Horror
Final Destination Bloodlines (15)
Review: Dedicated to the memory of actor Tony Todd, who has portrayed soothsaying mortician William Bludworth in the Final Destination films since the ghoulish franchise took flight 25 years ago, a belated sixth chapter directed by Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky goes back to the beginning to expose the chain of events that set the deadly curse in motion. Cue a nerve-jangling set piece inside a 494-feet tall restaurant tower, which completed construction months ahead of deadline and is clearly signposted as a deathtrap before the gore flows freely in Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor’s squelchy screenplay.
Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire trills from a parking valet’s transistor radio and a totemic bad penny is plucked from a watery grave, foreshadowing the domino rally of devastation, evisceration and incineration that has become the series’ trademark. Stein and Lipovsky’s picture is more of the same, replete with visual callbacks to previous stomach-churning instalments.
Like its predecessors, Final Destination Bloodlines gleefully encourages us to predict how each character will meet their grisly demise from a dizzying array of potentially lethal props littered around each location. A summer barbecue in a residential back garden and a bout of after-hours inkwork in a tattoo and body-piercing parlour offer seemingly limitless options.
High-achieving college student Stefanie Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) is plagued by violent nightmares of her grandmother Iris (Brec Bassinger) more than 50 years ago and a disaster at the Skyview Tower where Iris’s sweetheart Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) proposed on bended knee. Unable to sleep or focus during lectures, Stefanie is placed on academic probation and risks losing her scholarship. In desperation, she travels home to reconnect with her father Marty (Tinpo Lee) and younger brother Charlie (Teo Briones) and learn more about her family’s past.
Stefanie ignores the pleas of her uncle Howard (Alex Zahara) and aunt Brenda (April Telek) and tracks down Iris (Gabrielle Rose) to a safehouse in the wilderness. The sleep-deprived teenager learns about the tragic curse – “Death is coming for our family” – and attempts to warn incredulous kin that the Grim Reaper will pay them a visit in chronological order by birth. Thus, cousins Erik (Richard Harmon), Julia (Anna Lore) and Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) nervously look over their shoulder while Stefanie tracks down the one person who has successfully evaded the jinx.
Final Destination Bloodlines stitches a flimsy narrative thread through the series timeline to connect the premonitions of an exploding airplane, motorway pile-up, derailed rollercoaster, race car circuit crash and bridge collapse. Special effects and make up don’t stint on the ruptured flesh and innards. Characters’ ham-fisted attempt to cheat the prophecy inside a hospital – surely the safest refuge – elicits the biggest whoops and cheers. Within staggering distance of a mortuary slab, the carnage is to die for.
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Thriller
Hallow Road (15)
Review: With his tonally ambitious fourth feature, Bafta-winning British Iranian filmmaker Babak Anvari tests how far parents will go to protective their offspring from the calamitous but necessary consequences of their reckless actions. Shot predominantly as a two-hander between Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys as characters speed through the night to the scene of a road accident, Hallow Road narrowly avoids becoming a car crash itself when screenwriter William Gillies performs a handbrake narrative U-turn in the film’s disorienting final stretch.
This genre gear shift, teased by cinematographer Kit Fraser in the opening montage, works surprisingly well, galvanised by wholly committed on-screen performances from the two leads and heart-tugging vocals from Megan McDonnell on the other end of a telephone call that plays out in agonising real-time. The central conceit is strongly reminiscent of Steven Knight’s 2013 thriller Locke starring Tom Hardy, and Anvari’s picture gnaws hungrily on the claustrophobia inside a vehicle enveloped by the darkness of the witching hour.
Stylistic flourishes, such as projecting data from the sat nav onto Pike’s face during a pivotal telephone exchange, generate bursts of kinetic energy while characters are seat-belted in submission. Exterior visuals are noticeably in conflict with the movement of the car’s steering wheel during one scene but otherwise, Hallow Road sustains the illusion of relentless onward travel into the night, bookmarked by a terrifically effective interlude bathed in the blood red of a traffic signal.
Shortly after 2am, paramedic Maddie Finch (Pike) receives a panicked telephone call from her 18-year-old daughter Alice (McDonnell), who hasn’t returned home after a heated argument that ended with the teenager storming out of the house and stealing her father’s car. Through whimpers and sobs, Maddie learns that her daughter has been involved in a hit-and-run on Hallow Road and a young girl now lies motionless on the asphalt. Maddie jumps into her car with husband Frank (Rhys) in the driver’s seat and they race to the scene while the mother coaches Alice through CPR.
Heart-stopping seconds pass and Frank eventually orders his daughter to stop performing chest compressions and get back into the car. “I have to put our daughter first,” he snarls at Maddie, whose medical training instinctively prioritises the wellbeing of the patient. Tension escalates as Frank and Maddie find themselves on opposite sides of a moral dilemma about protecting Alice from police scrutiny.
Hallow Road milks suspense from a simple premise that veers into the realms of the fantastical and otherworldly. Pike and Rhys are expertly matched and they relish a bruising power struggle between conflicted parents. Clip a child’s wings as they attempt to fly the nest and they will fall. With a sickening thud.
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