Life of Pi

More of a ramble than a review.

I’m pretty sure this joke has been made before, but don’t they say ‘never work with children, water or animals’? That seems to be the cliché that filmmakers always use for some reason, even though the best films have always ignored it. Think of Jaws, E.T. or The Birds – they break the rules, and they’re some of the best films ever made. Life of Pi, however, breaks all three and is incredible because of it. This is very brave filmmaking. Ever since Yann Martel’s Life of Pi won the Booker prize in 2002, people have being saying that the book is unfilmable, and, looking at it with a rational mind, I guess they’re right; the majority of it is set on a lifeboat (although that didn’t stop Hitchcock when he made Lifeboat in 1944) and one of the central characters is a Bengali tiger named Richard Parker. There’s also this whole thing about whether it’s all in Pi’s mind or not, but that can be ignored for now. To be honest, Ang Lee is someone I have never really wanted to know more about. I knew he made Crouching Tiger, which I have only vague recollections as a child, and Brokeback Mountain, which I don’t remember enjoying much, but Life of Pi is such an accomplished film that all of my reservations about him have been swept away.

 The film is told to us by an older Pi, who has been visited by Rafe Spall, an author with writer’s block looking for something to write about, and Pi explains that not only will his story cure his writer’s block, but also it will make him believe in God. Now that’s interesting isn’t it? That’s a good opening to a story.  It also introduces the very strong themes of religion and story-telling that I think are brilliant themes, especially for a film such as this. Now, this framing device of having Pi himself tell us what happened is, I think, ingenious and it’s one of the main reasons why this film works on the level it does. As the story progresses, sections of the older Pi’s narration are slotted in between scenes, with the author asking a question or two, and this paces the film in such a way that it never becomes dull. It’s strange though, and very impressive, to realise that the longest stretch of the film without any of this narration is when Pi and Richard Parker are stranded on the boat, as if Ang Lee is saying ‘I don’t need anything to help me make this story interesting – I can do it perfectly well on my own thanks’.

 For anyone who hasn’t read or seen Life of Pi (and you should probably not be reading this if you haven’t done either), the story begins with a little boy named Piscine Molitor Patel (named after a French swimming pool) whose family owns a zoo in Pondicherry with large sloths, multi-coloured toucans, sprinting lizards, massive snakes and of course, a tiger named Richard Parker. The opening shots of the zoo are beautiful and make me wish I had seen it in 3D. Having suffered constant bullying (no pissing in the playground, Piscine!), Piscine decides to changes his name to Pi, and there’s this wonderful scene of him writing out the hundreds of decimal places of pi as the whole class cheers him on. He is raised as a Hindu, but as a fourteen year old he is introduced to Christianity and also discovers Islam and so begins to follow all three religions, much to the annoyance of his father. He loves animals and music and he meets a pretty girl who he takes a fancy to, but one day his father reveals that they are moving to Canada, and taking all of their animals with them in a boat across the Atlantic. Sad. Once they’re on the ship, along with Gerard Depardieu the cook and a few happy Buddhists, the boat inexplicably sinks.

 The underwater filming at this point is beautiful. Never have I seen a shipwreck so impressive as this (yes, even Titanic pales in comparison), with a zebra kicking its frantic legs and birds and lizards hopping from railing to railing attempting to escape the storm. There’s a moment when Pi jumps off the lifeboat because Richard Parker starts to clamber in, and he plunges into the sea beneath the waves and everything goes quiet. He sees the boat, now completely submerged, its lights flickering and you realise that his whole family is dead. So sad, but still, so beautiful.

 When eventually the storm clears, it’s like watching a sitcom with mismatched roommates. There’s a zebra with a broken leg, an orang-utan who’s lost her child, a blood-hungry hyena, Richard Parker hiding under the tarpaulin and Pi, who is clinging desperately to the prow. Who’s going to eat who? It’s a very tense situation, and one that Ang Lee pulls off very well, especially because each animal has its own human characteristic – you feel so sorry for the zebra, and yet you hate that hyena so much, and Pi – well, he can’t really do much, particularly when two of his shipmates are carnivorous. Once this is all settled, and it’s just Pi and the tiger, the story isn’t any less powerful, in fact, it becomes more so. Their relationship grows and grows, and it’s a credit to newcomer Suraj Sharma that the audience is captivated throughout. When shooting the film, most of the time he was acting on his own – there was no tiger, which is pretty astounding when you think about it.

 Then there’s the whale and the jellyfish and meerkat island – there’s too much to talk about, and it all contributes to this wild and magical picture of the ocean, how it can be deadly at times, but also very humbling and peaceful; there are scenes where the camera is held directly over the boat and through the clear water you can see large whales and schools of bright fish swimming underneath.

 And the ending. I liked the ending – the ambiguity of the book was kept and it was left up to the audience whether Pi’s story was what actually happened, and why I liked it was because it fitted so well with those themes of religion and story-telling. ‘Which story do you like the best?’, Pi asks the author, and in a way this is what religion is – you choose the story you like the best and it has nothing whatsoever to do with proof. The story he gave to the shipping company about surviving on the lifeboat with his mother and the cook seems to me like the ‘rational’ explanation, or the ‘scientific’ way of looking at things. Perhaps a representation of atheism and theism? Anyway, no matter what the deeper meaning, the film on the surface is still an incredible piece of work, and I should think that many Oscars will come its way sooner or later, and rightly so. 

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is an incredible piece of film-making - not only is it close to the books in terms of story, but what it shows on screen is subtle, almost toned down and fits very comfortably into Tolkien’s world. What made it such a marvel though, was how ambitious it had seemed at the time of release; no one had ever succeeded in making a film at this kind of scale and in this particular genre, so expectations were high when Peter Jackson announced his intent to adapt The Hobbit into two films, and then, months later, into a Hobbit trilogy. Excitement increased as the cast list was gradually revealed and fans began to speculate as to how Jackson would pull it off (including me) – where would the first film end? How could it possibly be extended into three films? Then finally, several days ago, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was released into the world, and it was (and I shudder to say it) sort of disappointing. What follows are my very muddled opinions of the film, in the form of a rant/review.

 The main problem was that it all looked very commercialised. Jackson, presumably drunk on power from the success of the Rings trilogy, spent most of the film trying to make it into this brightly-coloured, fun-for-all-the-family blockbuster, while simultaneously attempting to shove Middle Earth into his audience’s face, just because he can. I’m sorry, but that’s what it looked like.

 Tolkien’s books are filled with back story and extra information that, along with the main plotlines, are fascinating to read because it gives Middle Earth an extra dimension; we as readers are made aware of the sheer scale of the world in which these stories take place. And that’s great. That is why his books are as popular as they are: because of the author’s extensive imagination and dedication to what he has created. But to try and fill the script of The Hobbit with as many references, trivia and back story as possible in order to fill up the running time is not going to work. The truth of the matter is that the audience couldn’t care less about the wolves of Gundabad, the lost king of Angmar, or even the spawn of Ungoliant, especially when they’re mentioned in passing, and while characters like Galadriel and Saruman may have been intrinsic to plot of The Lord of the Rings, here they just come across as gap-fillers: unnecessary elements of the film that serve only to stretch it to its three hour running time.

 The tone of The Hobbit is at a completely different level to that of The Lord of the Rings. Everyone knows this. It’s a very light-hearted, largely uncomplicated tale of treasure hunting and riddle solving written initially for Tolkien’s children. Peter Jackson definitely knows this – he goes on about it in interviews, so why does it seem so misjudged? Why does it unashamedly try so hard to be The Lord of the Rings? What we’re presented with is a mixture of grotesque comedy and exaggerated, derivative ‘dark and brooding seriousness’, making the film seem unbalanced and most of the time unsure of itself. This might not necessarily be the filmmakers’ fault and is probably due to the Rings trilogy being made first; the bar had been set, and anything proceeding it was inevitably going to appear slightly silly. 

 To demonstrate some of the more ridiculous moments in The Hobbit, I shall use Radagast the Brown as an example. Here is a character rarely mentioned in either The Hobbit of the LOTR books, a wizard who prefers the company of animals and lives peacefully at his home at Rhosgobel in Mirkwood. His only role is to warn the White Council about the dark power massing in Dol Guldor, so he’s not really got a lot to do with The Hobbit, yet here he is riding around the forest on a rabbit-drawn sledge (not very animal friendly) with a sick hedgehog named Sebastian and dried bird crap running down the side of his face. Saruman even accuses Radagast of being a mushroom addict! The film has transformed him from a wise, friendly, nature-loving wizard, into a figure of ridicule – someone to laugh at. Characters like these are present throughout most of film (the Goblin King is an obvious one, looking completely out of place, as though he’d just walked out of the Ralph Bakshi cartoon version), but the only times they really worked were with the dwarves. Their characters were well-acted and cleverly written, Thorin especially, and theirs were the back stories that actually helped the film move forward.

 

 On that note, it needs to be stressed that The Hobbit was not awful – it was far from awful, just not very impressive, especially when compared to Jackson’s previous ventures into Middle Earth. That being said, it definitely has its moments. One of the film’s saving graces is its casting: Martin Freeman is a perfect Bilbo Baggins, not just in looks, but there’s something very Ian Holm-ish about the way he delivers his lines – I just wish he had more of them. In fact some of the best scenes are the one-to-one moments: Gandalf’s arrival is brilliant, as is Bilbo’s encounter with Gollum, which is handled surprisingly well. Jackson also manages fight scenes with a good eye for detail and camera angles, which is why many of the goblin war flashbacks worked – they were actually kind of beautiful. Similarly, the way he shoots landscapes is, as usual, incredible – it might have been a better film if he had filled up the gaps in the plot with more wide-angle shots of the company walking up mountains.

 For a blockbuster or a family film, The Hobbit is enjoyable in so far as it’s quite pleasant to be back in Middle Earth after so many years, but for fans who worship the books and the original trilogy as religious artefacts, it’s too epic for a story so simple and needed less ‘things’ going on. Or am I just being pedantic here? Do I not like it as much because it’s so different from what I imagined it would be? Perhaps I should just accept it as what it is and stop going on about it. It’s hard to decide…

Antiviral

Long live the new flesh! The new flesh here being David Cronenberg’s son Brandon, who seems to have inherited his father’s body-horror fixation and has used it to direct his feature-length debut Antiviral, an unnerving yet very entertaining piece of science fiction.

 Antiviral offers a disturbing new meaning to our culture of celebrity obsession. Televisions everywhere show round-the-clock footage of their lives and newspapers are full of the tiniest stories and scandals. But that’s just the beginning. Syd Marsh (Caleb Landry Jones) works for a company that specialises in injecting members of the public with diseases that have been taken from specific celebrities; you could be walking around with Madonna’s chest cold if you wanted to. Part of Syd’s job is to ‘copyright’ these infections: to remove all possibilities of contagion so that once they’re injected they cannot be passed on. His desire to make a bit of extra money on the side however, coupled with his own addictions, leads him to be injected with a disease so incurable, it becomes a matter of life and death.

  More a criticism of celebrity culture than an accurate vision of the future, there are moments in this film that are frankly alarming, even when compared to our present day society of Big Brother, X-Factor and Heat magazine, a world in which attaining celebrity status is the only worthwhile ambition. In Antiviral, for instance, there are companies that have developed ‘cell stakes’, slabs of grey meat grown from the muscle cells of the rich and famous that people actually queue up to buy and subsequently eat for lunch, their excuse being that it makes them feel closer to those they admire. It’s moments like these that make it a hard concept to imagine, yet it’s a credit to Cronenberg’s direction, his cold, very clinical approach to every scene, that makes it somehow believable.

  What makes Antiviral worth watching though, is Caleb Landry Jones, whose on-screen presence is beyond sinister. You might recognise him from X Men: First Class, The Last Exorcism and a couple of Breaking Bad episodes, but Antiviral is very much his breakthrough role; he won’t be forgotten in a hurry. Very pale, very freckled and with a ponytail of ginger hair, he has this contemptuous expression on his face as if trying to keep from shouting at every client who comes into his office, yet each line of dialogue is considered and slow, sometimes menacing and other times devoid of any emotion at all, and he has such a mesmerising way of walking through doors that it becomes hard to take your eyes off him. Yet Jones’ talent really comes into effect as the virus starts to take control of his body, developing a contorted, demonic stagger as he attempts to go about his life as though nothing is wrong.

  Now it wouldn’t be right to compare the films of father and son. There are certainly elements that share similarities: the hospital settings of Dead Ringers, the exploration of media and addiction in Videodrome, but Antiviral needs to be viewed as a completely separate piece of cinema, one that is refreshingly unique in its approach to a topic dealt with many times before, portraying a not-so-distant future with a strange, yet very absorbing bleakness. It’s a well-directed film with an extraordinary performance at its centre that serves as a perfect showcase for the brilliance of both Brandon Cronenberg and Caleb Landry Jones; let’s hope their collaborations continue.

(Original review: http://www.impactnottingham.com/2012/12/review-antiviral/)

American Mary @ Mayhem Festival

Mary Mason is strapped for cash. She studies hard to be a surgeon at university and lives on her own in a small apartment where at night she operates on cold turkeys, but Student Loans keep calling her demanding she pay the fees. So one evening she answers a job ad at a nearby Gentleman’s club, where the owner, Billy, asks her to strip to her underwear and to give him a massage. Mid-massage Billy gets a call saying that one of his ‘gang’ is dying in the basement from a fatal wound to the chest and he desperately offers Mary $5,000 to save his life. Mary accepts, completes the operation successfully and returns home with the money. Later that week however, a woman who looks uncannily like Betty Boop turns up at her apartment asking for Mary to perform surgery on her friend. Her friend, it turns out, wants to be ‘de-sexualised’ (you can imagine what that entails) in exchange for $10,000. Again, Mary accepts and she is subsequently drawn into the underground, and very illegal, world of body modification.

 Definitely one of the more original films of the festival, American Mary is obviously a very well thought through, very well made piece of cinema, the kind that we don’t really seem to get anymore, what with all the teen-orientated horror about possession and found-footage that’s shown all year round. It’s certainly a very refreshing film to watch. Its themes echo strongly that of David Cronenberg’s body-horror era, especially Scanners, The Brood or even Videodrome, and more recently films like Human Centipede and Audition. Then obviously there’s the iconic Dr Frankenstein or Dr Jekyll; the idea of altering the human body, changing its basic composition, which holds a strong resonance in American Mary as we see her in the operating theatre slicing and grafting bits of her patients’ skin.

 More importantly though, it’s also a film directed by women (the Soska sisters, whose debut Dead Hooker in a Trunk has been a favourite amongst grindhouse fans) specifically about women. The character of Mary has no male friends; in fact some of the only men with whom she comes into contact are either perverts or misogynists, and theme of revenge is strong throughout, inspiring scenes similar to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It may seem like a complicated idea, but for the most part, it works – for while the plot might be confused at times, it’s the well-written characters and their actors that drive the film forward. Katherine Isabelle, who plays Mary, is close to perfection in her role, creating a blend of Zooey Deschanel and Wednesday Addams: a light-hearted performance, yet with a grounded, macabre centre that can be quite menacing at times. The Soska sisters even make an appearance as identical twins, ‘Queens of the body-mod world’, with filed teeth, sinister German accents and corset piercings down their back. The whole film plays like a Marilyn Manson music video.

Not a film for the squeamish, though definitely one for fans of any type of horror – it’s strangely fascinating, yet never unbelievable.

The Casebook of Eddie Brewer @ Mayhem Festival

Mr Eddie Brewer is a psychic investigator, a man whose job it is to investigate ghostly occurrences, and he has agreed to take part in a documentary for the Culture channel. A presenter and cameraman follow Eddie around on the job, occasionally interviewing those involved and attempting to capture actual footage of the paranormal. Their first stop is a small, suburban house where a mother and daughter claim to have been having trouble with a poltergeist. Eddie sets up a camcorder in the lounge and then he and the film crew travel to their next appointment: Rookery House, a broken-down Georgian building where strange noises have been heard coming from the basement. 

 The film, written and directed by the relatively new filmmaker Andrew Spencer, is shot primarily as a documentary, but interspersed with CCTV tapes of the office block and several objective fourth wall scenes, creating an intriguing cinematic collage of different mediums. ‘This is not a found footage film’, Andrew assured the audience firmly at the Q & A session afterwards, and it is really isn’t. Cleverly, the CCTV shows the audience a few scenes that neither Eddie nor the documentary team are aware of, adding an extra layer to the film’s well-crafted narrative. 

In terms of scares (this is a horror festival, remember?), The Casebook of Eddie Brewer doesn’t really go in for shocks – this is no Paranormal Activity. There are no slamming doors, and only a few ghostly figures are glimpsed throughout – it’s more the atmosphere that’s unnerving. The walks through the empty, echoing basement and the mysterious hole in the wall make the film a very uncomfortable watch; the audience is always expecting something shocking to happen when the lights turn off, or as the camera edges around a particularly dark corner (especially considering the film’s 18 rating), but nothing ever does, and that’s the problem. It’s very reminiscent of films like Blair Witch Project (yes, a predictable example), especially those scenes in the basement, and while Blair Witch might be a different kind of film, it’s certainly a better horror film.

 Eddie Brewer, however, as a character is fantastic. Plagued by unexplained guilt (his wife, it is revealed early on in the film, died in a fire earlier that year) and constantly having to defend his profession and his dated techniques, the film offers a very complex character study, one that actor Ian Brooker has obviously worked hard to portray. Eddie is simply a very likeable man, one that the audience sticks with throughout, even in his angry or sulking moods. And while Eddie, rather ‘old school’ in his methods, is stubbornly averse to being called a ‘medium’, and even stresses repeatedly how he doesn’t charge for his services, it’s interesting to note that when a paid medium is actually brought into the building, the film starts to become a lot more exciting. Odd things start to happen; things that may have been staged by the medium himself, but work nonetheless, adding to the film’s carefully constructed atmosphere and were very well executed.  

The Casebook of Eddie Brewer is a good, strong character study, and a subtle satire on TV shows like Most Haunted, yet it still leaves you feeling somewhat unsatisfied.

Link to my original article: http://www.impactnottingham.com/2012/11/review-the-casebook-of-eddie-brewer-mayhem-horror-film-festival-2012/

The Beyond @ Screen 22

Lucio Fulci’s films are the ones to watch if you’re in the mood for disgusting, overtly camp horror. He started his career in a rather harmless way, directing a dozen or more unsuccessful Italian comedies that didn’t get a very wide release, particularly in the US. Then in the early 70s, possibly due to the suicide of his wife, he joined the ranks of the infamous ‘giallo’ directors, which included Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava and Sergio Martino and began creating some of his most famous films to date. Zombie Flesh Eaters and City of the Living Dead followed, obvious yet brilliant attempts to cash in on Romero’s undead franchise.

 Then came The Beyond: a delightful tale of Lovecraftian horror that had to be heavily edited and released using an alternate title for it actually to be shown in American cinemas, and Kino Klubb (following the success of their screening of Carpenter’s They Live! at Broadway last month) were kind enough to show it a week before Halloween, uncut and uncensored at Screen 22.

  For those of you unaware of what Screen 22 is, it is unofficially the smallest cinema in Europe (with only one screen and 22 seats, but Guinness World Records have yet to confirm it), just off Broad Street in Nottingham, and they don’t show newly released films, but a careful selection of classics, voted for by the public. Before The Beyond was shown, a nice man from Kino Klubb wearing a glow-in-the-dark skeleton outfit introduced filmmaker Luther Bhogal Jones, who, after expressing his admiration for Fulci, showed his brilliant new short film Creak, inspired by bumps in the night and exploring houses in the dark. 

 Then came the horror, the brightly coloured horror, of The Beyond, and everyone settled down in their seats, chocolate eyeballs clutched in their hands, ready to be entertained. The plot: in the late 1920s an artist is lynched in the basement of a hotel for dabbling in the black arts, and his murder opens up one of the Seven Gates to Hell. Cut to the present day and Lisa, a young woman from New York, has inherited the hotel and plans to have it renovated, but the building-work re-activates the portal and a whole host of things start to go wrong: people fall off ladders, patients at a nearby hospital all turn into zombies and the ghost of a blind girl tries to get Lisa to move out of the hotel. How does she get things back to normal?

 The Beyond is basically two different films sewn together: the first half, a haunted house story, comprising of a series of random ghostly events (the director himself said the film was plotless), and then the second, a full-blown zombie thriller set in a hospital, as if Fulci wanted to incorporate elements of Zombie Flesh Eaters. It just seemed overcomplicated – perhaps if the zombies were in the hotel itself, it would have been a more grounded and enjoyable film, but setting it in two completely separate locations muddled the already weightless story. 

  The special effects used were admittedly very entertaining, and the audience groaned or laughed every time an eyeball exploded  (Fulci’s trademark obsessions with eyes and the act of seeing are present throughout his films) or a tarantula ripped open someone’s face – this was some of the most inventive gore of its time, challenging and inspiring the likes of The Evil Dead, The Thing and Alien to be artfully disgusting without the use of computer graphics. This, and the hilarious lines of dialogue (“No Lisa, I’m a doctor! I’m calling the FBI.”), make it easy to see why The Beyond is considered by many to be such a cult classic. 

An equally pleasant and horrifying evening – Kino Klubb definitely know how to host a horror film.

 

 

Maniac @ Mayhem Festival

Maniac is the perfect film with which to start the festival. Premiering at Cannes this summer, the film is a masterful blend of innovative camerawork and claustrophobic horror that leaves the 1980s original lying hopelessly in the dust.

  Elijah Wood plays Frank, a man who stalks the streets at night looking for beautiful women. On finding a suitable match, he follows them home and then proceeds to kill and scalp them, taking the bloody mess of hair back to his shop where it is stapled onto the head of one of his many mannequins. Frank becomes disorientated, however, when he meets French photographer Anna, a friendly and attractive girl who wants to take pictures of his shop mannequins for an art exhibition. He cares for her, in a way that he hasn’t done with any girl before, and is mortified to discover that she has a boyfriend. On top of that, his murders are all over the news…

 Filmed almost completely in POV, we see what Frank sees; we see who he kills and how he does it – the only times we get a look at his face is when it’s reflected in mirrors or glass. It’s a very clever technique that director Franck Khalfoun has decided to use, simply because of how uncomfortable the audience is made to feel - there are scenes where Frank enters the apartments of women who are showering or taking a bath that are actually painful to watch. Similarly, the killings themselves, while not particularly violent, seem so real that they become difficult to comprehend. 

Inspiration is obvious. Elements of Psycho are scattered throughout the narrative, so much so that by the end it makes sense to look at Frank as a modern extension of Norman Bates; it becomes explicitly clear that his relationship with his dead mother plays an important part in how he views other women. Interestingly enough, Maniac is in no way misogynistic; Frank isn’t seeking revenge over how women have treated him and his motives have nothing directly to do with sex - he seems simply to be a collector of beauty.

 Another film that Maniac echoes strongly is Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, but in a different kind of way. Henry, like Frank, drives around the dark streets of the city killing unsuspecting women, but it’s very much an objective portrayal – very cold and unsympathetic, whereas Maniac’s narrative is the most empathising a film can be without reading a character’s thoughts aloud and this is where its strengths mainly lie. Wood gives an amazingly believable performance, playing Frank with an unexpected mixture of depravity and humanity, to such an extent that the audience is actually able to feel sympathetic towards him as his world slowly disintegrates.

 In terms of horror, Maniac is up there with some of the best of the year, not just because of the acting and the special effects, but also because of its subject matter. For once, this is a film that doesn’t deal with exorcism, possession or found footage – it explores the mind of a serial killer on a profoundly creative level, one that makes you think and shudder at exactly the same time.

‘Please don’t scream. You’re so beautiful’.

The Evil Dead

 The Evil Dead is the horror classic. Hailed by Stephen King himself as ‘the most ferociously original horror film of the year’ when it was released in 1981, it’s been banned in countries all over the world and is the first feature film from Sam Raimi, director of the Spiderman trilogy, Drag Me To Hell and Darkman.

 The Book of the Dead is where it all begins, the fabled Necronomicon of the Lovecraftian mythos, the ‘Naturan Demanto’, a book so evil that it contains an incantation in an unknown language, which if read out will summon the spirits of the Dead to kill all in sight. So you can imagine what happens, can you not?

 Five college students travel into the wilderness of Tennessee to spend a pleasant holiday in an abandoned cabin. Everything seems great until they hear noises coming from a chained-up trapdoor in the lounge and decide to investigate, but they find nothing except an old tape recorder and a book bound in human flesh and inked in human blood (oh, what could it be?). On playing the tape, they hear a voice reading out some sort of incantation and from that point onwards their holiday is ruined. Completely ruined. The first to become demonically possessed is Cheryl, who issues a Christmas Carol-type warning to her friends: ‘one by one we shall come for you’. She is then locked in the cellar and forced to remain there shouting insults for the remainder of the film.

The best, and probably the most impressive element of The Evil Dead aside from its innovative camera sweeps and demonic voiceovers, is its visual effects, particularly the gore. But this isn’t Saw gore – it’s much more than Saw gore – it’s stop motion gore. It’s hilarious-yet-disgusting, obviously-fake-yet-brilliant gore. Tree branches turn savage, limbs get amputated and monsters disintegrate all over the place – the actual time and effort put into creating effects like these with such a low budget ($350,000) is incredible. The film is well deserving of its Clavell de Plata award for special effects.

 The mass appeal of The Evil Dead and its sequels is probably due to its ability to combine full-on horror with a certain playfulness – for every moment of disgust, there’s a one-liner or a bit of slapstick to match it. And like Stephen King said, it’s just so unique: a simply structured 85 minutes of fun and blood. The film has gone on to inspire countless other horrors, from Braindead (one of Peter Jackson’s earlier efforts that uses the same sort of ‘animated gore’ effects, but to an even greater extent), to the more recent Cabin in the Woods. There’s even a musical based on the Evil Dead trilogy, which at the time of release was named ‘the new Rocky Horror’. Songs include ‘What the Fuck Was That?’ and ‘Do the Necronomicon’.

 Admittedly the acting isn’t the greatest, but this just adds to the film’s slightly mocking tone, as does the fantastic dialogue that the characters are given (“kill her if you can, loverboy”). Each actor has emerged from the series as a cult hero in the horror community, especially Bruce Campbell and his chainsaw antics. Nowadays, aside from sitting at a computer retweeting Evil Dead quotes (@GroovyBruce) and playing a character in USA Network’s Burn Notice, Campbell still holds a strong presence in the world of cinema. His friendship with Raimi continues, having appeared briefly in many of the director’s later films (the boxing announcer in Spiderman, for example) and, in more exciting news, both Raimi and Campbell are producers of the Evil Dead remake, set to be released in 2013, which follows the same storyline and stars Jane Levy (the girl from Suburgatory). It doesn’t even look that terrible.

 Just watch The Evil Dead this Halloween – it’s all on YouTube, so put it on while carving a pumpkin and you’ll have a wonderful time, but whatever you do, don’t take it too seriously. Or go down into the cellar…

Sinister

Sinister is good, inventive horror. You might not have given it a moment’s thought, what with the large amount of generic, unsatisfying films of the same genre being released over the past year (House at the End of the Street, The Possession, The Pact, Chernobyl Diaries, etc). You might not have given it the time of day if it walked up to you in the street. But please, give this one a chance. 

Sinister starts, rather brilliantly, with four people, paper bags over their heads and nooses around their necks, standing below a tree. And something is moving over to the right of the screen – it’s a saw, and as soon as it cuts through the branch, a mechanism is triggered that slowly lifts the four wriggling bodies off the ground by their necks…

 Ethan Hawke (star of Gattaca, Before Sunset and vampire thriller Daybreakers) plays a struggling author - complete with cardigan, slippers and reading glasses – who doesn’t just write crime fiction, he writes real crime; unsolved child murders in particular. His books attempt to piece together the events, highlighting mistakes that were made in the investigations (making him very unpopular with the police) and this time, he and his family have moved to a new house; a house where the previous family were murdered (although only Ethan knows this – he wants to use it as the setting for his next bestseller). After arriving, he finds a box in the attic containing a projector and several super-8 films, with labels like ‘Family BBQ’ and ‘Sleepy Time’. Intrigued, he watches them late at night, only to discover that they show different families being murdered in various horrible scenarios, and the only thing that links them together is a mysterious symbol that appears on the wall in every film. To top this off, his son Trevor is experiencing night terrors and his daughter Ashley has started drawing on the walls. What does this all mean?

 Writer and director Scott Derrickson (previous films include The Day the Earth Stood Still remake, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the fourth Hellraiser sequel) really seems to know what he’s doing with this one. The writing is noticeably realistic, especially the husband-wife arguments, which are some of the best scenes in the film. Ethan Hawke and Juliet Rylance’s onscreen relationship at times keeps the film firmly on track; believable and absorbing, as is the performance of up-and-coming child actor Michael Hall D’Addario as the long-haired, rebellious 12 year old.  Dialogue and performances aside however, the ‘death-tapes’ are where Derrickson’s genius really comes into play. Each super-8 is like a horror short, perfectly crafted with their own suitably terrifying soundtrack, and because they’re mostly spread out over the whole film, you’ll find yourself anticipating the next one, wanting to know how the next family will die (not for pleasure of course – simply curiosity).

It’s the plot, too, that shakes you up and down: unguessable at times, with a few moments that will produce screams throughout the cinema. As mentioned before, most people will be tempted to just shove Sinister into the bin of disappointing horror films; ones that attempt to use modern technology to give them an ‘edge’, but this one does it quite well – you won’t want to use laptops and film projectors in dark rooms for a long, long time.

 It was just a very enjoyable, satisfying horror that looked great and gave you more than you expected – what more can be said?

Savages

‘Just because I'm telling you this story... doesn't mean I'm alive at the end of it’, the film’s narrator ‘O’ (Blake Lively) begins, in a face-palming American Beauty imitation. O (short for Ophelia, ‘the bipolar bitch in Hamlet’) is a 20-year-old beach bunny living in sunny California with her two lovers, Chon (Taylor Kitsch) and Ben (Aaron Johnson), who both happen to be incredibly wealthy marijuana growers. ‘Chon fucks and Ben makes love’ – is how O differentiates between them; Chon is an ex-soldier (he smuggled the marijuana seeds back from Afghanistan) and Ben is a Buddhist who travels all over the world using his money to help those in need. Life seems pretty great until they get contacted by Lado (Benicio del Toro) and the Mexican cartel, who offer to merge their two business (a ‘joint’ venture, as Ben puts it). After refusing the offer, the duo are informed via Skype by Elena, the head of the cartel, that O has been captured and will be tortured until the offer is accepted, and of course, Ben and Chon decide to fight back.

 

 Savages is Oliver Stone’s latest effort, a story based on Don Winslow’s novel of the same name, and it’s a little uncertain on its feet to say the least. It definitely looks great (I refuse to use the phrase ‘visually stunning’) – very exotic, as though Stone turned up the contrast setting, maximised the colour or shot the whole film using the Instagram app, giving it a very City of God atmosphere. The eye-achingly blue sea and the white Laguna beaches contrasted with the darkness of the cartel ‘dungeons’ don’t, however, cover up just how mediocre the rest of the film is.

 It’s more than likely that Stone was inspired by the success of AMC’s Breaking Bad and decided to shape his own contribution, somehow forgetting to include any form of tension or interesting plot structure. Both stories concern the production of drugs, the DEA are involved (Savages has John Travolta in his first role for several years as police agent Dennis) and are even set in similar locations, with the shadow of the Mexican cartel hanging over them, but sadly that’s where the similarities end, particularly because it doesn’t know what kind of film it’s trying to be.

 At times it seems to play more like a horror – not a slasher necessarily, but definitely an exploitation film, elements of movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hills Have Eyes are unnervingly clear (the film actually begins with a beheading involving a chainsaw), and some of the torture sequences are simply brutal. It almost felt like Oliver Stone was restraining himself from making a full-blown exploitation film that focused more on the Mexican cartel’s side of the story rather than Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch’s problems, which would certainly have made Savages a lot more interesting to watch. Instead we get an awkward and mostly unconvincing balance of the two, and this, coupled with O’s ridiculous narration (‘I have orgasms, Chon has wargasms’…) doesn’t really give the film the thrill it could potentially have had.

 This review probably makes Savages sound worse than it actually it is – it’s not that bad. Aaron Johnson gives a very good performance, similar to his character in Kick Ass: passionate yet reserved, as does Taylor Kitsch – a step up from his role as John Carter – and Benicio del Toro doesn’t do a bad job either. So a very average piece of cinema; not terrible, but certainly not an Oliver Stone classic.

Paranorman and stop motion animation

 Stop motion animation is by far the greatest method of filmmaking. Not only is it the oldest (first used in something like 1897), but it just looks brilliant and requires extraordinary levels of artistic talent. It was marginally popular in the earlier half of the 20^th century, helping to create the likes of The Lost World, King Kong and Jason and the Argonauts, but as time went on it seemed to get better and better. You must remember sitting at home as a tiny child and watching Postman Pat – the way his red van jerked along the country roads and how they used bits of cellophane to animate the streams and rivers? Stop motion had a massive impact on children’s television in general – everyone loves Wallace & Gromit (created by Nick Parks’ Aardman Animation, who would also go on to make Chicken Run, Creature Comforts etc.) – if you looked hard enough you could actually see the thumbprints left by the animators on the clay models. And who could forget Pingu? (Although I never worked out how a penguin could build an igloo). 

 Before some of the more advanced CG effects came along, stop motion was also used in a lot of live-action films like Star Wars (the AT-AT walkers), Terminator and Raimi’s The Evil Dead series (the flying eyeball!). Then of course, Henry Selick and Tim Burton arrive on the scene and create The Nightmare Before Christmas, an incredibly well made film – it was as though Burton’s characters were designed specifically to move in stop motion. Burton then went on to make Corpse Bride and, now, Frankenweenie, using the same sort of character designs. Other directors of note include Wes Anderson, for the underwater scenes in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and the whole of Fantastic Mr Fox. However, the most important film (and greatest ever made, IMO) is Henry Selick’s Coraline, from the newly formed animation studio Laika. It’s a beautiful, magical, loveable piece of work that uses stop motion to the highest level of quality – the amount of work that went in to making it is unbelievable. It took three or four years to make, using the efforts of around 30 animators and over 250 technicians, each with a specific job. Every figure (and there are a lot of them), had its own flexible, metal skeleton, onto which was moulded their clay bodies, and then their clothes were put on (someone was hired to hand stitch every tiny item of clothing). One woman (according to the DVD extras) spent 66 days filming a 10 second dream sequence that in the end was cut from the finished film. How sad.

 Anyway, Laika (without Henry Selick this time) have returned to the big screen this year with Paranorman, their second feature film, and it is, as expected, very good. Basic plot – small, socially awkward, spiky haired Norman has no friends, loves to watch zombie movies and can see the dead. He enjoys talking to his deceased grandmother who haunts the living room. Unfortunately his family don’t believe him and neither do the kids at school, especially Alvin, who teases him and writes ‘see yu tomorow, freak’ on Norman’s locker every day. As if all this wasn’t enough, the town in which he lives has a history of witch-hunting, and now zombies are rising out of the ground. Guess who’s the only person who can stop them.

 I think its main selling point, aside from the consistent brilliance of the animation, is the subject matter. Children don’t usually get to see zombie movies (well they would if I were the parent), so it’s a welcome break from the army of brain-numbing fairytale adaptations they’re made to enjoy. And Paranorman doesn’t hold back on the decapitations or the flesh hanging off the zombies or the severed hand running around the street etc, which I assume is what children really want to see, yes?  However the subject matter must not be confused with the plot, which is sadly lacking in surprises. Maybe it’s due to the fact that Paranorman, unlike Coraline, is not based on a book – it was written by one of the directors, Chris Butler, and so has a lot more ‘creative freedom’, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. I can’t say that Neil Gaiman has the best style of writing, but his storylines are fantastic, so having his book to fall back on when making Coraline was what made the film seem so well scripted and tightly-plotted. Paranorman’s problem is that the plot’s too generic and uninvolving – the last half of the film is just an extended Scooby Doo chase scene…

 

 But if the plot becomes uninteresting, just focus on picking out the hundreds of tiny details that the animators have added in. Because this is a genre film, there are so many references to horror films, and I’m guessing there are three times as many as the ones I managed to find. Evil Dead references are rife (which makes sense – stop motion, remember), Scooby Doo of course, The Sixth Sense, The Addams Family, most Romero movies, Pet Semetary… Not only that, but because of the town’s witch-hunting history, most of the shops each have their own witch name and sign – I like that. Also, the cast have done a great job - Kodi Smit-McPhee especially - you don't realise just how many notable actors are in it until the credits roll. So Paranorman’s not brilliant – it barely touches the pinnacle upon which Coraline sits, but it’s still very, very good, and a perfect film to introduce children to zombies. To be honest, stop motion animation is my weakness, so if I watch any film that uses it, it automatically has a large advantage in its attempt to entertain me. Laika are the future! Apparently they’re trying to get to the stage of one-film-a-year, but they haven’t yet decided what their next film is going to be. I reckon they should stay on the modern fairy tale road they’re on at the moment, maybe adapt a Brothers Grimm story, or even an Angela Carter?

The Possession

There are so many reasons to be excited about The Possession, the first being that Sam Raimi produced it. Sure, there’s no way of knowing just how much creative control he had in the film’s production, but if the director of The Evil Dead was involved in some way (even if he just sat there doodling all day), enjoyment is practically guaranteed. Secondly, the film was cut from an 18 rating to a 15, which isn’t always a good sign, but with horror films, it just means they’re meant to be so terrifying that the press office feels the need to soften the scares a bit. Also (and this is where it gets good), the film set was haunted. ‘Unexplained winds’ and ‘lights exploding’ were a few of the ghostly occurrences that plagued the crew, the director revealed in a recent interview, and when the props were put into storage, a fire destroyed them all; a fire that started ‘from the inside’. Now how cool does that sound? However, once you actually start watching The Possession, you start to realise that the hype might have all been for nothing.

 It’s an exorcism film – they’re being churned out as fast as Step Up sequels at the moment (the last two years alone: Insidious, The Last Exorcism, Exorcismus, The Rite, The Devil Inside etc.) and this one is sadly as average as they come. Just look at how cliché the plot is: two sisters, Emily and Hannah, are shared between their divorced parents. On the way to their father’s new house they stop off at an ancient-looking garage sale and Emily’s heart is set on buying a heavy wooden box inscribed with strange Hebrew symbols, so of course she buys it. Back at dad’s house, she manages to pry the box open and the curse begins to take effect – she starts to talk to herself in the mirror and swarms of moths inhabit her bedroom. And to make matters worse, the father forgets to go to Hannah’s dance recital (I’m pretty sure that happens in every film ever made). In the end the parents are forced to unite in order to save their daughter, and they enlist the help of a Jewish exorcist, who discovers the demon is named Abizo, ‘the killer of children’. It’s so formulaic, you start to wonder why they even bothered.

 Having said that, there are definitely some interesting things about it. I’m guessing everyone has seen the trailer, in which Emily shines a torch into her mouth and sees a couple of fingers emerging from the top of her larynx, the idea being that the demon is physically living inside her, and admittedly this is pulled off relatively well (this is probably Raimi’s contribution – he likes hands surfacing from unnatural places), but that’s as far as it goes in trying to be unique. Also, while The Possession might not be scary, you have to congratulate it for not resorting to the Paranormal Activity technique of slamming doors to make the audience jump in their seats – the film actually tries hard to be terrifying.

 But to be honest, I’m becoming very tired of the recent batch of 15 rated horror films. Yes, film companies want to make as much money as possible and most 18 rated films these days aren’t very successful financially, but that’s no excuse for audiences having to endure this substandard quality in horror films that we’ve all come to accept as normal. The Possession couldn’t hold a candle to any of its predecessors such as The Exorcist, The Omen or The Amityville Horror because of this infuriating constraint of having to appeal solely to a teenage audience. If this constraint were removed (or if it were the 1970s), this would have been a much better film. Try harder.

Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy

There have been many different Batman adaptations over the last fifty years: the hilariously camp Adam West portrayal in the 60s; the darker, more ambitious films of Tim Burton – the first to fully embrace the superhero’s gothic overtones; Joel Schumacher’s cliché-ridden, colourful contributions (not brilliant, but they’re enjoyable if you’re in the right mood…), and now the world has had the privilege to have been given Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, a ruthlessly intelligent set of films that are now accepted as the highest standard of the superhero genre.

 Have you ever heard the theory that each film in The Dark Knight trilogy is inspired by or similar to the film that Nolan made before it? It might not necessarily be true, but it definitely makes sense, and helps to figure out what each film is about. Memento shows a man attempting to piece together his life after he loses his short-term memory - it’s about discovering your identity, working out who you can trust, and you can see the similarities in Batman Begins: Bruce Wayne becomes Batman by creating a new identity for himself, overcoming what he fears in order to fight what he hates. The next film Nolan made was The Prestige (for some reason largely forgotten), a film about magic, stage presence and public image, and The Dark Knight (this might be stretching it a bit) gives us the Joker, ‘watch as I make this pencil disappear’, and Batman chooses to sacrifice himself for the well-being of Gotham, taking the blame for the crimes of Harvey Dent.

 So that just leaves Inception paired with The Dark Knight Rises – this is where the theory starts to crumble. Other than the sheer scale of both films, there isn’t much with which to compare the two. Perhaps it’s that in Inception the characters invent new cityscapes and in The Dark Knight Rises, Gotham is transformed into a different kind of city, one that has to unite in order to defeat the… Yes, it’s hard.

 The third film of the Batman trilogy is, on a separate note, fantastic. Remember the Bane that followed Uma Thurman around in Batman and Robin looking like a tiny Mexican wrestler? Well Tom Hardy’s Bane is larger, cleverer and generally a lot more imposing. He’s the villain who broke Batman’s back in the comic books. His voice, if you haven’t seen the film or any of its trailers, is what Darth Vader would sound like if he were high pitched and ever-so slightly British, ‘I am Gotham’s reckoning’. Where Christopher Nolan has succeeded most in this trilogy is in his casting of the villains: Cilian Murphy’s Scarecrow is calm, collected and charming; Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning Joker holds the whole of The Dark Knight together, and now in Rises, Tom Hardy holds such charisma that you want him to appear in every single scene.

 Bane is actually physically stronger than Bruce Wayne/Batman. This is the film where Batman becomes close to giving up all hope for both himself and the citizens of Gotham – the city is starting to fall apart and a revolution is just around the corner (a comment, maybe, on today’s society?). Relationships go deeper than ever before. Alfred gives Bruce a couple of lengthy, heartfelt lectures – he’s had enough with his master’s reckless actions – and it seems Gotham’s had enough with Commissioner Gordan – he’s a war hero, but it’s peace time. 

 I’ve heard it said that Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy is the most consistently brilliant set of films ever made, better even than the original Star Wars, The Godfather and Toy Story. Or The Lord of the Rings? Surely not – isn’t that blasphemy? The Batman films may not be the best trilogy ever made, but they’re very close to perfect. So much so that it becomes very hard to actually pick a favourite – all three have their successes, but equally have their failings, however small they may seem. Personally I think that if Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman hadn’t been in The Dark Knight Rises, it might have been improved to perfection; her character is unnecessary and just not very well crafted. Other than that though, the film is definitely worth seeing – it’s the best of its genre and I’m guessing that all superhero films from now on will now try (and probably fail) to emulate this kind of film-making. Five stars for sure.

The Amazing Spiderman

 As a concept, Spiderman works. It works not because of his unique super powers or the villains he fights (although these do help), but because he’s a teenager. Unlike any other popular superhero in the Marvel or DC universe, Spiderman is a teenager and this is what makes him so enjoyable to watch; however improbable the idea of mutating into a web-slinging gymnast sounds, the fact that he is a teenager makes him extremely relatable – he fights crime, worries about girls and does his homework all in the same day. For example, Bruce Banner (The Hulk) is a nuclear physicist. Who can properly relate to that? Only a nuclear physicist of course. I’m not saying that just because someone has a different profession to you, you won’t be able to connect on an emotional level – of course you will, but the point is that everyone has been a teenager at some time in their life and that most people have been to high school, so as a character he instantly becomes very easy to like.

 The Amazing Spiderman rewinds the story, starts again; different actors, different director (Marc Webb – appropriate name). The basics are still there, teenager Peter Parker, aspiring photographer, attends Midtown high school in New York City. We’ve got the caring and understanding uncle and aunt, the love interest, even Norman Osbourne (the Green Goblin from the original) is around somewhere. 

 The differences are many. Played by Andrew Garfield, Peter Parker is now attractive as well as being an intelligent outcast and he seems to be much more confident in the face of his peers - bullies and girls alike. The relationship with his uncle and aunt is a lot more drawn out, as is the connection with his dead parents. In their review, Empire stressed how The Amazing Spiderman is ‘a rare comic-book flick that is better at examining relationships than superheroism’, and yes, they’re right this time. Unlike Raimi’s original Spiderman, this film examines closely the consequences of Peter becoming the hero, how it affects the people around him and more importantly, what it does to himself. 

 It’s a very good film – certainly not as derivative as you would expect it to be; there are no upside down kisses, no webs shooting from wrists (he has to invent those himself) and no ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ lines. And it’s funny, too, almost in a Kick Ass sort of way – Andrew Garfield is definitely enjoying himself in this role, and he’s fantastic at it. I wouldn’t say it’s a step up from the roles he’s had in The Social Network or Never Let Me Go, but his consistency is to be approved of.

 Of course there are flaws. The villain is not exactly brilliant; compared to the likes of the Green Goblin, Doc Oc or Venom, The Lizard is substandard. Rhys Ifans plays one armed scientist Dr Curt Connors (who also appears several times in the original trilogy) who injects himself one evening with a gene mutation serum in the hope of growing his arm back, but ends up transforming into a 600lb version of Godzilla that can regrow amputated limbs. Why is he the villain? What’s his motive? He wants to turn the whole of NYC into giant lizards – why? Because he’s angry that he himself is a lizard? It doesn’t make sense – someone please clear this up. Also, isn’t it odd that in both versions of the film, it isn’t explained properly how he obtained his costume? Surely a 17 year old isn’t capable of creating a flexible, breathable superhero costume?

 Overall, however, it’s a very satisfying film. Not up to the standard of Nolan’s Batman films of course, but it beats Avengers Assemble any day. Marc Webb shows he can do a lot more than just music videos and romantic comedies – thank goodness a sequel is already scheduled for 2014.

Cosmopolis

Eric Packer, 28 year old multi billionaire assets manager, decides he wants a hair cut on the other side of Manhattan. But the president is in town, his security guard protests, and there have been rumours of ‘activity’ in the area – it would be easier to go to a barber nearby. No, we must drive to the other side of town, he repeats.

Based on the 2003 novel by Don DeLillo, the narrative structure of Cosmopolis is, fittingly, very post-modern; the majority of the film is shot inside a limousine, Packer’s personal ‘bubble’, and is assembled using different episodes and encounters he has with his various acquaintances. Due to the limitations of the vehicle, the audience is confined to Packer’s mind – we see and hear only that which he chooses.

Robert Pattinson plays a fascinating character. Packer is rich, intelligent, even married, yet he seems completely detached from the real world. His conversations involve him changing the subject whenever he is asked a question (“why are they called airports?”) and very rarely does he smile. If anything, American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman comes to mind; a man so wealthy, but so caged in by society that he relishes any form of chaos, be it street protests or an assassination on live television. One encounter with a college even finishes with Packer speculating what would happen if rats were to become world currency (“how much would a pregnant rat be worth?”).

Under Cronenberg’s expertise, there is no question that Pattinson has matured since Twilight, portraying a character with a complexity never seen before, both alienated and alienating, and undoubtedly the star of the show. Other cast members include Paul Giamatti, who is gripping as the existentialistic lunatic, as is Sarah Gadon as Packer’s under-appreciated wife. Over the years Cronenberg too has changed significantly in the style and content of his films, moving away from his ‘body-horror’ era and settling into a more psychological groove. His previous film A Dangerous Method centres on the motives and thought processes of the characters, and Cosmopolis is no different – here he focuses on the meaning of what is said, rather than what is done. However, while the heart of the film is this strange, distorted realism, there are some brilliantly surreal moments to Cosmopolis that make it completely enthralling, yet oddly curious.

A Wicker Man Sing-a-long

I’d heard of these kinds of events being hosted all over the country and had even read an article on the Guardian website about it; singing along to unnerving pagan soundtrack of Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man didn’t exactly seem fun, but it did sound interesting, so I decided to go. Brought a friend too.

 The event was hosted by a couple of guys from Mayhem Horror in the cinebar of Nottingham’s Broadway cinema, so it was very informal; popcorn in bowls, songsheets were handed out, and being drunk was in no way frowned upon (it was actively encouraged). I had watched The Wicker Man a couple of times before, but until I looked at the songsheets I’d had no idea how many songs were actually in the film. There are a helluva lot, and most contain a lyric or two about lying with the landlord’s daughter in the cornfields.

 One of the opening scenes is a series of shots of Edward Woodward flying to Summerisle in his police plane to the sounds of the quietly sinister, and rather catchy, ‘Corn Rigs’. Singing started up a little tentatively at first, especially when we got to the line in the chorus, ‘I'll not forget that happy night among the rigs with Annie’, but soon, presumably due to the alcohol, we were singing away as if they were nursery rhymes at playgroup. 

 We all had a great time, especially with the naked dance scene (stop thinking what you’re thinking). There’s a window in the wall of the cinebar next to the screen where the audience can see anyone who walks past to go to the toilets and as Willow was singing her siren song on the breast-filled screen, a man appeared at the window and began to dance, taking his shirt off in the process, much to the amusement of everyone watching. 

 The film itself is completely brilliant, and is made even more so with the song lyrics in front of you. Not only do you realise what the songs are actually about (usually sex, yes), but you become part of the unsettling experience and the climax is rendered all the more shocking when you realise that you’re singing along with Christopher Lee to ‘Summer is A-Cumen’ while watching a man being burnt to death.

It’s good, clean, communal fun, so if you ever get the chance I strongly urge you to go to one of these screenings. If you don’t end up enjoying it, look on the bright side – it’s a conversation starter and you’d have a much better time than if you stayed at home warbling along to the Mamma Mia soundtrack or playing Singstar with the family (‘oh God, oh Jesus Christ’).