Above Average Joe Blogs

I had a bit of a bumper week for films the past week, knocking off Darren Aronofsky's Mother! (! is part of the title for reasons unknown) and then Matthew Vaughn's sequel to Kingsman, subtitled The Golden Circle. Before diving into these reviews I'd like to talk a bit about the problems with trailers. Both the trailer for Mother! and The Golden Circle raise two different problems with modern trailers which are almost impossible to avoid if you are seeing movies in the cinema and therefore having to watch trailers before the actual film. Mother! and a Misleading Trailer First, Mother!'s (this is never going to be an easy film to properly punctuate) problem relates to the potential for miss-selling the movie in question. The trailers for Mother! suggested that the film was going to be a psychological horror movie that was going to go further than any other movie before in terms of shock value. That isn't me hyperbolising, one trailer for the films come replete w...

Cannily enough, the last time Stephen King's mammoth sized horror epic It got an adaptation it was 1990. Then It was adapted into a tv-movie starring the inimitable, sinister voiced, Tim Curry. Now 27 years later, just like the titular monster's feeding cycle, It is back, and ready to feast on the fears of children. And unfortunately, that's about the only peer group I suspect will find this, whilst wonderfully made bit of 80s retro kids on bikes adventuring throwback, scary. But before we dive deep into that tautologically turgid claim a few side notes. First, I'm not a mega Stephen King fan. That isn't saying I dislike him but I've only read a handful of his books, although considering how vast his body of work is maybe that isn't too bad. The first King book I read was Cell, which I read in high school. That was a twist on the zombie apocalypse genre, where all the mobile phones in the world suddenly let out a phone call which, if answered, turns th...

By the time I'd sprinted to the end of Outlast 2's lean campaign of around 6 hours the opening tension had long since died out to be replaced by utter confusion, bewilderment, and jaded cynicism at the amount of violence, only punctuated with the occasional creepy image. Australia's Funniest Home Videos got dark. That isn't to say Outlast 2 is a bad game, far from it, but in terms of horror it is decidedly average, too eager to the throw gore and obscenities on top of gore and obscenities, when a quiet lull and sinister shadow would have made you tremble from head to toe. I think the intensity of my negativity above stems from the fact that the game has at its core an interesting premise. Much like the original Outlast your character is in the reporter/journalist school of archetypes, which serves as the reasoning for why he insists on filming everything. That's right, for the uninitiated the Outlast series focuses on first person horror with the option of...

About two thirds of the way through the new Australian horror film Hounds of Love, a door is closed, screams are heard and the shot fades to black. In this scene there is no explicit violence, and for the majority of the film the violence is off-screen and implied, yet my heartbeat must've been about to explode out of my chest. When the scene had finished, the blood pumping around my ears gone, only then did I notice that just to my right, a few seats down, a woman in the cinema was weeping, stifling back tears. That's how much of an impact this film had without showing any violence. Hounds of Love is the debut film by Australian director Ben Young, not that you'd know it was his first time with this terrifying little film, about the kidnapping of a young girl by a serial killer couple in the suburbs of Perth. The cinematography and acting are all brilliant, with the central three performances of Ashleigh Cummings, ostensible victim, and Emma Booth and Stephen Curry as th...

A Shared (Collapsing) Universe  One happy family A "shared universe" is the hip new cool thing to have. Everyone's got one, from the Avengers and the Justice League, to Godzilla and King Kong, and now Universal is banking on The Mummy being the tentpole film for their Dark Universe. The Dark Universe is set to comprise of resurrecting the vintage Universal monsters of the black and white period. This means, pending good box office returns (not so much critics, sorry The Mummy) we are set to see Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, Invisible Man, and The Creature of the Black Lagoon return to the silver screen.  But doesn't this beg the question: aren't we a bit fatigued by this whole shared universe idea though? Can't a film just stand on its own two feet, propelling its own narrative forward without having to make concessions to another 6 potential movies, some that many years off too? Whilst Marvel's cinematic universe has proven fertile gro...

But for the fact that I have seen Alien: Covenant and Get Out within the space of a few weeks I don't think I could find another excuse to cram review of both films into one blog post. The closest other link I can get to is the strange paradox I put in the title. Get Out tackles racism, albeit in a way that isn't the norm for film, whilst Alien: Covenant continues the cycle of fear in relation to its titular antagonist, formally named Xenomorphs, thus it is a film about xenophobia but not racism. Clear as mud, yes? Alien: Covenant - No Spoilers Review I will try to avoid spoilers for the majority of this part of the review. Unfortunately a combination of trailers and some stupid reviews have already given away a few key aspects.  High Alien Art Alien: Covenant is a sequel to the seemingly divisive at the time Prometheus (I rather liked it back then, like it a lot more now), which itself is a prequel to Alien. Director Ridley Scott plans two more Alien films which w...

Kinder very surprised  On the 6th of December 1979, John Hurt got a little bit too friendly with a randy space spider resulting in one of the most awkward dinner scenes in movie history. Whilst the tag line promised that in space no one can hear you scream, the crew of the Nostromo, including the iconic Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), certainly did scream, as did, I imagine, the majority of moviegoers when they saw the Chestburster rip and tear through John Hurt's chest and skitter off into the darkness of the vessel to grow and torment the crew. If you are this close to an Alien you are in trouble. The alien, or to give it its technical term "Xenomorph, boarded the Nostromo when Kane (John Hurt) decided to enjoy his space Easter a little bit too eagerly, opening an oozing egg, and got a face full of legs and other unsavoury parts down the gullet. Ash, the not at all suspicious science officer, overrides Ripley's orders to maintain quarantine and keep Kane and t...

Loving Lovecraft So life gets in the way every so often and the again planned review of Under the Shadow has fallen by the wayside again (I will not promise to make it the next blog entry's topic as I can't seem to keep it!) but in its place is something I hope you will find equally entertaining.  He looks friendly... When I was around 14 or 15 a video game for Xbox came out call Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. I was instantly intrigued a) by the fact that this was touted as a horror game without zombies or ghosts and goblins but instead about unknowable horrors for the depths of space and the ocean, and b) how on earth to pronounce its title (try Cu-thu-lu). Good luck When I finally got my hands on the game I was not disappointed. The game was set in the early 1900s, following a private investigator investigating (as private investigators a want to do) the disappearance of a boy in the seaside town of Innsmouth. Naturally when he goes looking for the...