Notes on Countdown

Countdown was the film of the week for a special PG-13 horror Hallowe’en edition of Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle.

It’s almost hard to believe that Countdown wasn’t produced by Jason Blum. There is a certain Happy Death Day quality to proceedings, although this is far darker in tone; pushing the PG-13 rating to the limit with its demon CGI FX. The cold open certainly puts one in mind of Scream, sketching in the plot and tone of the film with great economy. The dread it generates is replicated numerous times before it starts to lose its effectiveness. Meanwhile Elizabeth Lail continues the odd flashback vibe as she seems to be channelling Kellie Martin’s ER role.

Listen here:

 

Notes on Happy Death Day 2U

Sequel Happy Death Day 2U was the film of the week on Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle much earlier today.

Having finally caught up with Happy Death Day recently I was greatly looking forward to its hasty sequel. What could be better than Scream meets Groundhog Day: Part II in which Jessica Rothe’s Tree having attained the mastery of her time loop and become a better person gets to help someone else thru the same nightmare with hard-bitten savoir faire? Funny you should ask… My suspicions were flagged when I saw on the poster on the way in ‘based on characters by’. The problem with hasty sequels is that while you can re-assemble your cast, sets, VFX team, stuntmen, cinematographer, and composer quite readily, you will then usually find yourself doing your best Chico Marx – “Whaddya know? We forgotta da script!”. In this case, whaddya know, we forgotta da scriptwriter, as Christopher Landon decides he can both direct and write at the same time. Like Gerald Ford, walking, and chewing gum, he is badly mistaken. By the end of Happy Death Day 2U you have only the memory of a slasher flick, buried under slapstick.

Listen here:

Hopes: 2019

Glass

They called him Mister…

Glass, an unlikely sequel

to Unbreakable

 

Cold Pursuit

U.S. remake, but…

with same director, Neeson

in for Skarsgard. Hmm.

 

Happy Death Day 2U

Groundhog Day: Part II.

I know what you Screamed before.

Meta-mad sequel.

 

Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Cate Blanchett missing,

Daughter on her trail, thru time,

Very Linklater…

Pet Sematary

Stephen King remake.

Yes, sometimes dead is better,

but maybe not here.

 

Shazam!

Chuck: superhero.

Big: but with superpowers.

This could be great fun.

 

Under the Silver Lake

It Follows: P.I.

Sort of, Garfield the P.I.

Riley Keough the femme

 

Pokemon: Detective Pikachu

Ryan Reynolds is voice

Pikachu is the shamus

PG Deadpool fun?

The Turning

of the screw, that is.

Mackenzie Davis the lead,

can the ghosts be real?

 

John Wick: Parabellum

Keanu is back

On a horse while in a suit

Killers in  pursuit

 

Ad Astra

James Gray does sci-fi,

Brad Pitt looks for dad in space,

Gets Conradian.

 

Flarksy

Rogen heart Theron;

High school crush, now head Canuck.

No problem. Wait, what?!

Ford v Ferrari

Mangold for long haul;

Le Mans! Ferrari must lose!

Thus spake Matt Damon

 

Hobbs and Shaw

The Rock and The Stath.

The director of John Wick.

This will be bonkers.

 

The Woman in the Window

Not the Fritz Lang one!

Amy Adams: Rear Window.

Joe Wright the new Hitch.

CR: Chris Large/FX

Gemini Man

Will Smith and Ang Lee,

Clive Owen and the great MEW,

cloned hitman puzzler.

 

Charlie’s Angels

K-Stew’s big comeback

French films have made her, um, hip?

Just don’t bite your lip…

 

The Day Shall Come

Anna Kendrick stars in-

Um, nobody knows a thing

Bar it’s Chris Morris

 

Jojo Rabbit

‘My friend Adolf H.’

is Taika Waititi-

this could get quite strange…

They call this screening ‘The Mop’

There is a certain type of film that plays last of all at a multiplex for the purpose of mopping up late-comers and professional procrastinators.

Right now in Movies at Dundrum Blockers is on at 21:20 and A Quiet Place at 21:10. A Quiet Place is the kind of film that fits the archetype of ‘The Mop’, as is Cineworld’s final movie tonight, The Strangers: Prey at Night, on at 22:45. The Mop is usually a horror film. In fact a good deal of Blumhouse’s output (Sinister, The Purge, Happy Death Day, Truth or Dare) would be well-suited to mop purposes. The Mop ought to be a horror film, because it sustains horror week in week out. Horror films aren’t expensive to make. That is the secret of Jason Blum’s success. It is possible to make a very presentable film on the catering budget of a CGI-laden blockbuster. And horror films and late, dithering audiences have an easy to understand and easy to fulfil compact.

The audience that needs to be mopped has arrived without having booked in advance, something which admittedly is becoming less common. They have no firm idea what they’re going to see and are heavily swayed by the times of the films and the times of bus/Luas home. One of my greatest experiences in dithering saw myself, the man behind the online pseudonym E von Ludendorff, and John Fahey begged to leave Cineworld by a security guard who’d  suffered thru too many minutes of arguing over what to see – “Lads! Would you go outside for a few minutes, just DECIDE, and then come back in”. That resulted in an almighty tussle between Saw, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, and Shark Tale.

Horror films don’t get much respect outside of Hallowe’en. But, just as Seth Rogen noted it’s easy to tell if a comedy is working as opposed to a drama, it’s quite easy to spot when a horror film is not scary. They are a matter of technique. Think of the sequence in Let Me In where Elias Koteas foolishly moves towards the bloodied door to see what’s behind it while Michael Giacchino’s string orchestration goes into a frenzy. In the hands of someone like Matt Reeves or James Watkins such a sequence is almost unbearably suspenseful. In the hands of a hack, the effect is lost entirely, and you become aware it’s just a guy slowly walking towards a door with a vampire behind it.