No.249 : The Meg (2018)

 The Meg at the IMDb

Jason Statham stars in this ‘hunt the fish’ thriller that is ‘Jaws’ in all but name, but also takes the time to rehash every seafaring cliché that you could point a harpoon at.

We open in the past with Statham in charge of a rescue attempt on a stricken sub. He gets most of the men off but has to close the hatch on the last few when an unknown force starts to attack the sub. He’s haunted by the decision and retreats into a refreshing bottle of Chang beer, in one of the many overt examples of product placement on show.

Nothing will get Statham back in the water, and we head off to a sea exploration lab off the coast of China. Dwight Shrute, who seems to have done well out of the beet business, is coming to inspect his billion dollar investment. He’s come at a good time as the deepest trench of the ocean is about to be explored by one of their submersibles. The diverse crew see lots of nice sea life but are then attacked, and rendered disabled, by a megladon, a prehistoric shark that can grow to 70 feet. With life support for only 18 hours left they may as well start writing the obituaries…unless Jason can be tempted out of his retirement? Well it is his ex-wife that’s in peril and his name’s over the title; so he'd better get packed.

The rescue goes well, apart from the standard sacrifice of a crew member, and all that’s left is to take care of ’The Meg’ before it kills anyone else. They could just leave it alone, but that wouldn’t make for much of a film so they set off with a few schemes, the first several of which are doomed to fail, as you‘d expect.

After catching their prey an even bigger fish appears; with the crew and hardware decimated, how can it be stopped now that its heading to Amity, sorry, some Chinese beach where it‘s bright coloured inflatables day?

I avoided this film when it came out as it looked rubbish. You know what they say about making rash judgements? That’s right, they are often correct. The ingredients were all here -  Statham in an obvious cash in monster movie, a genre that makes it hard to be original and a Chinese Co-Production which led to several Chinese characters being shoe horned in for no discernable reason, including a cute wee girl who possibly was an ill-advised passenger on a boat under constant megladon attack.

It really was by the numbers, with the troubled Statham trying to gain redemption whilst struggling with a CGI fish that changed size depending on what was required of it. Shrute should be ashamed of his outing as the billionaire financer who for some reason was getting into the fish exploitation business. He had no arc to speak of and even when he went off piste to avoid the lawsuits he was hardly a malevolent genius or even a misguided do-gooder he was just ‘can you show me the way to the bank?’ throughout.

Statham gave his usual effortless performance playing the same baldy Cockney who inhabits all of his films. He had no journey or emotional range and it looked like he was just waving a harpoon against a green screen until the run time hit the contractually agreed length.

The effects were decent in places but there is only so much that you can do with a big fish chomping on people and boats. There was plenty of gore but that was pretty comic, with the buckets of chum the only realistic blood on show.

If you watch ‘The Meg’ you pretty much get what you deserve. There may have been a message about the environment or over fishing in there, but it was hard to pick it out amongst all the CGI, product placements and cardboard cut-out characters who were designed to keep the demographic and screen time to the backers’ requirements. A cookie cutter film that could have done with a shark bite to the script to jazz things up just a little.

THE Tag Line : MEGa Disappointment  - 35%

 

No.230 : The Blob (1958)

 

The Blob at the IMDb

Every one loves Steve McQueen, but what about this early offering for ‘Steven McQueen’? Well I can tell you it’s dreadful and Steve rightly dropped the ‘N’ to avoid association with this turkey. To be fair it would probably never have seen light after its initial release if it wasn’t for the appearance of the star man who was 'a getting on a bit' 28 when the film was made.

Steven plays ‘Steve’ a high school kid out on a no nonsense date with his stuffy girlfriend. They see a meteor land and go to have a look. Meanwhile the object has already been found by a hill billy farmer who pokes it with a broom handle. Huge mistake as a blob of jelly affixes itself to his arm. He goes running about in the road and is picked up by Steve who administers the time honoured cure of putting a jacket over him.

They head into town and dump the old coot with a doctor who summons his nurse to help. Soon the two are absorbed by the blob which is gaining size and a reddish colour. Steve meanwhile wastes ten minutes facing off some dudes who want a drag race but eventually he realises the blob is a threat to the town and starts to annoy the police. He narrowly escapes its blobby clutches when hiding out in a meat freezer (remember that for later!) before the blob heads to a movie theatre for some people popcorn.

After some off screen horror the police and the fire department show up, but Steve, his date, a cute kid and some Italian stereotypes are trapped in a diner which is now enveloped in the massive blob. Can they be saved and can this red menace be defeated?

This was a laughable piece of nonsense, but it was also boring and badly acted. The special effects were very poor with the blob being either shown in forced perspective or in a form of animation that Walt Disney’s dog could have bettered.

McQueen shows none of the charisma he’s later known for and looks too skinny and old for the high school hero role. He isn’t helped much by a uniformly dreadful cast who look like they have been pulled off the street to deliver their stilted dialogue.

I’m not sure if there was a metaphor in place here - the red menace was a bit on the nose and it was hardly a clever ‘body snatchers’ type analogy. Basically what you get is people screaming and being absorbed off screen. At one point the police chief says ‘it must have killed at least 50 or 60 people’  thanks very much for the zero we saw - even the dog escaping wasn’t shown, and only mentioned.

I was surprised the film was in colour, but apart from that it was just as dreadful as I’d imagined and I just wish I’d kept avoiding it. You may get some jollies laughing at the rubbish special effects and some early McQueen embarrassment, but I’d advise that you avoid ‘The Blob’ - not to avoid absorption but to avoid boredom.

THE Tag Line : Bad Job Blob  32%

No.227 : The Sand (2015)

 

The Sand at the IMDb

You know that TV show ‘Floor is Lava’? Well this film is basically that, with the floor being sand and to step in it is to risk a poor CGI demise.

The film opens with a bunch of frat kids having a beach party. I was concerned this may be a found footage affair as the first five minutes are basically jerky camcorder shots of teens doing shots and chugging beer. At one point they find a large slimy ball that looks for all the world like a testicle. They don’t pay it much heed but it couldn’t have been a more obvious plot device if it had ‘McGuffin’ written all over it.

Next morning the kids start to wake up. Four are in a car, two in a lifeguard station and one chap is in a barrel with a dick drawn on his face. Our lead girl Kaylee, sees a seagull get eaten by the sand, or to be more correct she sees it digitally erased, and immediately comes to the conclusion that the sand is alive and no one can step on it. Everyone takes this daft notion seriously, especially as teens start to be devoured by the hungry sand.

The ’monster’ isn’t clear from the start and takes the form of wispy tendrils that raise up from the stand and grab whomever it can. The majority of the film is then taken up with various plans to escape the threat. Things like building bridges out of wood and surfboards move the players about a bit and there is a sub plot about some one shagging another girl’s boyfriend, but essentially it’s just a poor excuse for having attractive young people slowly picked off by an unseen threat.

Salvation appears in the form of a disbelieving beach patrol guard but he’s soon killed off for disbelieving the kids and for being too old. Eventually we are down to four players and the monster is starting to reveal itself. Who will survive their day at the beach?

I saw this mess on Amazon Prime where it was tagged as a horror comedy. There were laughs to be fair, but they were of the ridiculous nature and seemingly unintended. The threat wasn’t discussed or explored, with only the testicle egg appearing split in half offering any  suggesting that the enemy may be of  extra terrestrial origin. Later on when it grew some tentacles it was a bit bolder but was less scary than when it was an unknown. That may be down to the quality of the CGI however, the software for which looked like it came from the cover of a magazine called ‘Shit CGI for Your Vic-20’ from the 80s.

The cast were uniformly awful but were serviced by some terrible dialogue “I don’t wanna die with a dick on my face” cried one - I hear you brother! The paper thin plot was like an unused 20 minute segment of ‘Creepshow’ stretched, beyond breaking point, to feature length.

Of course if watching some near teens cavorting about in their swimwear avoiding mild peril is your thing, you could probably do worse. More so if you like nitpicking your way through some terrible kills, massive plot holes and risible special effects. If however you’d prefer a decent film, I’d suggest that you look elsewhere.

Best Bit : Overacting Beach Patrol Man 40%

No.169 : The Pyramid (2014)

The Pyramid at the IMDb

From 2014 comes this laughably bad survival horror which has Jay from ‘The In-Betweeners’ as it’s leading man. Sadly he doesn’t shag any birds or carry out any motor cycle stunts.

Jay is a cameraman for a team of archaeologists. They are excited to have found a rare 3 sided pyramid and are ready to start exploring it. Sadly those selfish Egyptians are in the middle of their uprising and the team are called home. The gang are informed that they have only 24 hours to explore their potential treasure trove.

Luckily the have a  million dollar rover ‘Shorty’, which can take the danger out of the proceedings. We know of Shorty’s capabilities after a gratuitous scene of its sleazy operator (not Jay!) spying on an undressing lady.

They manage to get the entrance chamber open but things look dangerous when a local gets a puff of poison gas in has face. This potential warning is dismissed as an effect of fungus and they forge ahead with their plan to explore the tomb in a hurry.

Unfortunately Shorty proves to be as useful as a cock flavoured lollipop when he breaks down after two minutes - or has be been stopped by unknown forces? That one.

Immediately disregarding their earlier reservations the full team heads in, closely followed by an Egyptian soldier who had been tasked with sending them home. I can't remember his name but it may have been 'Cannon Fodder'.

Predictably things soon goes tits up with our heroes falling through the floor into a catacomb of chambers, compete with killer Siamese cats and nasty traps. As our heroes are picked off one by one, who will survive? - not a lone female as usual surely?

This is a truly dreadful film but it’s awfulness did keep me engaged right to the end.

It is presented with some opening captions as a ‘found footage’ film but this is forgotten early on as we get lots of POV and ‘entering the room’ style shots. I don’t mind this conceit if it makes for a better film but it served only to take you out of the story and the characters’ predicament.

The plot as it is, is very thin and even then things like characters becoming infected with a eye changing virus aren’t followed up on. You get the usual jump scares and flashes of the bad guy but you’d wish they’d stuck to that when you see the big reveal. I won’t spoil it, but you won’t have seen worse CGI than this. Pity the poor actors trying to interact with a monster that looks ridiculous and physically impossible.

To be fair they do set it up when the pompous archaeologist tells stories of Anubis weighing hearts to value souls, but it was a brave and ultimately mental choice to make it actually happen.

The cast is uniformly awful with ‘cheeky chap’ Jay losing any charm he had under a ill advised beard and some toe curling dialogue “We’re just like food in a bowl” he yells and “This stinks” which is a perfectly succinct review of the whole enterprise. My favourite line of natural sounding dialogue was “Robot guy has just been devoured by a creature we can’t identify” - how did this miss out on ‘Best Screenplay’?!

You could argue that the film doesn’t take itself seriously, but it does. Every survival horror cliché is run through right down to the ‘Drag Me to Hell’ final moment. There were a few laughs in there but none that were intended.

Enter ‘The Pyramid’ at your own peril!

The Tag Line : ‘Finished it mate’. 35%

No.70 : The Keep (1983)

The Keep at IMDb

Nazis and the occult are well worn bedfellows in the movies with largely forgettable results. I’d never seen the 1983 effort ‘The Keep’ before, but it was better than I anticipated, though not by much.

The film opens with Jurgen Prochnow leading a group of German soldiers to a castle in a remote part of Romania. The war has yet to touch this area and he’s happy to be given this backwater job rather than a place on the Russian front. His men however are less thankful and use the soft posting as grounds to scare the locals and pillage what they can from ‘the keep’ - basically the prison bit of the castle.

The men soon disregard their ‘no looting’ orders and pry silver crosses from the brickwork. One cross stays stubborn, and when forced it brings a full stone block from the wall with it. This new gap opens into a massive chamber, which is well realised as the camera pulls back to reveal its scale. The new opening awakes something that has lain dormant in the keep and it wastes no time in getting out and frying its liberators.

Jurgen and a typically nasty SS man start an investigation into the deaths and to an inscription they find painted on the wall. They determine the best man to answer the questions they have is Ian McKellan who is presently languishing in a concentration camp. In the very next scene he’s at the keep with his daughter and translating doom for all. Meanwhile Scott Glenn awakens in Greece to a bad case of glowing eyes and heads towards the keep himself.

McKellan manages to make contact with the monster and is told that if he can remove an artefact from the keep the beast will no longer be anchored there and will rid the world of Nazis. To demonstrate his power he makes McKellan go all Benjamin Button and the old man sheds 40 years in seconds. He initially keeps his wheelchair though - possibly worried that it’ll affect his benefits.

Glenn by now has shown up and after boffing McKellan’s daughter gets shot up by the SS man, revealing green blood. He falls into a pit but no doubt he’ll still have a part to play. With all the Keep based Nazis dead, including Jurgen and Gabriel Byrne in a funny haircut, McKellan makes for the door with the monster restricting device. Should his quest to rid the world of Nazis be achieved at any cost or are some prices too high to pay?

If you don’t take it seriously ‘The Keep’ is a lot of fun. Seemingly director Michael Mann disowned the film after his 3 hour cut was halved but I think in this case the studio called it right. 90 minutes of crappy dialogue and ropey special effects is fine, but 3 hours would be taking the piss.

The whole film has an 80s aesthetic from the daughter’s big hair to the totally inappropriate synth soundtrack from Tangerine Dream. The effects, as they are, are mostly post-production additions of light and lasers and frankly they make ‘Flash Gordon’ look like ‘Avatar’. The same reversing smoke effect is used frequently but you wished they’d used it more when the monster is full revealed - he looks like one of those ‘Slam Man’ training dummies.

McKellan does OK with his preposterous dialogue and he seems to be enjoying himself, hamming it up for all he’s worth. His ‘old man’ make up is rubbish and it’s no surprise when he’s ‘transformed’ into his younger self. Glenn’s role is underwritten and I imagine a lot of his character development was lost in the edit. He basically gets the bright eyes, shags McKellan’s daughter , gets shot and then saves the day. A good day’s work you may think, but he seems totally anonymous when mysterious was being sought.

‘The Keep’ is no classic but good fun and fast moving, and well worth a look.

THE Tag Line : One to Keep (as a guilty pleasure) 70%