Letterboxd — Your life in film

This is a very bad film. On every level it fails. It's so bad that goes beyond being boring and becomes confusing, almost disturbing at times. The way in which characters speak, the repetition within the narration, the stilted movements in fight scenes, the peculiar framing of every scene... It's all at odds with what we expect a piece of narrative film to function. The more it attempts to explain whats what and whos who, the less it makes sense,…

A bloody mess that strives for laughs over scares, pouring a trough of guttural porridge over the screen as the characters make jokes about erections. It's a fantastical reimagining of the typical high-school/college movie. With a band of outsiders reluctantly finding themselves becoming heroes, whilst simultaneously receiving waves of abuse from the "popular kids". What Deathgasm does differently is that it in no way takes itself, or any of its characters seriously. So, what could have quickly become tired and…

High concept monster-of-the-week vibes. It feels as if it could have been an episode of The Twilight Zone, or that Mulder and Scully might have turned up to get to the bottom of everything. At least it sounds like that on paper, a beach that makes you go all old all quick. But it turns out to be at times a somewhat elegantly composed expression of ageing, at least in regard to its form anyway. It's an odd feeling, to…

Frustratingly formulaic. The passage from television screen to cinema so often calls upon a tried and tested blueprint; put characters in a foreign environment and watch them wrestle with unfamiliar concepts as they unconsciously work on their own shortcomings. These films make this deliberate move away from the comforts of the original series, towards an idea of what is 'cinematic'. Which in the context of these television series-turned-films, seems to be to do everything much bigger and louder.

The original…

Joker doesn't do anything that hasn't been done before. It's standing upon the shoulders of giants and doing so without any shame or discomfort whatsoever. In fact, rather than disguising its influences it proudly places them front and centre, at times it feels less an exploration of DC Comic mythology than a celebration of the gritty wave of anti-hero films of the 1970s. A celebration so loud and unabashed that it harbours not an ounce of nuance or subtlety.

It's…

A film that looks as if it should be positioned alongside all of the other early 80s slasher films, but really doesn't quite belong alongside them. Rather than going for cheap thrills at every opportunity, it attempts to be carefully paced narrative, choosing a steady build and release of tension. Which, despite rarely being effective, is a welcome change within the slasher sub-genre.

It's not really doing anything that different, in terms of narrative at least, to every other slasher…

A by-the-numbers highly derivative slasher film that continually fails to stand alongside the films that it mimics. There must have been hundreds of slasher films released between 1980 and 1982, the majority of which are utterly indistinguishable from one another, each working from the same sets of rules and borrowed iconography. The only time it might differ is setting, one in a remote lodge, a college, an abandoned lodge or it takes places during Christmas or Halloween. These were films…

A pseudo-sequel to the original film, building upon a few original ideas and themes, and developing several of its own. It seems to have taken the subtext, the political core, of the original film and then deconstructed it and rebuilt it in keeping with contemporary political and societal issues. It's clear that this is the element that rings out the loudest, there is little in the way of scares or suspense, plenty of violence - which is occasionally shocking but…

An odd film that could have gone to some interesting places and explored some intriguing ideas, but it didn't. An unusual little kid with a silly haircut is picked on and ridiculed by pretty much everyone in his town. Unfortunately we don't ever feel sympathy for him, because he is both weird and annoying. This kid finds a hole, or pit if you like, in the woods in which several four foot trolls live, he starts to kick people that…

On paper this film really shouldn't work, a typecast actor in a tired and cliche-ridden spectacle-driven high-concept narrative, and yet somehow it does. It's not all that different to the thousands of other end of the world disaster films, but where it does differ makes all of the difference.

Surprisingly this film isn't driven by spectacle, or even the promise of spectacle, its a far more grounded and humanistic depiction of mass-scale destruction. Typically these films focus on one family,…

A strange mixture of tones, its both sombre and oddly graphic, with a pointed allegorical core that is handled so well it almost feels larger than the films actual plot. Which I suppose is the intention of any film that wants to convey a message or provoke a reaction, to allow for substance and style to merge and compliment each other. There are times in which the film works with bold iconography, pale faced zombies, yet feels as if it…

Like a cross between Falling Down and John Wick. Neatly priming the audience to expect one thing, and then delivering something much larger and much more cathartic. Building up levels of pity and sympathy and then revealing that our hero is already more than equipped to deal with and overcome his problems. For whatever reason audiences seem that much more receptive to weak and unlikely protagonists, perhaps its easier (or quicker) to feel sympathy than it is to admire someone…