Video game movies tend to come in two flavours. They’re either about video game characters in their separate video game world, or they’re about those characters making in their way into the ‘real world’. On both counts, studios have historically struggled with making such movies worthwhile, although with the recent successes of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (I specify the sequel because the original is still pretty naff), that tide has definitely been turning of late.
Y’know, I questioned the point of making a big-budget B-movie like this back when the first Meg came out, but with the industry still recovering from the COVID shuffle, I especially question it now. Doubly so because of the director for this one: Ben Wheatley. While he has a storied history with out-there horror material (also helping to produce just plain weird shit like Aaaaaaah! and The Greasy Strangler), and he’s done a bit of pop work in the past like directing two episodes of Capaldi-era Doctor Who, I’m… still trying to figure out where this fits in his larger catalogue. And bear in mind that I managed to find something about his Rebecca remake that made sense, so it says something when I’m struggling with this one. Then again, there’s a lot about this film that I’m struggling with.
It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these on here, but we’ve got another preview screening to get through today (thanks again to StudioCanal for reaching out and letting me attend)… and this is an interesting one. After dealing with some Dracula fanfiction over the past twelve months, between the god-awful The Invitation and the pretty goddamn good Renfield, we now have a specific adaptation of the original Bram Stoker novel. More specifically, the chapter ‘The Captain’s Log’ which, in context to the rest of the book, is mainly just an interlude to explain Dracula shifting from one place to another so that the bigger story can continue.
The existential threat posed by the atomic bomb has always felt like an abstract concept to me. Being born after the bubbling conceptualising of it during WWII, and its position as the final safeguard during the Cold War, I haven’t really considered that kind of devastation as something real. Or, at least, beyond the perplexing optimism of the time that, should one of these bombs go off, the public would be perfectly fine if they just hid under a table with their arms over their heads. Part of my struggle with dealing with media in the context with which it was made (usually when dealing with anything made pre-1995) extends beyond just media and even for actual shit that has happened, and could very well happen again. And yet, for the longest time, I’ve always treated it as something historical, something academic, rather than anything concrete.
Watching this film changed that for me. Big time.
2023 has already seen action cinema reach some amazing heights, from the high-art elevation of John Wick: Chapter 4, to the western shonen sports drama of Creed III, even the one-take shoot-out scene in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3. So when a film like Sisu comes out, it can’t help but feel slight, even if that is somewhat by design. It is by and large as simple and straight-forward as an action flick gets: Man finds gold, Nazis find man, Nazis try and take gold, man makes them regret it.
It’s a 90-minute feature that is so lean, it’s possible that quite a bit of usable meat was thrown away in the attempt to remove all traces of fat from the cut. But then again, even if it is just a thin excuse to have our stoic action lead cut, shoot, and blow up Nazis for an hour and a half… well, there’s never not a good time for such things, right?
I got into this when I looked at Arctic a few years back, but now more than ever, it has been cool to see so many YouTubers making it in the film business. Joe Penna went from MysteryGuitarMan to delivering the kind of survival thrillers that even I can get into; Radio Silence, the guys who pioneered the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ format on YT, not only have been contributing to and are now producing the V/H/S anthology series, but now have the keys to one of the most beloved slasher franchises ever in the new Scream movies; and the Martial Club stunt team got to work on last year’s runaway success Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Before this blog even existed, I was one of many who thoughtthey could turn YouTube into their career (before realising that going into video-making with that mindset is, to put it simply, a terrible idea), and while I realised that it wasn’t the way for me, it’s still quite nice to see so many others turn that passion into something viable.
And this time around, we have a success story from my neck of the woods (kind of), with the Adelaide-based team of brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, AKA RackaRacka. It was quite surreal to see their production logo next to national grant Screen Australia and A2-bloody-4 in the opening credits, and that’s only the beginning of it where this film is concerned.
