Diary of the Dead

I’ve never really bought into the intense approbation that follows George A Romero around, specifically by the horror movie buff crowd, and specifically in relation to his supposedly great Dead Trilogy. That tag is a little tired, of course, following the fourth in the series, Land of the Dead in 2005, and now the latest, Diary of the Dead. The Dead Quintet? Doesn’t really work, does it?

Anyway, commentary on modern society or not, The Dead Series (oooh, maybe that’s better, bet it’s been used) has threatened for many years to be Horror’s most accomplished crossover franchise. Even if you’ve never seen one you probably have an impression of their essence, some vague notion of what they’re all about. Massed ranks of lumbering, green-faced zombies, tearing chunks out of the living whilst also turning the camera in on ourselves to make some sort of wry observation. Right?

And you’d not be far wrong, let’s be honest. Night, Dawn, Day and Land have all been just that, and Romero’s reputation has trotted along behind each, happily soaking up the varying degrees of kudos and praise that come his way.

Dawn is the movie that most fans will point at as being the bona fide classic, and certainly it’s the most successful. It helps that in “when there’s no more room in Hell the dead will walk the Earth” it has one of the all-time greatest taglines, but it just seemed to strike a chord with so many people. Even that certified horrophobe, Roger Ebert, believed it to be:

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brilliantly crafted, funny, droll, and savagely merciless in its satiric view of the American consumer society.

And so, with his latest entry into the series, Romero has rebooted the entire thing by taking the story back to its very origins, the initial outbreak of the zombie plague. Catching, perhaps, the Redacted bug from Brian de Palma, he has mushed things up big style this time around and the rather flat and undynamic style that I found hamstrung the first couple of movies, is replaced by a panoply of varying film stocks and viewpoints. There’s CCTV, mobile phone footage, TV reportage, YouTube style downloads and a mess of faux amateur guff all fixed and re-cut by a group of film students who are making an independent horror film when they become aware of the big news story on their doorstep.

There’s not much new in this regard, of course. The Blair Witch camera-holders were film students, and suddenly realising that there’s this new thing called the internet will not be having anyone throwing themselves back in their cinema seats with amazement any day soon, but it can’t be denied that as a vehicle upon which to hang the story it has some credibility for our video-hooked generation. And, of course, that’s the point. The opening sequence of news footage is particularly strong, and much of the mock-up TV material really is very well done indeed. Similarly, it’s hard not to get carried away with the ‘downloads’ that the crew (travelling cross-country in a Winnebago) manage to snaffle from the ‘net.

But there are huge problems, most notably with the acting, which is mostly fairly poor. An exception to this is Michelle Morgan, as Debra, the girlfriend of Jason who we rarely see, he being the guy behind the main camera. Debra begins the whole shebang by telling us this is Jason’s film and she’s cutting it together for whoever might find it. She’s very good, but everyone else is pretty woeful. Nothing new, I’m afraid, as one of the things Romero was never very good at was getting decent players in. This is distracting, and irritating, and when the movie is actually trying to say something about how we assimilate data, about our visual addictions and the responsibilities we have to ourselves and others, to suddenly have a real stinker mess up the dialogue by making it parodical, renders it a travesty.

Second, we have, as we had with Cloverfield, the problem of drop-the-fucking-camera-already. Obviously, we need close-ups of the zombies, but 100% of us, I’m sure, would have abandoned the idea of documenting this kind of nightmare about 15 minutes in. Jason, to try and get around this, is made out to be artistic and earnest; two very laudable but notoriously difficult concepts to emote with any success. It should come as no surprise therefore that he comes across as a) an asshole, and b) someone willing to get every other idiot into deep, deep trouble. You can’t rail against a world of trials and tribulations when you’re shouting at the dick on the screen to act like a decent human being and sort himself out.

Third, it tries too hard to counter the earnest subtext by introducing a very poorly advised comic element towards the end. As the movie begins we see the group making a low-budget horror film where a Mummy is stiffly chasing a voluptuous girl through the forest. My hand slapped hard against my forehead when it dawned, at the end, that they were going to do this for real. Bad, bad idea. It’s a joke that falls fatally flat. Earnestness makes a reappearance (with, incidentally, a truly excellent ram-the-point-home coda) but this stupid interlude holes the boat beneath the waterline. It seems dumb, that in a forty year career, no doubt learning as he goes along, honing his craft, that in a 90 minutes movie where he can essentially mess about with convention to his heart’s content, Romero feels he has to so spectacularly get a three minute sequence so wrong.

Still, all that said, perhaps there is something to this Romero guy after all. There is a great deal to admire here, and to finally ask if we’re actually worth saving is a sentiment with which I imagine a lot of people will eagerly coincide.

Despite being a fair distance up itself, which I kind of expected, this Diary is one worth taking a sneaky look at.

The Cottage

Paul Andrew Williams caused a bit of a stir in the Artsy film market with his 2006 thriller, London to Brighton, and the success of that would appear to have given him the greenlight to complete the project he really fancied, The Cottage. It’s debatable that he should have continued dining out on the good will generated via that earlier release, and not bothered with this bit of bargain basement budget bollocks, but then this does have the feel of a project written and directed by a man simply unwilling to let it go. And with some impetus, sometimes you just can’t stop a determined man.

It starts off with a fairly tired premise and stutters along from there. Two brothers, David (Andy Serkis) and Peter (Reece Shearsmith) arrive at the eponymous cottage, having kidnapped Tracey (Jennifer Ellison). Tracey is connected to a bunch of nasty criminal fraternity types, as you might have already guessed. She’s a foul-mouthed little minx and is very quick to develop gaping holes in the amateurs’ game, and with hired hoodlums on the way to further muddy the waters, the ill-conceived plan is soon blown to bits. This, then, is one of those how-much-worse-can-it-get crime capers, where the least prepared of the bungling duo (Shearsmith) soon gets his nose broken, his jaw broken, his toes mangled, his…etc. You get the picture.

The element that Williams would suggest sets this apart is that at the two-thirds mark everything goes up a gear when the central characters stumble on a reclusive serial killer farmer who makes Leatherface look like Bob the Builder.

Well, maybe. Just a little bit, but essentially the shock of that soon wears off and it’s back to galloping around in the dark to the strains of the Benny Hill theme tune. No, not quite, but it might as well be.

In truth, I didn’t mind it at all, it’s done with good humour for a start, and there is one joke about those excruciating ‘torture porn’ scenes that go on and on, which made me laugh out loud. Shearsmith and Serkis make an interesting pairing with a little bit of genuine chemistry between them, and Ellison has what can only be described as diverting baps. I’m sorry, but it has to be said. They are. What do you want me to say, ferchrissakes?

Ultimately, though, it’s all very derivative and despite the darkness of some of the giggles, neither black enough, nor scary enough, nor funny enough to warrant more than an “it’s OK, yeah”.

So, Paul, it’s OK. Yeah? Try harder next time.

The Other Boleyn Girl

The Other Boleyn Girl tells the story of sisters Anne and Mary, daughters to effette but ambitious Sir Thomas Boleyn, a man eager to manipulate his family’s fortunes by passing the girls decorously beneath the nose of the king. Childless, with the fate of the nation in the balance, king Henry needs a distraction, and Thomas believes he can supply the goods.

Now, you need a strong man as the captain of a ship on choppy waters. And when that ship is going down as spectacularly as this film sinks, you need that someone to be a man with a calm and assertive presence. So, why get Eric Bana to play Henry VIII? Backed up by Scarlett Johannson and Natalie Portman? It seems almost like comedy casting, and the trailer (holy shit, right?) does nothing to disavow you of that thought (“In an age when a woman’s destiny…”, etc.). Unfortunately, these ‘heavyweights’ act merely as dolorous ballast, with all the acting ability of wet sandbags.

Thank Fuck, then, for Mark Rylance as Sir Thomas. Rylance has been one of our unsung acting stalwarts and heroes for God only knows how long. As a stage actor he’s untouchable, and as a screen presence he’s mesmeric. For much of this woeful adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s historical potboiler he holds the centre calmly and authoritatively; and it is odd indeed that in the role of a weak and feeble man he lends the film almost all the gravitas it can muster. It’s called acting, apparently. David Morrissey and Ana Torrent, as Katherine of Aragon, help out nobly, but Rylance is the main guy here, easily acting the socks off the Eric, Scarlett and Nat triumvirate, who essentially end up being clothes horses. Aren’t the costumes lovely, you’re expected to say. Well, that’s as maybe, but they have no substance, these people, nothing that makes you give a shit about them, or hate them, or feel anything strongly about them at all. They’re not Josh Hartnett bad, or Hayden Christensen bad, but you end up with that all-time worst feeling, instead of the comfort of derision, you get indifference.

We lose Paul Schofield and gain Eric Bana. Maybe God reads Heat magazine, after all.

Jesus, Mary and J-Lo, but The Other Boleyn Girl is poor. These big name Hollywood stars stomp around clenching their buttocks and grimacing in dark corridors whilst hopping in and out of bed with each other, while declaiming actorly insights into the punctuations of English history:

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Henry: I have torn this country apart – for you! Norfolk: If the king anulls the marriage he will break with Rome! Anne: Then why not? A new Church of England! Norfolk: Why, this piece of paper that Your Majesty has just signed turns out to be some sort of death warrant! Henry: Oops. …and I can’t go back on it without destroying the whole basis of the British Constitution…! Norfolk: I fear not!

OK, maybe not the last one, but God’s Toenails, there is so much shouting and waving of meaty exam-level soundbitery in here it’s difficult not to see it as anything other than a pointless exercise in didactic historical simplicity. In one scene, the feisty Katherine of Aragon is saying she won’t recognise the divorce Henry expects, and in the very next he’s telling Anne that he’s just ripped the kingdom away from Rome. Oh aye? When did that happen then? Do these things that ‘change a country forever’, as the laughable what-happened-next subtitled epilogues state, not take very long then? Five minutes, wa-ha-heyy, excommunicated. Bish bash bosh.

The annoying thing is that there are things to admire here, some imagery and brief splashes of style that catch the eye, but with the three woodentops nodding along after each other for the majority of screen time, it suffers, almost fatally, from being deadly dull. What I wouldn’t have given for Genevieve Bujold and Richard Burton chewing the scenery with passion and gusto, and Anne whispering, with tears in her eyes that she has a “little neck” ready for the sword. Go see Anne of the Thousand Days if you want the same story told with verve; apart from Rylance and a couple of his thespy chums, this, I’m afraid is not even laughably bad. It’s a bloodless emotionless mess.

El Orfanato (The Orphanage)

Mad about the boy…

Laura (Belén Rueda) grows up in an orphanage by the sea, until one day (seen in the pre-credit sequence) she is taken away by her new adoptive parents. Thirty years later she returns with her own family, husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and young son Simón (Roger Príncep), to blow the cobwebs off the old place and re-open it as a home for sick and disabled kids.

Taken away so young (she is six or seven in those early moments) her memories of the old home are hazy, but swim into her mind’s eye regularly. She has no recollection of what happened to her young friends, but becomes uneasy as stronger and stronger images of the past occur to her. Also a little disturbing is Simón who – until the new children arrive – must create imaginary friends as secret playmates. Gradually he seems more and more determined that these children are real. He draws pictures of them and one, a child wearing a sack mask, appears to be suddenly familiar to Laura.

The day of the children’s arrival approaches, but on the eve of the big event, a sinister social worker turns up to ask searching questions about Simón. She knows, and the audience now discovers, that the boy is adopted, that he has a serious illness (later we find out what it is), but Laura is very protective and throws the woman out. Doubts grow in your mind about Laura. Is she to be trusted? You see the film from her point of view, hell, you can’t escape from being inside her mind; but can you trust her?

On the day of the Grand Opening, Simón has an argument with Laura and runs off. Months pass, the home for children idea is shelved, and Laura and Carlos descend into melancholy. Driven by her despair, Laura tries to find out what happened to Simón, who the mysterious social worker might be, and what exactly happened at the orphanage after she left it so many years before.

Roger Ebert, in his review, said that El Orfanato was deliberately aimed at viewers with developed attention spans, and he’s spot on. There are ample opportunities here to descend into schlock and horror, but what first-time director Juan Antonio Bayona opts for instead (іAleluya, el héroe!) are long, long drawn out periods of absolute tension. For those waiting for jolts of terror, there is something about halfway through that will have you leaping out of your seat in surprise, but that’s merely there to prove it’s possible and the guy’s playing with you. For the most part Bayona wants to ratchet it up by degrees.

Is this a thriller, a ghost story or an exploration of the dark corners that despair and sorrow and grief can take us? I’m not sure. Covering a lot of shared ground with The Others and The Innocents, El Orfanato focuses on one woman whose emotions are no longer limited by the safety of conventional relationships. Losing her anchor via grief, Laura is forced to confront the things she’s scared of, and she’s going to drag you along with her. Rueda gives an intensely physical performance here, utterly driven by her need to find out what happened to her little boy. She’s got you on her grip, on her side, because you feel her grief for her, and once you’ve taken that step in, you’re hooked, even if, when the lights start to flicker, you may no longer fully trust the person whose hand you’re holding.

There are some distressing moments here (one, where Laura meets the child covered by the mask, will stay with you for good) but none as scary as the trailers. Do not watch them until after you have seen this terrific, thoughtful, smart movie. I don’t know what audience they think they’re aiming it at (or, rather, I’m afraid I do) but it’s not the one it should reach. After 30 minutes a bunch of kids left, muttering, disenchanted no doubt by the lack of cheerleaders and jocks being offed in increasingly inventive ways. Saw, this ain’t. Extraordinary it most certainly is.