films focused on the elderly. On the rare occasions those films exist, they tend to come in the same two flavours. One, the elderly as the villains. These generally boil down to “ewwww, old people”. The others are with the elderly as a victim, these are usually more interesting (so are rarer, because Hollywood hates interesting), and show the elderly as trying to survive. At the same time, they struggle against not only the villain, but also their limitations brought on by age. The Rule of Jenny Pen (TROJP, trow-jop) attempts both.

It mostly manages it. The director is good at shock. The death of Howie is particularly shocking, especially since it happens so early on and occurs mostly in the background of a scene. I imagine it was mainly done that way so that we wouldn’t focus on it, so it would be easier to do the effects for as you wouldn’t notice it’s actually a model being set on fire. It helps the scene, though. It makes it seem shocking and realistic.

It’s not always realistic. There are a few moments which make you wonder if the staff have had any training whatsoever in terms of safeguarding. It would be acceptable for one or two of them to not notice things, but none of them? It’s not as if they appear overworked or like they don’t care. Most of the staff seem like they genuinely give a shit and want to do their best; so it’s baffling to try and figure out how they can miss signs of abuse.

The lack of realistic safeguarding is not my main issue; that would be the pacing. TROJP is fifteen minutes shy of 2 hours, and it only has enough story for about half of that runtime. I know the characters are physically slow, but that doesn’t mean the film has to be. I’m not asking for an exhilarating action film, but I don’t want the film to pause because it doesn’t have a clue what it’s supposed to do. This would be a fascinating short, there’s no doubt about it. It has ambition, creativity, and solid performances.

More than solid, actually. Lithgow is a tremendous actor, and I’m sure he’ll be a fantastic Dumbledore in a tv show that I will actively try to avoid. He’s positively unhinged in his role as Dave Crealy; utterly menacing and creepy. Geoffrey Rush is great going toe to toe with him. The best moments are when the two of them share a scene and try to outperform each other.

There is one thing I absolutely loved about TROJP. Whereas most films would approach a story like this with a “Is it really happening, or is he just mad?” Jenny Penn takes a “why not both?” strategy, which is much scarier. He isn’t in full control of his mental abilities, so he (and the audience) has trouble working out exactly what is real. But some of it IS real. That mixture is terrifying to think about and to watch unfold.

As I said, there are moments where TROJP isn’t a fascinating watch. But there are also times when it’s (and there’s no other way of saying this), fucking dull. And the dull moments are just not good enough to get you through the rest of it.

Abigail (2024) Review

On By troubledproductionsIn Uncategorized1 Comment

Quick Synopsis: A group of would-be criminals kidnaps a 12-year-old, and don’t even do that right. Losers.

I’ve spoken before about going into some films completely blind, having not even seen a trailer. I wish I had done that for this. The more you know about Abigail, the worse it is. A lot of the film is spent with the killer in shadow, making you think the killings are being done by a hitman working for Abigails’ mob boss father. But if you’ve seen the trailer, you know that Abigail is a vampire, so you know what’s happening. To be fair, the title and the poster do that too. It’s a film called Abigail, and the poster features that character in a bloodstained dress, so even if you don’t know she’s a vampire, you do know that she is responsible for the deaths. So the whole “what is happening? It’s a secret” aspect of the opening half is wasted. I know we didn’t see a lot of Jaws in the film of the same title, but we were aware it was a shark. We didn’t spend half the time watching that film and being told it was hippo.

Once the truth is revealed, it’s a much better film. It’s still good before that, but it definitely feels like it’s holding back on you a little bit. It’s shot like a horror movie before the characters know it’s a horror movie. So the vampiric reveal doesn’t come as a shock, it comes off as “Well that’s what happens next in a horror film”. Compare this to say, From Dusk Till Dawn, which comes off as a heist movie for the first half, which means the vampiric shift comes off as a genuine shock. Here, you KNOW it’s a horror movie, so you’re expecting something similar to what happens. They could have played it off like a heist movie and it would have improved it. I’ll admit, that would have drawn comparisons to the aforementioned FDTD. But heist movies are cinematically different now than they were in the 90’s, they’re now more focused on straight lines, split-screen shots etc. So whilst it would have been similar in terms of genre shift, the styles themselves would be different, which would have lessened comparisons.

I’m overexaggerating slightly, I’ll admit. The sections before them are still pretty entertaining. That’s mainly due to the cast though. I’m a huge fan of both Kathryn Newton and Melissa Barrera, and they’re both given a lot to work with even before shit gets bloody. The characters feel real, which helps sell the believability of this universe. The core group all mesh together well, to the point where their interactions don’t feel like the script is just fleshing out doomed characters. Kevin Durand does look distractingly like an even dumber Elon Musk though.

The real highlight is Alisha Weir as the titular vampire. She is believably an ancient being, there’s no “yeah but that’s clearly just a child speaking, not a 200-year-old person who looks like one”. Her physicality helps too. Her movements (or her stunt doubles movements, I dunno) have a brutal elegance to them, so even when she’s killing someone there’s still an air of beauty and art to it. The ballerina aspect to her character allows some very unique action scenes, of her walking down a bannister with her feet in the ballerina tippy toe pose (I do know the name, it’s called En Pointe, but I’m using that in a pun later). There’s a scene where she dances with someone’s corpse that is very weird and artful, but it did make me sad as it reminded me of Bray Wyatt. The music selection is pretty en pointe (ballet pun! I told you that would come back), mostly consisting of classical music which you’d normally find in ballet performances, operas, and an advert for a Ferrari Pene Piccolo complete with steering wheel, tyres, and can go from 0-80 in 5 seconds which you’ll never manage because you’re only using it to take your kids to school 5 minutes down the road.

In summary; it is just a mindless horror film. But it’s one of the better ones. With humour, some great kills, one truly disturbing moment, and just enough heart to elevate it.

Hereditary (2018)

On By troubledproductionsIn ReviewLeave a comment

It’s been a few days since I watched this. I needed the cool-down period so that I could approach this with the sophistication and slick analytical nature which we are known for. So here goes: WHAT THE COCKING SHIT-FUCK WAS THAT?

I mean, I liked it, I think. I’m still not entirely sure to be honest. I thought it was very, very good, I’m just not sure if I ever want to see it again. It seems to have divided opinion, some people view it as a fantastic film that could lead the way for horror movies, whilst some people view it as a boring mess. Me? I see it as a boring mess, that could lead the way for horror movies.

There is a very good chance you’ll find the opening third incredibly tedious, and you will look at your watch/the person next to you/your own reflection in the shiny surface of something as you contemplate how you’re wasting your life. But like all films; once the small child gets decapitated, it really picks up. But only compared to what was going on before, compared to standard films it is still incredibly slow. Almost two-thirds of the film is basically foreplay, which is always a risky strategy as it means if you flub the actual orgasm then it’s just been a massive waste of everyone’s time. Luckily the cumshot here is really good. The closing section is just insane, in a brilliant way. I feel it could have been a better film if you cut a lot of the opening, but then that also could have hurt it. Part of the brilliance was the way everything was set up, there is SOOOOO much foreshadowing it’s actually genius. So many things you think are inconsequential (even the play being studied in class) actually turn out to be deeply important. After leaving the film you’ll suddenly remember a seemingly throwaway line, and how it actually foreshadowed something important, and you’ll think “fuck, that was brilliant”. And it is. The script is the work of someone who knows exactly what they’re doing. Same with the directing, scares are punctuated with audio cues. What normally happens in a lot of horror films is this: person is sitting in an empty room, suddenly there’s a loud piece of audio, and a face appears behind them. The way this does it; person sitting in an empty room, you suddenly notice there’s a face behind them, and you wonder how long it’s been there. This shows fantastic competence from a first-time director and is a brilliant idea. It forces you to feel you have to pay attention to every single moment. You can’t look away, not even for a second unless you want to risk missing. A lot of the times for films you can be a passive watcher, you’ll be watching the film but you won’t really be fully focused on it, you’ll be thinking of how hungry you are, whether England will win the world cup (Spoilers; yes! But not the football one, the cheese-rolling world cup), or whether that person sitting in front of you will ever SHUT UP and if he doesn’t stop talking you’re going to go down there and twat him with a crowbar. This, you’re very active, you can tell this even in the body language of the people who were watching it whilst I was there; everyone was leaning forward. It’s not just that that makes it seem the work of a seasoned director, the way they cut between scenes is unique, and brilliant, and is sure to lead to many poor directors attempting to imitate it and failing miserably.

This makes the very last scene even more frustrating. The film does a brilliant job throughout of teasing you with the truth, giving you glimpses of why what is happening is happening. Which makes it very puzzling that the final scene is someone explaining exactly what it was about, it would be like if you were watching The Thing and at the end John Carpenter appeared on screen and said “That guy on the left, he’s not human”. It treats the audience with so much respect for most of the film an then thinks we’re idiots who need it explained to us for the final section. I mean, I am an idiot, but still.

That being said, kudos to the film for having the sheer balls to kill what looked like the main character, and so brutally too, I like marketing works like that, when it deliberately deceives you, but not in a way that you feel cheated, but in a way that it means the story beats come as a complete surprise. It’s the way of saying “okay, now all bets are off” and it throws you off, I love it.

So should you see it? Maaaaaybe. There’s another film you should watch first: The Witch. If you hated that, you’d hate this too. But if you liked it, you’d like this too.