No.184 : The Decline (2020)

The Decline at the IMDb

Like our previous film ‘The Objective’ this film also has a group of people who are gradually whittled down by a relentless killer, but that’s where the similarities end, as this one was quite good.

Made by Netflix, the film is French/Canadian and the version I watched had dubbing that would make a porno blush. I think you can watch it in the original French and view the subtitles if your O'level language skills are lacking, and that would present the film at its best. I watched it dubbed with sub-titles and it was strange that barely a line of dialogue matched the words spelled out below.

Anyway, we open with people looking over a dead body wrapped in a bloody sheet and we wonder how we got here - well you’ll need to wait 34 minutes before you catch up. We meet Antoine who, in Chas Tenenbaum style, rouses his family in the night and evacuates them from the city. We learn that it was just a drill and that the next time his daughter’s turtle is getting left behind. Antoine worries about social decay and feels that things will kick off soon. He preps his family by watching Youtube videos of a Ray Mears style outdoorsman who gives handy tips on preserving rice and bush craft.

Things get moving when Antoine is invited to a survival camp hosted in the wilderness, by his hero. Things start off OK, with some rabbit skinning and dish washing, but we start to wonder the agenda when the arts and crafts lesson turns to pipe bomb manufacturing and the conversation to immigrants with machetes. Clearly our man is a nutter, but before the visitors can make their excuses and leave, one of them is blown up and killed by a home made bomb.

Our previously counter culture visitors agree that they should really be calling the cops, but the survival nut host, Alain, says no and  starts to burn the body. Protests from the group see one shot in the leg and another three, flee into the woods where we know plenty of traps lie in wait. Alain teams up with return guest and fellow mentalist David, and the hunt is on.

Who will survive? Will it be family man Antoine whom we have invested in or maybe the military woman whom we know is good at wrestling moves? Surely not the shot woman tied to the table?

Despite the poor dubbing I really liked this film and it kept a heady pace throughout. It’s hard to comment on the acting, as the dubbing took so much away from the performances, but it was likeable and believable group of characters. I liked how they all started out as survivalists fearing ‘the man’ only to have to re-examine their positions once things went out of their comfort zone.

It was good that it was quickly whittled down to a two versus two scenario and there were a few surprises to keep you guessing. The deaths were all visceral with plenty of blood being splattered across the fresh snow. Of course, you will have seen a survival horror along these lines before, but there were enough fresh elements and twists here to keep me engaged.

I’m not sure why it was called ‘The Decline’ - a decline in society? Declining numbers of survivors? Probably lost in translation. At only 85 minutes this is a quick thrill and definitely one to spend some of your Nexflix time on.

THE Tag Line : Survive This!  75%

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.154 : The Rezort (2015)

The Rezort at the IMDb

Don’t worry spelling pedants, the title is correct. The ‘Z’ stands for ‘Zombie’ and there are plenty in this British survival horror.

The film opens with a large and annoying media dump. For some reason all the clips are overlaid with static and a lot of jerky cuts. I guess this is to make you uncomfortable and edgey, but for me it was just irritating. I was worried that the whole thing was going to be a ‘found footage’ affair but thankfully it changed to a conventional film after the title card.

We learn that it has been seven years since an epidemic that caused the dead to come alive and eat the living. So far, so very predictable. Despite the loss of 2 billion people the government deem it appropriate to leave one island off the coast of Africa full of the undead, so that the rich can enjoy holidays shooting them up. It seems a daft concept, but is there another plan afoot that would explain, if not exactly justify the risk?

We meet the usual cavalcade of misfits who go through the orientation before being allowed out into the island. This obviously allows the viewer to know what’s going on and to anticipate the pitfalls, which come on plenty and often.

Strangely for a resort that caters for rich asshole hunters none of our crew want to be there. We meet a single women who was dumped at the alter and is using the non-refundable ticket herself. We also get some team gamers who won a competition and a dull woman and her Irish boyfriend who have less life that most of the island’s inhabitants.

 The big star is the enigmatic Dougray Scott who may be mysterious or he may have forgotten his script. We’re not sure why he’s there (bad agent?) but he does have a bigger gun than everyone else so we know he’s to be taken seriously.

As is the law for any futuristic theme park things soon go awry with one visitor’s attempts to steal some files for a refugee agency causing a virus to infect the system and quickly close down all the security protocols. They do this from an underground bunker that was nicked wholesale from ‘Westworld’.

Strangely the manacles on the zombies are computer controlled and once these are off the undead go on a neck biting rampage. Still it’ll be OK - the island zombies or ‘shufflers’ have been there for seven years and are slow - only fresh ones can run about a bit. Wait, were are these speedy zombies coming from? Is there an even more nefarious scheme in place? As our diminishing band of heroes trek across the island to safety we wonder if the plot is as obvious as first flagged and will we all learn to care just a little bit before the inevitable conclusion?

This was a decent slice of hokum but it offered nothing new to an already overloaded genre. The attempts to layer in a bit of social commentary were heavy handed with the blue teddy bear taking the role of the red coat in ‘Schindler’s List’. Obviously it would be hard to mirror that film’s level of gravitas when you have a bunch of Z listers running about screaming as a never ending hoard of zombies jump out from every corner.

Having Scott carry the film was a mistake as he had no charisma at all. He wasn’t burdened with any backstory at all and, although tasty with his sniper rifle, he had little to do except lead the chase to the exit - a path no doubt mirrored by all unlucky enough to see this dud in the cinema.

There was the fun of seeing every other theme park and zombie film ever made homaged with ‘28 Weeks Later’ getting a few nods along with ‘Jurassic Park’ and ‘Westworld’ - film and TV versions.

It was competently made but I had zero interest in any of the dull characters - apart from ‘Marty’ off ’Lead Balloon’ - wondered what he’d been up to!

The ending was clearly meant to make us think and revalue our own morals, but frankly when you set your film in a zombie theme park you are asking a lot of your audience if you want anything more than the odd grunt and lack of dribble.

Risible nonsense with a moral high ground that hardly befits the brain dead premise. ‘eat brainnsss?’ need to have one first!

The TAG Line -  World War Zzzzzzzz  45%

No.79 : The Grey (2011)

The Grey at the IMDb

Liam Neeson sheds his hard as nails killer with wife problems image from ‘Taken’ to play a hard as nails killer with wife problems in this survival thriller. You can’t say the man doesn’t have range.

Neeson works as a hunter for a petroleum company in Alaska - basically when a work crew goes out to fix the pipes it’s Liam who shoots the wolves. He’s not happy though, and neither are we as we have to listen to five minutes of sentimental voice over as he writes what may be a suicide note before heading out to the pub. He downs a couple of shots, and presumably because the kebab shop is shut, heads outside to eat his rifle.

He’s about to end the film early when some howling makes him think twice - huge mistake! He heads for home the next day but his flight is of the no frills variety - the fare doesn’t even include a proper landing! Before the plane goes down he pisses off a friendly workmate so we know he’s not exactly a people person, well for now at least.

The plane goes down in the wilderness with only half a dozen survivors who include both Liam and the man he had words with - awkward! The guys gather up the salvable stuff and once we establish Liam’s gun is wrecked we meet the bad guys in the form of a pack of mostly CGI wolves. These guys aren’t after dinner, they only want to assert their authority over these interlopers. Liam assumes control and given his wolfy knowledge the rest fall in line despite the normal grumbles.

What follows is what you’d expect in the form of the group being relentlessly whittled down by the lupine louts. There are some slight deviations to the ‘Ten Little Indians’ format but as you’d probably guess we end up with Liam and one cannon fodder guy and a showdown with the marauding pack.

I quite liked ‘The Grey’ but I felt it was writing a smart cheque that its script couldn’t cash. The attempt to make Liam deep and thoughtful failed despite the constant call-backs to his wife who may have left him or is dead. There was a lot of spiritual stuff going on throughout with a couple of near death workers experiencing visions of what they loved most.

This would suggest we are delving into the realms of metaphor or allegory but I’m not buying. You could argue that they were all dead from the off and it was how they met their fate and faced it was what mattered. Indeed some of the guys don’t fall prey to the wolves with the weather and a direct lift from ‘Sometimes a Great Notion’ taking care of two of them.

The tension never really scaled the heights I expected with the attacks too far apart and too much time spent jabbering on about the meaning of life. If I wanted my mind expanded I’d gets some LSD - what you want in a Liam Neeson survival picture is some man on wolf action.

I did like a few scenes especially early on, when the darkness was lit up by more and more wolf eyes. At this point the guys knew they were screwed and that kind of fed into their approaches going forward. The ensemble cast mostly of lesser known actors did well and each got a decent dispatch.

The finale was kept enigmatic with a post credit snippet giving us a clue. I don’t always need a definite conclusion, and a helicopter showing up to save the day may have been stretching it, but something less inconclusive may have been more satisfying.

The film is worth a look but at two hours it does plod at some points and I really needed more bang sticks for my bucks if I was going to rate it higher.

THE Tag Line :  No Result - Going to Extra Time 70%