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Film Box
Directed by YouTube stars the Philippou brothers, Talk to Me is a surprisingly clever twist on The Monkey’s Paw, the 1902 ghost story by WW Jacobs in which the titular mummified paw grants wishes with terrible consequences. This time the paw is an embalmed human hand covered in names like a plaster cast, and the subject of a social media challenge: allow yourself to be tied to a chair, grip the hand, say “talk to me”, and become possessed by a ghost. You then have 90 seconds to essentially trip out before you must either release the hand or risk unleashing the spirit. And you thought ingesting raw cinnamon was bad.
Sophie Wilde plays Mia, an Australian teenager whose mother has died in what may or may not have been a suicide attempt. She and her friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) with the latter’s little brother Riley (Joe Bird) rock up at a party where the hand is in use. (So to speak…) Mia volunteers to do the challenge, and that’s her first mistake.
You know what? For a supernatural teeny-bop slasher, let alone a YouTuber movie, this isn’t bad at all. Compared to a similar entry in the genre, Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare (2018), also about a group of youths who summon malign forces via a social media game, it creates an authentic setting in its Aussie suburb, “Chekhov’s Gun” theming, real tension, and somewhat believable characters. (I’ll get back to that last one.)
A part of that might be down to the fact that Truth or Dare was made by forty-somethings, whereas the Philippou brothers are much more au fait with the world of young people and social media. That doesn’t make their characters likeable, but it does make them a little more real-seeming. (Possibly related side-note: I’ve never liked kids, even when I was one.)
As for comparing it to other YouTuber movies… To say that this is better than, say, the Paul brothers’ Airplane Mode (2019) – wherein a man breastfeeds an infant – or (ugh) Shane Dawson’s Not Cool (2014) – which thought that a schizoid woman’s mental torture was hilarious (don’t ask) – is like saying that your mother looks better than a week-old bin bag stuffed to bursting with used nappies and left outside for a week in July. We’re not dealing with a noble genre. Talk to Me shows that YouTubers can make good films, however.
The plotting is as ropey and creaky as all get out at times, the biggest problem being its prologue. The prologue’s there to give us an immediate hook, something scary happening before the credits roll. In and of itself it’s fine. I liked the touch that kids at a party would keep filming with their phones as one of their peers had a psychotic breakdown. But it hobbles the plot later on because you have to ask yourself why the two characters in possession of the hand would keep messing around with it after.
We’re already on shaky ground anyway, as it’s obvious to both us and the characters that something supernatural and dangerous is happening, yet they keep doing it. Their age makes up for some of this, they’re kids whose brains and sense of permanence haven’t fully formed, but as characters, they do mark it hard to believe in them sometimes, let alone sympathise when what happens is wholly their fault. Locking hands with the monkey’s paw once is understandable, but once you know what it does, why would you do it again?
To be fair, I did like a scene where the characters are messing about with the hand, each taking turns with it as if it’s a bong that they’re passing between themselves. The film has grit and authenticity about its world that works hugely in its favour. I found some members of the cast annoying, but not because their parts were badly written or their acting wasn’t good. They’re convincingly young, dumb, and temperamental. Wilde is great as Mia, and Bird feels genuinely vulnerable as Riley, so that when he’s attacked by the spirits it’s more shocking than if neither the Philippou brothers nor Bird had given him personality.
I think what makes Talk to Me a much better take on its tropes – social media, smartphones, games, and ghosts – than Truth or Dare is its smaller scale. It’s a more intimate film. Slower-paced, but all the greater for it, and with a perfectly tied bow of an ending that would distinguish a classic ghost story.
Co-written by Seth Rogan, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a surprisingly fun and effective cartoon feature, drawn in the kinetic, impressionistic style of the SpiderVerse movies and scored with a thumping mix of modern and classic pop standards. It seems that with this combination studios have re-energised comic-book films to a super-heroic degree, breaking (or at least thrashing against) the chains of the Marvel and DC templates. Structural issues remain, mostly the enervating final fight sequences that resemble the last bosses in a video game and have to be absurdly large scale, but overall these films represent a bold new future (as well as defibrillator paddles) for their particular genre.
The Turtles have had a mixed career, at least in terms of quality. Financially, they’re a pizza-breathed leviathan comparable to Kiss in how much product they’ve been slapped on. (Are there Turtle coffins, like with Kiss? I hope so.) The first few live-action films were box office successes, and the first of those at least is a pretty good movie for what it is. The second inspired an infamous moment in British censorship when a scene of a Turtle using a string of sausages as nunchucks was removed for its depiction of “combat weapons”.
Censorship has dogged the characters, which were originally intended as a parody of comic book heroes before they were adopted as children’s icons. The central concept is intrinsically dark, weird, and violent, and one of the best things about Mutant Mayhem is that it leans into this aspect while still delivering a fun time for children. Moreover, the Turtle boys are surprisingly well-delineated for characters normally distinguished just by their different-coloured domino masks; they’re loveable goofball crime fighters.
After an exciting prologue introduces us to the inciting incident that creates the Turtles, courtesy of evil scientist Cynthia Utrom (Maya Rudolph), we see our Renaissance-named heroes Donatello (Micah Abbey), Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), and Raphael (Brady Noon) stalk the NY streets at night to retrieve groceries for themselves and their adopted master, the rat Splinter (Jackie Chan). Splinter wants his boys to stay in the sewer, away from prejudiced and violent humans. But then they meet April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri), an aspiring journalist still in high school, who helps them rumble a mutant baddie called Superfly (Ice Cube), hellbent on deadly revenge against humans.
It’s a problem that voice actors have been replaced in large part by celebrities for cinema, but the cast here does a good job. Ice Cube is particularly effective as Superfly, a genuinely menacing and even sympathetic villain, driven by rage at a bigoted world. One especially strong moment sees him recall when he first took a life, and it’s oddly compelling for a kid’s film, as well as clever in how it substitutes blood for ketchup in-universe, allowing for the point to be made while remaining child-friendly.
The film is rated PG, as it should be. This is a gargantuan improvement over the three CGI Turtles films that previously came out in the 21st century. It bothers to have a story and a style, doesn’t just skate by on nihilistic action with little form or purpose. Mutant Mayhem never stops moving, perfectly synthesising the visuals and music to create an energetic action comedy with a heartfelt message about accepting those who look different. It’s warm, it’s smart, it’s a breath of fresh ooze.
Based on a theme park ride, Disney’s Haunted Mansion is one of their few live-action films in a while to not be a bastardisation of one of their animated classics. It also has a lively sense of humour and real energy to its storytelling, harkening back to the first Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), also based on one of their attractions. As was Jungle Cruise (2021), meaning I think that there have now been enough such films to constitute a sub-genre.
Of that genre, if the first Pirates film is the best, Haunted Mansion comes second and Cruise third. 2003’s The Haunted Mansion, meanwhile, might rank a distant fourth given that it’s one of the many family-oriented films that Eddie Murphy made once his heyday was long past, ranging from the historically disastrous (2002’s The Adventures of Pluto Nash) to the mediocre (2003’s Daddy Day Care). I don’t think it’s too outlandish to guess that this new adaptation of the ride is better than the one that came out 20 years ago.
The plot is that a New Orleans-based astrophysicist, Ben Matthias (LaKeith Stanfield), is grieving the loss of his partner when Father Kent (Owen Wilson) requests his expertise in spectral photography at a mansion inhabited by Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her son Travis (Chase W. Dillon). On crossing the threshold, however, he finds himself tied to the house by mischievous ghosts and determines to break the spell with the help of his new friends, also including a professor (Danny DeVito) and a medium (Tiffany Haddish).
Surprisingly to me, this film has gotten middling to bad reviews, the consensus (as per Rotten Tomatoes) being that it’s neither funny nor scary enough. As for “scary”, it’s a family film, you’re not going to get a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel. You’re not going to see blood pouring out of sconces and the cute child protagonist dragged to Hell. I don’t know why any grown-up critic would expect scares from a Disney flick. That’s like going to a romance film expecting to see action violence, or a DC film expecting to be entertained. And if the film was genuinely scary the same critics would be calling it inappropriate for children.
With regards to “funny”, it’s not exactly a knee-slapper but I found it jolly enough. It’s really a Halloween-themed adventure film a la Hocus Pocus (1993) or Caspar (1995), both of which also received middling to poor reviews before becoming cult favourites. I have a suspicion that Haunted Mansion will do well on VOD and streaming come Halloween, what with parents looking for films to watch with their kids or just keep them occupied for a couple of hours, which may be why Disney elected to release this 12A film before the spooky season. Parents might be hesitant about taking their little ones to a film recommended for ages 12 and above, but who really looks at classifications all that hard when picking something out from the kids’ section of a streaming service?
The special effects I thought were conceptually fun, using a lot of distorted perspectives to shrink and enlarge various parts of the mansion, including a reference to MC Escher. The plot takes hints from Shirley Jackson’s classic 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House, in its depiction of a group of people trapped at a haunted mansion overseen by a villainous patriarchal spirit. The effects have been criticised too but I found them effective and colourful, if a little dimly lit here and there.
The film is old-fashioned in ways both good and bad. Its boilerplate structure as to both its main and child characters is a little overfamiliar. Matthias was an astrophysicist at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) but now he’s leading ghost tours around New Orleans because he lost his partner for the most generic reason possible for one of these films, while Travis is a nerdy kid who can’t understand why kids don’t find his classroom diligence and bow ties cool.
However, these generic elements are outweighed for me by the charmingly old-fashioned adventure stuff, which includes messages drawn on bathroom mirrors and read via steam from the taps, ghostly sea captains, and Scooby-Doo corridor chases. The celebrity supporting roles are also fun. Jamie Lee Curtis shows up as a head in a crystal ball and Jared Leto gives his first acceptable performance for years as the evil spectral patriarch. (Although I suspect that his voice was digitally tinkered with. He’s unrecognisable anyway, so it would have been worth just hiring a great voice actor.)
All in all, this is a fun gothic adventure film with some colourful special effects, good performances, and a nice spooky vibe. Good summer (and Halloween) entertainment.
Saw this movie for its 50th anniversary at my local cinema. I’d never seen it before, but it’s one of those movies whose tropes you’re aware of via osmosis. Having finally seen it, I was pleased to have found it a riotously entertaining piece of work, one of the more involving and fun movies that I’ve seen this year.
The last film that Bruce Lee made before he died the same year aged just 32, the story sees him as a martial arts master called Lee, hired by the British government to investigate a mysterious island on which a fighting tournament is held once every three years. Fellow contestants include gambling addict Roper (John Saxon, a mainstay of the horror and western genres, appearing in character roles for Wes Craven in a couple of the Nightmare on Elm Streets) and Williams (Jim Kelly, star of both martial arts and blaxploitation films).
The basic plot of Enter the Dragon is a hodgepodge of tropes recognisable from the James Bond series. Some elements are straight steals, like the central antagonist Han (Shih Kien), an island-bound maniac with a detachable hand, a character modelled on Dr No from the film of the same name (1962). Yet Enter the Dragon never feels derivative so much as a meditation on similar themes and images in pop culture, an illustration of pulp storytelling at its finest.
The martial arts genre is a bit like horror in that for every masterpiece there are about a million VHS cassettes stuffing landfills. The sort of dross that ends up being ridiculed on YouTube channel Red Letter Media’s “Best of the Worst” show. Until Quentin Tarantino’s superlative revitalisation of the genre with his Kill Bill (2003/04) films, it had become kind of a joke in the West, with every flabby dojo owner in Los Angeles fancying himself the next Bruce Lee. (There’s an amusing but possibly apocryphal story about how Steven Segal became a movie star: a producer bet his colleague that he couldn’t make the least charismatic man he knew a success, and so picked out the owner of his local dojo.)
It’s therefore so refreshing to see how Enter the Dragon bothers to construct a real story with characterful set pieces and solid plotting. We get to know each of the three main protagonists, which means that when one of them proves fallible it has a real emotional impact. Besides all the well-choreographed fight sequences that one expects, we get wonderful little scenelets like a praying mantis fight on a boat, a match on which the sailors take bets as the camera gives close-ups of the sparring insects.
Also present are interesting social asides. Before setting sail for the tournament, Williams surveys the wharf with its families packed into cramped and filthy boats and remarks that ghettoes are the same everywhere. Just as it also borrows bits and bobs from the revenge genre, Dragon uses Williams to toss in some blaxploitation too. His first scene sees him slapped with the ‘70s slur “jig” by two police officers, whom he proceeds to be more than a match for. Given how agenda-driven pundits like to complain that modern films are too “woke” in their disrespect for institutions, it’s interesting to see this pre-PC classic show contempt for authoritarian overreach. Saxon and Kelly are fun genre actors and bring love-ability to roles that could have been played meaner.
Lee, meanwhile, is a beautiful man and a charming performer; he evinces cool masculinity without ever seeming detached or brutish, rare for even the best action studs. An element surprising in its absence is the lack of a love interest for him, which makes me wonder if he insisted on that for either personal or cultural reasons. A character who in a Bond or other such action film would normally fill that role appears, the female operative Mei-ling (Betty Chung), but she’s hardly utilised, making Lee seem almost asexual.
Maybe the idea was to show how in control his character is; while Roper and Williams indulge the needs of the flesh with a Chinese harem led by white madam Tania (Ahna Capri), Lee seems above such urges. Incidentally, Capri is a lovely actress, able to do more with one eyebrow and half a smirk than many can do with Shakespeare.
The fight sequences once they arrive are absurdly satisfying. Without showing much in the way of blood and gore they vibrate with dramatic intensity while displaying stage management at its highest level. The choreography is an art unto itself. These scenes run the gamut of emotions from humour to horror and excitement and suspense, capped by a glorious “boss fight” in a hall of mirrors. An all-around brilliant genre piece.
I just saw Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu and it was stupid crap. I was going to be kind and call it a mixed bag, but by the end of the film I had no impulse to be kind. It’s intriguing in its premise in that it’s based not so much on Bram Stoker’s original novel as the 1922 silent film Nosferatu, which was only called that because the makers couldn’t get the rights to Dracula from Stoker’s widow, so instead they changed the names and moved the setting from England to Germany. In this version, then, the hardy young lawyer Jonathan Harker becomes Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult), his wife Mina is now Ellen (an abominable Lily-Rose Depp), while their friends Lord Holmwood and his doomed fiancée Lucy Westenra are Mr and Mrs Harding, played respectively by Aaron Taylor-Johnson (bad but probably doing his best with what he was given) and Emma Corrin (great, considering). Dracula is Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) and Van Helsing’s name has been changed to Von Franz (Willem Defoe, the best thing in the film).
I’ll start my autopsy with a positive: a lot of the basic shots were good. I started out liking the movie for its historical detail, with gloomy Dickensian streets, evocative period finery, fashions (Mrs Hardings’ hair and that of her daughters is in those absurd side curls that look like spaniels’ ears), and evenings by firelight. It’s clearly inspired by the silent movie aesthetic.
Unfortunately, as soon as Hutter leaves the peasant lodgings and reaches the perimeter forest of Castle Orlok on his journey to handle the Count’s legal affairs, the film goes off a cliff. Where to begin? I guess the biggest problem is that Nosferatu has no personality. This is easily the worst interpretation of the Dracula character I’ve seen, simply because it’s barely an interpretation. Skarsgård is fine, giving one of the film’s better performances, although it might be hard to judge fairly given that his every utterance is drowned by apocalyptic gravelling on the soundtrack.
The point of Dracula is that he’s subtle, a good host, one who seems at least within the ken of acceptable “foreign” behaviour when Harker meets him. All of the intimacy and slow seduction are gone from this version. In a completely inexplicable decision, Eggers elects to condense the whole meat of Stoker’s first act – the bit of the story that everyone remembers – down to almost nothing. No Dracula crawling down the wall, no Wyrd Sisters, no “music of the night” or kidnapped gypsy child… nothing. Hutter has barely arrived before he’s making his escape. Orlok is barely above the level of an animal and seems subnormally intelligent for most of the piece. (The end of the film makes him seem, frankly, stupid, but I can’t get into that without spoilers.)
Hoult is fine as Hutter, he doesn’t embarrass himself, as hard as the script tries to make him. Lily Rose-Depp, however… she’s not quite as bad as, say, Keanu Reeves trying to do an English accent in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), but she can’t pull off whatever she’s trying to here. Her line delivery is frequently cringe-inducing, not a line of it resonating. It’s pure “amateur dramatics society goes Victorian” and highlights her status as a nepo baby, since on acting alone she would have been relegated to Corrin’s role. Corrin is by far the better actor and could have done something with Ellen even if they couldn’t have saved the character.
Part of the charm of the original text is that the protagonists seem to genuinely like each other. They’re normal Victorians besieged by unspeakable horror but who rise to the challenges posed. In this version, they’re at such obnoxious variance with one another that in a scene that pretty much kills what care you could have had for them, Harding casts both Hutters – Thomas Hutter having been his best friend, mind – out into the cold and plague-ridden, rat-filled streets while Thomas is so unwell he’s barely ambulatory.
The most entertaining part of Nosferatu 2024 is Defoe as Von Franz. The film lights up and becomes an entertaining occult story whenever he’s on screen and allowed to dominate the scene. Defoe has the language and mannerisms down, feeling authentic where others falter.
The Dracula story has always been partly metaphorical for sexual desire and violence, with the Count representing unchecked hedonism and predation. Here Orlok is too mindless to carry such weight symbolically, but elsewhere Eggers is so absurdly unsubtle that by the seventh or eighth time Rose-Depp was thrashing about with eyes rolled up into her head, screaming how Orlok would come inside her, I wanted to walk out before I cringed myself into a stroke.
The film felt three hours long, was punctuated with cheap jump scares, and seemed like it was written by a callow, edgy teenager who hasn’t yet come to terms with his thoughts on the opposite sex. How it was written and directed by the man behind The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019), two of my favourite folk horror films, is beyond me.
Rating: 1.5/4
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