Good Manners

Good Manners is misfiled outside the NZIFF's Incredibly Strange section. It is an urban Brazillian horror film among other things, which starts with pregnant Ana interviewing nannies in an upmarket apartment. She hires Clara who moves in to work as a housekeeper prior to to the birth. The impassive Clara contrasts with the flighty, impulsive, Zumba obsessed Ana. Despite the difference in social class and personality the two develop a close bond, which holds them together when odd things start to happen.

When the story of Ana and Clara came to an end and I expected the credits to roll, but there is jump of 8-10 years and a new plot starts. Good Manners is like a double feature, two stories back to back, with Clara as the linking character. This time Clara is in charge, running her own pharmacy and looking after her son.

I didn't know there were home ultrasound kits

There is more humour than horror in Good Manners and some stylish set pieces. It is also one of a surprising number of films at this year's festival which are either lesbian centric or with lesbian content.

Ian's rating 3/5

Thelma

Thelma is starting university in Oslo. She is from a strict, religious, rural family. So this is a culture shock. Though having an epileptic-style fit when a pretty girl sits next to her in the crowded library is an even bigger shock. The doctor who treats her is pretty sure it isn't an epileptic fit, suggesting psychogenic seizures. No-one notices the simultaneous bird strikes on the windows.

The contrast between the clean, modern Scandinavian university, the student world of Facebook and iPhones and the unnatural events make them more startling. These students even find the idea of fellow students who believe in God difficult to process. They expect things to be rational.

Thelma is a quiet, reserved girl, trying to live up to her parents' expectations and her religious upbringing, while also trying to fit in to student life. Underneath that reserved exterior there are alot of emotions wrangling for control: confusion, fear, lust, guilt. The more she tries be unnoticed the more she attracts attention to herself. It's interesting to contrast the timid Thelma with the much brasher and younger Mia in Blue My Mind though both girls are physically similar; pale, slim with long hair, placid expressions and perfect skin.

Thelma evolves from being the victim of her fits to being in control and in the penultimate scene, she strides from her family home in triumph.

There is enough ambiguity in the film to view what happens as either supernatural with Themla's telekinetic powers being successfully repressed during most of her childhood and resurfacing at university or as Thelma's imagination, dreams and unreliable guilt-ridden childhood memories.

Equally the final scene, which on the face of it feels like a cop-out in this otherwise dark, sinister Scandinavian movie, could also be interpreted in a couple of more sinister ways.

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Ian's rating 4/5

Mandy

I'm a lumberjack and I'm Okay. Until the night some drug-crazed biker, hippy, Jesus-freaks showed up at my cabin in the woods and killed my woman.

Given how little dialogue or plot there is in this film, there are some details writer and director Panos Cosmatos thinks it is important that we know such as the character's names and that it is set in 1983. But the only name you need to know is Nicolas Cage, whose revenge rampage is what this film is all about. His transformation from a mild-mannered lumberjack living blissfully with Mandy, a new age artist/shopkeeper, to raging homicidal maniac is what we paid to see.

Mandy is a self indulgent visual orgy of 1970s and 80s imagery with an incessant soundtrack of fog horn and bass guitar. Each scene (and this film rarely moves smoothly from one scene to the next) is lit in an appropriate colour: green woods, yellows and oranges for the interior of the happy couple's cabin, blue as they sleep, red for the sky filled with oversized planets borrowed from the front cover of a science fiction novel. In addition to the occasional CGI, there are some old-fashioned animation clips to "link" things together and remind us of the dead Mandy. This film certainly qualifies for the Incredibly Strange section of the NZIFF. It seems like Panos Cosmatos was trying to create a movie for a cult following and so far he has wowed the critics.

Mandy is not without humour. The chainsaw duel with its nod to India Jones is my favourite set piece in the film.

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Ian's rating 1.5/5

It Comes at Night

Travis and his gun-toting, trigger happy, paranoid parents live in a large boarded up house deep in the forest. He doesn't sleep well due to nightmares about his grandfather dying of the plague that, we assume, has destroyed civilization. His only other company / diversion is his dog. But the family isn't short of anything and no-one has to go to work or school, they are in a cosy catastrophe situation.

The title, It Comes at Night, refers both to Travis's nightmares and the genesis of most of the disruptions to the family's life in self-imposed seclusion. This film is not about the catastrophe that has destroyed civilization, but about Travis's family and its interactions with the world outside the house. Those interactions oscillate between middle-class politeness and murderous violent paranoia, with no nuances in between. The main problem they face is how to decide who to trust when you have very little information and no way of corroborating what people tell you.

While Travis is our way into this film, his father, Paul, is the character who dominates the screen, his family and anyone trying to get close. In fact, the male characters dominate this film in a way that you can almost smell the testosterone wafting towards you from the screen.

While some of the activity in the film seems borderline supernatural (especially to Travis), apart from Travis's nightmares this is a rational horror film, rooted in the horrors of real-world cause and effect. Dealing with the unknown outside their little hideaway provides the thrills in the film.

If one were attempting to philosophize about the film, it would be tempting to draw parallels between the attitudes of this fictional family in the forest and the attitudes of Americans toward each other (and towards the outside world). Where to draw the lines between us and them and how to deal with them.

While the script marginalises its female characters, it is film about around its male characters and their spoken and non-spoken interactions. Joel Edgerton (Paul) dominates when ever he is on-screen.

Ian's rating 3/5

The Untamed

I don't understand why The Untamed isn't Ant Timpson's Incredibly Strange section of the NZIFF, because there is no doubt that this is a very strange Mexican film. Most of the film is a family sexual drama between bi-sexual Angel, his wife Alejandra (and 2 little boys) and Fabián his homosexual brother-in-law. Angel is in denial about his sexuality and acts as a crass homophobe in public. Circling the family and precipitating the crisis is free spirit and outsider, Veronica. Veronica is obsessed by an alien creature that we don't get to see for most of the film and that not directly related to most of the action.

Veronica is treated in hospital by Fabián for a "dog" bite to her abdomen and she later entices him to experience something amazing in the woods (that she refuses to describe). The alien lives in a darkened room in an off the grid house in the woods owned by a middle aged scientist and his wife. (We all know to be wary of the cabin in the woods, don't we?). They don't mind people visiting the alien and are happy to provide refreshments and advice.

It turns out that while visiting the alien is an amazing experience for some people it can be less so for others. The consequences tear Angel and Alejandra's family apart, but Veronica's role in the matter remains secret. Undeterred (or perhaps obsessed) Veronica takes Alejandra to visit the house in the woods too.

While it is not mentioned in the film it seems that the alien has a sexual preference but even if it likes you it can be risky to visit, hence the title.

Despite the labels, there is very little science fiction in the film and even less horror. It is mostly a realistic drama about adult relationships with a slightly horrifying, yet enticing alien hiding in a dark corner of a house in the woods and a fair bit of sex. Pleasure and violence are the main themes of the film, especially how sexual pleasure motivates people's actions.

Ian's rating 3/5

The Evil Within

Do you wonder where the ideas behind some of your dreams come from? Did you ever have a dream or nightmare so weird that it must have come from someone (or something) else's mind?

Apparently, Andrew Getty thought so when he was a child. Written and directed by billionaire Andrew Getty, The Evil Within is the story of a nightmare plagued young man who actions are increasing directed by a demon who manifests itself in his dreams and later in his reflection in a mirror.

Dennis suffers from brain damage and lives with his irrepressibly cheerful older brother John. Most of the story is told from Dennis's point of view and while his dream sequences are weird, they take a back seat to his reflection in a mirror that John gives him. His reflection begins to talk to him, urging him and blackmailing him into increasingly psychopathic behaviour.

This isn't a jump horror movie, nor is it a splatter movie (despite the death toll it is surprisingly bloodless), it is mostly a creepy psychological horror with plenty of special effects. The dim house, dark dream scenes, and darker basement all contrast with John's relentless cheerfulness, the bright sunshine outside and Susan the bikini clad worker at Dennis's favourite ice cream parlour.

The Evil Within throws us into the weirdness from the beginning, using up many of its best ideas in the first few minutes. This means that like a lot of horror films it gets a bit repetitive before the finale. For light relief, there is a sprinkling humour throughout the film especially from the female supporting characters and a brief encounter with a laid back Cosmo Kramer inspired character.

Ian's rating 2.5/5

Tragedy Girls

In any horror film, you need a good premise for all the blood and mayhem. Often American films only seem to require a country location and an old house but Tragedy Girls is a little more imaginative and gives a high school movie (with the requisite corridors lined with lockers, cheerleaders and a prom)  more than a touch of blood and guts. Teenagers are renowned for being self-centred, and more obsessed with social media than the rest of the planet and the central characters of  the movie (McKayla and Sadie) take these characteristics to sociopathic levels. A couple of grisly murders in their small town inspires them to start a blog called Tragedy Girls but soon they feel compelled to create more fodder for their blog - firstly by capturing the murderer and putting him to work, and later committing some murders themselves. Improbably, they don't get caught and neither do they appear to have any twinges of conscience.

As you'll have guessed, this isn't a movie that wants to be taken seriously, and the makers have played with (and added to) some classic movie tropes. There's a particularly imaginative murder in the school workshop, with circular saws and hoist chains that bring James Bond movies to mind. The girl who discovers the body drops her takeaway coffee and the coffee mixes artistically with the blood on the floor. Another murder takes place in the gym where Mykayla manages to kill one of the town s firefighters who's at least twice her size.

At one point, Sadie starts dating the local sheriff's son, and it seems like she might be putting him first and giving up her evil ways, but her relationship with Mykayla wins out and the boyfriend and most of their high school class comes to a grisly end. Watch the film, and find out how.

Anne's rating 3/5 Ian's rating 3/5

The Lure

The band that hunts mermaids together, stays together.

Or perhaps not. The link between pop music, mermaids and Warsaw is not fully explained by Disney, but The Lure fills in those gaps in your knowledge, plus it goes into their eating habits.

The Lure is very much a musical film. It is centred around the two mermaids and the pop band they join. Not only are there musical performances at the night club (of which they are a permanent feature) but also any of the main characters may burst into a song and dance routine in any scene, rather like a 1940's musical or Bollywood film. I don't know if the songs are typical of Polish music but the lyrics invoke some crazy imagery e.g.

Holy moly, bitter tastes can be delicious as hell
Picking at love’s cracked-up shells

The story line is dream like, with scenes that don't make sense, sudden jumps and characters that don't serve any plot purpose. It feels like a bunch of amazing ideas thrown together around the basic concept of two mermaids leaving the Vistula to work in a Warsaw night club. But given that the action is centred around a nightclub it is not unreasonable that things make as much sense as you would expect from that sleep deprived, addled world. It is also a horror film with a bit of gore and some radical surgery in the second half. It is hard to pigeon hole this crazy musical horror. It is better to just let its madness wash over you and go with the tide.

Ian's rating 4/5 Anne's rating 3/5

Housebound

Housebound was one of the festival films I was really looking forward to and it didn't disappoint  - all the elements of a classic horror film, with large dollops of comedy thrown in.

 Housebound's main character, the recalcitrant Kylie, is sentenced to home detention for her part in robbing and destroying an ATM. It's not her current home, it's her childhood home, where her mum and step-dad  live. It's not an ordinary suburban home, it's a big old two-storey wooden house that's a bit isolated.What's more, the house has a history - it used to be a residential home for teenage girls with mental problems, and Kylie's mum thinks it's haunted. For a horror film to be authentically nightmarish, there should be no escape, and the home detention scenario fits the bill perfectly.

Not long into her detention, Kylie comes to realise her Mum could be right about the house being haunted. Light flicker, there are strange noises and sometimes food goes missing. Some of the noises come from the  basement (where would horror movies be without the basement?) where there'a bunch of paraphenalia from the house's previous owner including a statue of Jesus. The next door neighbour is a wierdo. Kylie tries to put two and two together with the help of Amos the security guard who is monitoring her detention.

There are quiet spooky bits ( the toilet scene is one of my favourites) and full on fights with lots of splatter. There's a  variety  of weaponry and I bet you've never seen a cheese grater used in anger before. Housebound  has great acting, good music and a great location  and its just such good fun. Go and enjoy.

Anne's rating 4/5 Ian's rating 4/5

When Animals Dream

Marie is growing up, getting her first job, interacting with boys, getting a mysterious rash on her chest and discovering disturbing things about her non-speaking wheelchair bound mother. The small, dull, featureless Danish fishing village is an appropriate setting for the rising tension between Marie and her workmates. It also matches her pale blonde complexion. Marie's father is caring but inarticulate and it is left to Marie to figure out her mother's secret and her inheritance.

When Animals Dream is not a blood bath horror movie nor a Disneyfied glorification of the supernatural like the Twilight series nor a bloody soap opera like True Blood. When Animals Dream is much more a coming of age film for a lonely girl with an unusual difference. I thought the ending was a bit weak but it might appeal to those given to revenge fantasies.

The special effects and on screen violence is kept to a minimum. The focus of the story is the emerging secret and how Marie is going to cope with it. It is clear that like any predator that can kill people, Marie is in mortal danger herself. Humans don't like to be endangered, except by themselves.

Ian's rating 3.5/5

The Babadook

An alternative title for The Babadook could be " a mother's worst nightmare." So what do mothers worry about, particularly if they're tired and stressed? Do they worry they might have a car accident if they're really tired? Do they worry that they might actually harm someone or something they care about if they're really angry? Do they worry about getting sacked if they have to take time off work to look after their kids? Do they feel inferior in the company of better-dressed other mothers with better-behaved children?  Are they embarrassed when their child pushes his cousin out of the treehouse? Do they worry that the neighbours hear them shouting at their children and judge them? Do they think they'll scream if their child says "Mum-mee!" one more time?

The answer to all those questions is probably yes. And all those scenarios crop up in the Babadook. I was unsurprised to find out that the Babadook  was written, produced and directed by women. It seemed
 like a very woman-centric nightmare scenario. The

story centres around solo mother Amelia and her seven-year-old son Samuel. Amelia's husband died on the trip to hospital for Samuel's birth so we're talking solo parenthood with extra pathos. Samuel has "behavioral issues"  and a vivid imagination. One of the story books in the house features a bogeyman- in- the-wardrobe type creature which Samuel is convinced is real. He builds an assortment of weaponry to deal with it and of course he can't sleep because he's frightened. His behaviour gets worse and he's suspended from school. Amelia gets (more) exhausted and she starts to see the Babadook too. She rear-ends a car. She makes soup with broken glass in it. She strangles the family dog. And so on.

The trouble with The Babadook is that it's tedious rather than terrifying. There are some scary moments, an atmospheric score and there's quite a lot of screaming but mostly you want it to stop because of the tediousness. I think a good horror film should have the kind of frightening thing that you can't do anything about, and you never know when it's coming. It should get under your skin at least a bit. I felt that most of the terror in the Babadook was eminently addressable. Try painting the rooms in your house is a more cheerful colour than dark gray. Get a flatmate or a boarder or live with your mum so you don't have to deal with your child completely alone. Get psychological help sooner rather than later.  Watching the trailer again I can see that part of the nightmare is Amelia seeking help and not getting it, but perhaps waiting seven years wasn't the wisest idea.

I didn't feel the Babadook got under my skin. I didn't go home and feel any urge to look under the bed or check the wardrobe for bogeymen. All I felt was a bit relieved I wasn't a solo mother and a bit cheated in the adrenaline department.

Anne's rating 2/5 Ian's rating 2/5

It Follows

Sex and horror go hand-in-hand in movies. But rarely is sex part of the chain of horror. It Follows addresses this with a sexually transmitted curse. An infected person is followed by something that will kill them if it catches them. If they have sex before it catches them, then their sex partner becomes the target instead. But if the target person is caught and killed then the previous person in the chain becomes the target again. An idea that puts a certain amount of responsibility on the current victim of the curse.

While It Follows is punctuated by well timed jump scares, once we realize that Jay is the heroine then it becomes an exercise in rising tension as we try to figure out how she is going to survive, even with the help of her friends and sisters. While perhaps a little short on laughs, it also avoids some of the typical silly life shortening behaviours that are stock in trade in other horror films. It Follows keeps the gore level down and has a refreshingly different idea on horror to normal run of zombies, vampires, super resourceful crazy serial killers, ghosts or swarms of mutated creatures. Combining fear of sexually transmitted diseases with a thing that behaves like something from a bad dream makes It Follows feel like something you are more likely to experience, albeit from the safety of your own bed.

While almost every other American horror is set among the middle or upper middle class It Follows has a working class setting. Oddly the décor and technology screams 1980s - except for an ebook reader in the shape of scallop shells.

This film was made by the director of The Myth of the American Sleepover, it is a huge improvement over that film!

Ian's rating 4/5 Anne's rating 3.5/5

You're Next

A slasher fest is where a group of people go to an isolated, creepy location and get killed one by one in a variety of gory ways. The audience gets to be shocked by the sudden appearances of the killer (out of the dark, through the window, from behind the victim, when the victim goes through a door, when the victim is sans clothes, etc.) They get to enjoy the gore, and to speculate on who will be the next victim and which characters will survive to the final credits.

When I get the New Zealand International Film Festival program one of the first things I do is flip to the back to checkout Ant Timpson's Incredibly Strange section. This is a mix of horror films and other odd ball films that don't fit in other sections. This year the Incredibly Strange section included Blue Ruin which is a perfectly respectable small thriller that feels like it was miss filed and should have been in the same section as The East. You're Next on the other hand is typical Ant Timpson material.

You're Next is a slasher fest which starts with the first two victims being killed during the opening credits and before the main group begins to arrive for a family re-union at the big old house down the road.

The general air of doom seems misplaced as the family get down to sniping and bitching. But we know the calm won't last, and the next death is a relief from unpleasantness of the passive-aggressive brotherly feuding. At 10 people the group is unusually large for a slasher film, and you wonder if they will run out of imaginative ways to kill them off. But we are in safe hands and the typical suicidal strategies take over.

There are plenty of shocks both sudden and bloody, interspersed with plenty of laughs and at least four good plot twists. Be warned that there is no shortage of gore as a wide variety of household objects are put to use beyond their manufacturer's specifications.

Trailer

Ian's rating 4/5

Sightseers

Anyone who has watched an episode of Top Gear will know about the evils of caravans, and of course Mr Bean is an object lesson in the dangers of the socially awkward. Dial down the social awkwardness to slightly lower than Ricky Gervais in The Office and you have Tina and Chris. Chris owns the caravan and is keen to get some alone time with his new girlfriend and see the sights of Yorkshire. Tina is excited to have a boyfriend and grasp at the chance to escape from her suffocating mother. Chris is not only interested in trams and innovative caravans, he has a low tolerance for loutish behaviour and snobbery. Tina becomes suspicious of the coincidental deaths that follow them and keen to impress her boyfriend joins in the killing spree. Such one-upmanship is not healthy for the bystanders and eventually takes its toll on the happy couple to a sound track dominated by Tainted Love.

Sightseers follows a simple recipe of humour and shock. Unfortunately there is only enough good material for a 50-60 minutes film (or TV drama). So by the end of 95 minutes the shocks were wearing a bit thin and the gaps between jokes were getting tedious. That said Chris voiced everyone's darkest desire when he whined "I just want to be feared and respected. Is that too much to ask?".

Ian's rating 2/5 Anne's rating 2/5

Sightseers was preceded by a short film called Bear about a woman who wakes up on her birthday and thinks her boyfriend has forgotten it and she heads out on her mountain bike. Meanwhile her boyfriend has planned a surprise picnic, which doesn't go as planned. The ending would seem more realistic if the film was set in a country with bears rather than Australia!

The Cabin in the Woods

Do you think horror films are overly formulaic? Perhaps something like:

(es+u+cs+t)²+s+(tl+f)/2 +(a+dr+fs)/n + sin x - 1?

Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard seem to think so. In The Cabin in the Woods they follow the basic rules of US horror films - five college students (the hunk, the sexy blonde, the cute quieter brunette, the scholar and the pothead - looking suspiciously like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo) spend a weekend in cabin in the woods against the advice of a cranky old local man. Naturally they wake up something evil that shortens their life expectancy. There is no surprise in the order of their demise.

Fran Kranz as Marty

"It was the pioneer days; people had
to make their own interrogation rooms.
Out of cornmeal."

But luckily there is another side to The Cabin in the Woods, an exploration of why horror film plots have so many common elements. It pulls aside the curtain and shows us the strings and levers that maneuvour pretty young things into silly life shortening behaviours. This takes the film into an X-files / H. P. Lovecraft direction that works best if you don't read the plot spoilers on Wikipedia etc.

The inspiration for Marty?

While The Cabin in the Woods is not the first horror film to deconstruct the genre (see Scream or Tucker and Dale vs Evil), this is the one that will appeal to Joss Whedon fans. It has his trademark high production values, spunky petite actresses and most importantly quotable lines and references to other films. Plenty for the fanatics to look for and tweet about over multiple watchings.

Anna Hutchison works her butt off in her short lived role that steals the limelight until her demise. Once she has gone Kristen Connolly (as Dana) is intended to carry the cabin story for the rest of the film but she doesn't quite match up to other feisty heroines in the genre. Fran Kranz as Marty supports her with some of the best lines in the film, which is lucky as the other two guys are almost interchangeable, but he is hampered by his light entertainment role.

The final act starts when Dana and Marty take the elevator down to Peter Jackson territory and CGI threatens to take over from dialogue and acting. This is a bit of a pity because snappy dialogue is a feature of this film. But if you like lots of monsters and gore then this will be your favourite part.

The other stand-out actor is Richard Jenkins as an unflapable, super capable, middle manager in the parallel story. Richard's face is far more familiar than his name in countless supporting roles as someone's sad-eyed dad or co-worker (Six Feet Under, Burn after Reading). Lurking in the background is Amy Acker looking perky but lacking opportunities to shine.

Anne complained that The Cabin in the Woods wasn't funny enough. I thought that the pacing was wrong. Too much plot given away too soon, and not enough character development for us to care about who if anyone survived. The climatic scene went on too long. A hand reaching out of mirror to strangle someone is shocking but the end of the world -- not so much. But I'm sure Joss Whedon fans will be too busy trying to pick up on all the references and memorise the best lines to notice the defects.

Ian 3.5/5 Anne 2.5/5

The Last Circus

Like hand puppets, clowns get a bad rep in films (e.g. Pennywise in It, the clown doll in Poltergeist, Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight) and The Last Circus is no exception.

The Last Circus starts during the Spanish Civil War with the Republicans/Loyalists bursting into a theatre during a performance for children to recruit men to defend Madrid from the Nationalists/Facists. Javier's father, a clown, joins the fight armed with a machete and is taken prisoner. After the war he and other PoWs are forced to work on the Valle de los Caídos (a memorial to the Civil War).

The story jumps forward to 1973 Javier is now a clown and joins a small circus. Naturally he falls for the beautiful Natalia, the acrobat and girlfriend of Sergio the head clown, a vicious tyrant, that everyone including the circus owner, is scared of. Natalia unexpectedly returns the affections of chubby, wimpy Javier, enjoying the risks of two-timing Sergio. This precipitates the wroth of Sergio on both of them. Finally the worm turns precipitating open warfare between the two clowns in which Franco himself becomes colateral damage. The final denouement takes place 150 metres up on the cross above the basilica in Valle de los Caídos.

If we were Spanish we might understand that Sergio and Javier represent Facist authoritarianism and democracy/humanitarianism respectively and Natalia is symbolic for Spain itself (the prize to be fought over and attracted to both).

Overall I'd class The Last Circus as somewhat surreal, very violent and overly dramatic rather than funny or horrific or a thriller.

Ian's rating 1.5/5

The Innkeepers

The Innkeepers is almost worth watching for the super cute elfin Claire (Sara Paxton) who spends most of the movie creeping and running around an old hotel scaring herself to near hysteria by doing all the things that have the audience whispering "don't do that".

Claire and the cooler, geekier Luke are the sole staff on duty on the last weekend the hotel is open. They are so obsessed with ghost hunting that between them they manage to get off side with all the guests. Which also has the audience thinking: "don't do that".

This is an exceedingly slow burning slacker horror movie that waits until its final minutes to deliver its punch.

Ian's rating 2/5

Triangle

Triangle starts off in suburban Florida with a solo mum (Jess) frustrated with her autistic son and trying while trying to make a sailing trip with a her boyfriend and four other people. The trip starts smoothly, though Jess seems inexplicably dazed and distracted. But the spooky stuff starts soon enough and Jess (Melissa George) is at the middle of it.

This is more of a mystery horror movie than a splatter one. The basic mystery is signaled in the title, but like an onion there are layers of mystery here and at the bottom it becomes a psychological thriller as the protagonists try to escape the trap they are caught in.

Triangle is carefully constructed, and it pays to keep your attention on the details, as the you try to decipher it faster than Jess. In fact at the end I felt like watching it again, to double check the revelations against the earlier events to see if it all makes sense or if I'd been taken for a ride by some cinematic slight of hand.

Ian's rating 4/5

Splice

Made by the director of Cube but using a much bigger budget, Splice is sci-fi horror movie set in the near future when genetic engineering and in vitro gestation are a bit further advanced on current state of the art. Elsa Kast and Clive Nicoli are bio-engineers working at the Nucleic Exchange Research and Development lab (part of the research division of pharmaceutical company Newstead Pharma). N.E.R.D. focuses on gene splicing and protein production. Proteins that will have pharmacological uses. Their initial success is a slug like creature made from the DNA of 6 or 8 different species. Not satisfied with that they want to move onto using human DNA to create a creature that will produce proteins to be used in even more useful drugs.

Unfortunately their law suit averse and bottom line focused management want profits from the existing creature, rather than spend their money on a new creature. You should be able to see where this is going. Unlike Cube this is not a cerebral sci-fi thriller, rather an update on ideas from Frankenstein and The Fly. Aimed at sci-fi and horror fans, there is even a lab scene stolen straight from Alien. It is all quite stylishly done, even if the plot becomes extremely predictable and clichéd in the final few scenes, it still had alternating shock and humour that got the loudest audience reaction at this year's film festival.

The lead characters keep our sympathy in a way that most mad scientist characters don't, and the creature itself gradually acquires a personality. The only downside was the lack of inventiveness in the plot.

Ian's rating 4/5

Wound

The film festival program says that:

Wound is the angry by-product of being bored by the utterly predictable banality of our mainstream movies

The warning bells should have rung louder. This is code for "Wound is a surreal movie". Unfortunately I have a checkered history with surreal movies. I either enjoy them or am confused, frustrated and bored by them - nothing in between.

It is obvious that Kate O’Rourke (who plays Sue) acted her heart out in this movie. She is in almost every scene and displaying a range of extreme emotions in most of them. It feels exhausting just to watch her. The same way it was exhausting to watch the heroine of Run, Lola, Run running for 90 minutes. Kate certainly deserves recognition for her acting in Wound. Te Kaea Beri, who plays Tanya the sulky, silently raging teenager does good job too. I thought that the dolls were the next best characters after Sue and Tanya.

There is plenty of violence and even more symbolism which suits a film about a sexually abused and hence mentally ill woman with revenge fantasies. In my view many of the scenes could have been jumbled up and played in a different order or left out all together without distracting from the story or experience. If a film maker leaves too much up to the viewer they are no longer telling a story, but proving some images which the viewer can interpret any way they like or more likely give up trying to interpret. I suspect that I should make greater efforts to avoid surreal films, as more often than not I don't enjoy them.

Mental illness is probably good subject for a surreal movie and if you like disturbing images and things that don't make sense then by all means go and see Wound, it is well acted and full of symbolism and other craziness.

Ian's rating 1.5/5