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Showing posts from August, 2022

Superdeep (2020)

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 A frustrating missed opportunity to do something awesome. There are some tropes that never get old, in my humble opinion.  One of the oldest, most over-used yet evergreen is the one about the squad of tough-as-nails  (or, less often smart-as-fuck scientists) who have to investigate a Terribly Mysterious Happening and discover Things Man Was Not Meant To Know that eats their faces before the Plucky Final Guy / Girl blows it up or flushes it into space or whatever.  Love it.  Any film like that is almost guaranteed a sympathetic viewing - and (weirdly) the closer they stick to the template the better they mostly are.  Mostly. Milena Radulović spends almost the entire film looking various sorts of bad ass. Which is what makes Superdeep disappointing.  In theory, it should be among the greatest of such films - it is essentially The Thing and Aliens and a bunch of lesser genre examples ( Leviathan , Ghost Ship , Event Horizon ) stuck into a blender and the resultant icky goo poured down

Castle Freak (1995)

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What, exactly, were Stuart Gordon's claim to be cinema's pre-eminent adaptor of HP Lovecraft? The hideous monster that lurks in the darkness, tormenting the innocent with his depravity.  Image Bauer Hosting His credentials: Reanimator , a witless take on one of Lovecraft's most morbidly (literally) funny stories; Dagon , a blundering rendition of The Shadow over Innsmouth, and a few odds and ends like Castle Freak which owes a few vague ideas to The Outsider;  From Beyond (a lurid 'reimagining' of a  minor story) and a brief, camp rendering of The Dreams In The Witch House - where he added the sex scenes Lovecraft carelessly forgot to include in his original mind bending yarn. This is the only Lovecrafty bit in the film, where monstrous Gorgio comes face to face with ... himself Thing is, none of these films are actually any good, on any level.  Nor are they worthy failures, like the recent The Colour Out of Space .  Stuart Gordon's 'Lovecraft' films a

Moloch (2022)

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An effective but uneven folk horror from the Netherlands, a place not generally associated with unspeakable ancient evil steeped into the soil ... but is the real monster the atrocious dubbing? Sorry to bother you.  We're here to talk about the terrible ancient curse afflicting your bloodline.  Can we com in? Moloch is a mixed bag.  First of all, the dubbing is terrible.  Characters speak without moving their lips and then their lips flap for several seconds after the finish their lines - which are rendered in unemphatic fashion by voice actors who sound bored rather than terrified or annoyed or aroused.  Why, couldn't they have stuck subtitles on?  The set of people who are willing to soldier on in spite of the dire dubbing is identical to the set of people who will read subtitles.  Why degrade their experience by this travesty? But that said ... Beneath this superficial issue is a good film, made in a very small way and with a tight, claustrophobic atmosphere, set in a stark