No One Will Save You (2023) - Movie Review

This feels like the kind of flex every screenwriter-cum-director wants to make. After making his mark with some incredibly well-scripted efforts with The Babysitter, Love And Monsters, and even his directorial debut with Spontaneous, it looks like Brian Duffield wanted to show that he could tell a great story without even needing dialogue. And indeed, this is a film about a largely-mute protagonist who says all of one line, and the rest of the cast are just as silent. As someone who has been growing to love Duffield’s cinematic work, I was definitely curious about how such a venture would shape out.

The Dive (2023) - Movie Review

As unhelpful as “it’s a [insert genre here] movie that even people who hate [insert genre here] like” is as a critical observation, I do like being able to see and even recommend films that fall into areas that are… outside of my expertise, let’s say. I may frequently rail against bad talking animal movies, and be generally ambivalent towards Westerns, but that just makes my encountering examples I actually like feel just that much better; it's like biting into a BeanBoozled and getting a normal flavour. And here, we have a survival film that had me properly invested from end to end.

65 (2023) - Movie Review

Dinosaurs aren’t interesting anymore. The sense of wonder that Steven Spielberg once instilled in audiences by using modern cinema technology to bring prehistoric predators back to life with 1993’s Jurassic Park has since lost its lustre. There’s something to be said about how much further CGI and practical effects have come since then (or, if we’re being honest, how much harder they’re being pushed for the bulk of mainstream blockbuster visuals), but there’s the impact of that film’s own sequels to consider as well. The cleverest thing to come out of the Jurassic World trilogy (and bear in mind that I’m a staunch defender of Fallen Kingdom) is its potentially-unintentional observation of how jaded modern audiences have become, to the point where what once was considered breathtaking is now just… there. It's the kind of statement that makes the presence of even one sequel, let alone all five, seem counterproductive.

Gold (2022) - Movie Review

Considering the summer heat is officially kicking in down here in Australia, I’m probably in the most ideal state of mind to engage with a film about a guy trying to survive in the desert. And considering this first came out near the end of January of this year (deep in the middle of the last summer), I’m willing to bet that that timing isn’t a coincidence. Trust me to be both timely and late to the party at the same time.

Thirteen Lives (2022) - Movie Review

I was initially planning to just skip this one entirely. After how badly Hillbilly Elegy turned out, I didn’t want to run the risk of Ron Howard screwing the pooch on a story that is far more important than the humble brag come-up of a venture capitalist. I even raised this same issue with fellow critic and top bloke Travis Johnson over at Celluloid & Whiskey, who understood my apprehension but suggested I still check it out. I’ve been to many a screening with this guy, and he knows his shit, so I figured it was worth giving a burl. And man, am I glad I did, because this is some of Howard’s best narrative work in ages.

Prey (2022) - Movie Review

I kinda regret how much slack I cut The Predator a few years back. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s as underwhelming an action flick as it gets, but I mean more specifically for how it treated autism. Flattery doesn’t tend to age very well, and that’s basically what it amounted to in that regard: Empty platitudes that were pretty asinine when you think them over for even a second. Cut to today’s film, which was being developed at the same time as Shane Black’s little misstep, and which has an approach to representation that has a bit more thought to it than ‘you’re the next phase in human evolution’.

Fall (2022) - Movie Review

After everything I said when I reviewed Beast, deciding to sit down for yet another survival flick might get me to belabour the point that this isn’t really my genre. Then again, in my defence, the trailer for this thing showed more characterisation than the whole of Beast, so I figured I’d at least give it a chance. So long as this provides me with some reason to care about who is doing the surviving here, we should be good. And to the film’s credit, I certainly got reasons to care… even if they weren’t necessarily in the characters’ favour.

Beast (2022) - Movie Review

I really like carrots. I admit that I don’t eat as healthy as I probably should, but carrots would likely be a foundation for my diet if I were to make any major overhauls. That slight sweetness combined with the crunch when it’s raw and fresh; it’s definitely one of my favourite healthier foods.

But that’s not to say that I could happily live off just carrots. Eating one or two on their own as a snack, sure, but when I sit down for dinner, I’m not likely to just have a plate piled high with raw carrots to eat. They’re good, but there needs to be something more to it. Seasoning, a particular cooking method, some other vegetables and proteins; anything to make it into more of a complete meal.

No, this has not suddenly become Mahan’s Munchies or anything like that. I’m bringing this up because I have a similar attitude to survival movies. Survival as a character drive in a film can be great, and is usually built into the more visceral genres like action and horror. But I’m starting to realise that a film that is just centred on characters surviving a perilous scenario, with all the scripting and production focus being put towards that one aspect, doesn’t do much for me as a viewer or a critic. So you can imagine how not-glowing my review for this survival thriller will be.

Stowaway (2021) - Movie Review

The sophomore feature from Mystery Guitar Man turned budding filmmaker Joe Penna is an amplification of everything that went into his first film Arctic. The main cast has been doubled, the dialogue has increased exponentially, and while the setting is ostensibly far more cramped than the vastness of the Arctic, it serves as ground zero for a survival narrative that delves even further into dissecting human instincts. The result of all this is a film so refined, it retroactively makes Arctic look like splashing around in a kiddie pool by comparison.

Sweetheart (2020) - Movie Review

Female-led survival horror flicks have been steadily making the rounds over the last handful of years. The Shallows, Crawl, both entries in the Metres Down series; I guess the recent resurgence in ‘prestige’ horror cinema combined with the attempts to bring more female lead characters to the screen have resulted in this intersection. But up until this point, these films have thrived (or floundered) based on being short but sweet genre exercises, not rising too far above the benchmark for man vs. nature yarns. And then this film came along, yet another from the industrious (industrial?) Blumhouse production line, which… basically recontextualises this entire trend.

Arctic (2019) - Movie Review

Maybe it’s because of my own origins as a YouTuber, but I always get a kick out of seeing someone from that sector of the Internet making it onto the big screen. It doesn’t always turn out for the best, and there’s definitely something to be said about YouTube stars getting brought into productions just for name value, but as someone who has also been trying to turn my extended hobby into something legitimate (stop laughing), it fills me with a sense of comradery. And this film is part of that legacy, coming from writer/director Joe Penna, AKA MysteryGuitarMan, one of the old guard of the YouTube scene and someone who has been chipping away at the short film grindstone for a while now. His feature-length debut, if nothing else, shows him as a cinematic creative who knows his shit.

47 Metres Down: Uncaged (2019) - Movie Review

Well, after the success of the first 47 Metres Down movie, which was easily one of the most unnecessary features I reviewed in the entirety of 2017, it appears we already have a sequel. Knowing what other unneeded horror cinema have been getting follow-ups (a sequel to The Gallows came out this year; I mean, c’mon!) I should be more irritated at this film’s mere existence… but maybe this could be a good thing.

As I’ve been making a habit of saying around here, I love movies that redeem qualities of bad movies, and while I was largely unimpressed with the first film, it’s not as if it had literally nothing about it that could’ve worked with a different take. Hell, with how well Crawl turned out earlier this year, I’m willing to go into this with some level of optimism. Thankfully, this may not be all that good of a film, but it is markedly better than its predecessor.

Crawl (2019) - Movie Review

In a year where the biggest hitters have been culminations of several years’ worth of production work-up, films like this are easily cherished. These low-stakes, high-tension B-movie genre exercises where the focus is placed more on making the audience feel something rather than just see something. It follows in the footsteps of previous review subjects like The Shallows in pitting a tough and determined woman against the forces of nature, and much like Shallows, the under-90-minute run time means that there’s no time to waste time. And the end result is a very taut, very gripping, very wince-inducing offering.

The Belko Experiment (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: For the workers of Belko Industries, situated in an office building in Bogotá, it started out like any other work day. That is, until a mysterious voice rings out through the building posing a terrible ultimatum. All the doors have been locked down, and every window has been shuttered; the workers are trapped inside. The mysterious voice tells them that, of the 80 workers in the building, 30 must be killed in order for the rest to make it out alive. If not, 60 of them will be randomly selected to die instead. With their options running out and tensions running high, it seems that some are more willing to play along than others.

The Mountain Between Us (2017) - Movie Review

 

The plot: Neurosurgeon Ben (Idris Elba) and photojournalist Alex (Kate Winslet) are both stranded at the airport when their flight is cancelled. Urgently needing to get back, they take an unchartered flight with pilot Walter (Beau Bridges). Unfortunately, the storm that cancelled their original flight hits their new flight and the plane crashes. With Alex terribly injured, they have to find a way to survive the frozen mountain climate and, hopefully, make it back home.

The Shallows (2016) - Movie Review

Were shark movies ever cool? I mean, outside of the original Jaws, they only seem to be getting sillier and sillier. Sure, it’s easy to say that now in the post-Sharknado age, but these films been like this for a long time. It’s the ultimate irony that a film that helped define Hollywood as it stands today would also go on to spawn easily one of the most B-movie of the notable B-movie sub-genres.

From the laughable special effects to the hokey acting, right down to the (if you’ll excuse the term) jumping the shark moments like having them be driven by revenge or an exterior need to advertise for Sea World, leaping out of the water to take bites out of airplanes or even grouping together to form tornadoes to attack people, the sub-genre has a pretty prominent reputation for being hilariously ridiculous. Considering all this, making a film nowadays that is meant to make audiences take sharks seriously again is a pretty tall order. So, how does this particular feature turn out in that regard?