Horror
Evil Dead Burn (18)
Review: Washing dirty dishes and cutlery by hand could save your life. That’s the takeaway of French filmmaker Sebastien Vanicek’s relentlessly brutal and bloodthirsty instalment of the long-running horror franchise, which began rifling through the pages of the Book of the Dead in 1981 under the aegis of Sam Raimi. A rapidly decaying family home provides a pungent and conveniently crumbling backdrop to the flesh-ripping recriminations of Evil Dead Burn, including an exhilarating fight sequence shot in a single take from the perspective of a survivor crawling along the ground as carnage unfolds around them.
Alice (Souheila Yacoub) is numbed by the loss of her husband Will (George Pullar) in a fiery car accident. She blames herself for arguing with him in the street shortly before he drove away, fizzing with anger behind the wheel. The young widow is oblivious to a horrific chain of events at the crash site, which effectively condemned Will’s family to repeated attacks by demonic forces that answer the call of the ancient Necronomicon. Mired in grief, Alice reluctantly seeks solace with her in-laws in their isolated and decrepit home, staying close to sympathetic brother-in-law Joseph (Hunter Doohan) and his girlfriend Thya (Luciane Buchanan) who have always shown her kindness. Will’s parents Susan (Tandi Wright) and Edgar (Erroll Shand), however, and senile grandmother Polly (Maude Davey) are less welcoming to the sombre seclusion.
One by one, grieving kin are transformed into monstrous creatures called deadites. A reunion of tearful reminiscence, including a viewing of Alice and Will’s wedding video, degenerates into a hellish battle for survival around the tumbledown property. Thank goodness Edgar has a petrol-powered hedge trimmer stored in his workshop for just such an occasion.
Evil Dead Burn is the most intensely physical chapter of the series, punctuated by frenetic and bruising skirmishes that look sickeningly realistic in close-up on handheld cameras. Strong women proliferate on both sides of this war as screenwriters Vanicek and Florent Bernard crave our indulgence with some of the plot’s loopier excesses. Fight choreography and stunt performances are hugely impressive and directorial brio elevates the wince-inducing confrontations, including a disorienting showdown in a bathroom that rotates 180 degrees as a deadite walks up a wall and onto a ceiling in a single fluid motion.
A grisly opening sequence tethers events in Evil Dead Rise to this new gorefest and a car headrest and calligraphy pen are weaponised for nauseating thrills to ensure the stomach-churning carnage continues in earnest. Characters are stabbed, slashed and bludgeoned without mercy, reducing more than one cranium to a sticky pulp of bone, flesh and brain matter. If heaven is a place on Earth then, logically, so too must be hell. Welcome to purgatory as imagined by Vanicek and his team.
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Adventure
Moana (PG)
Review: A mere 10 years after the Oscar-nominated animation first set sail for heart-tugging adventure, a spirited live-action version of Moana adopts the almost-shot-for-shot approach of the recent How To Train Your Dragon remake with similarly crowd-pleasing results. Splashy in every sense, director Thomas Kail’s harpoons the same emotional beats as its predecessor and welcomes back Dwayne Johnson as amusingly self-absorbed demi-god Maui replete with sentient tattoos that act as his conscience. Self-deprecation, giggles and tightly curled locks? You’re welcome!
Spirited chieftain’s daughter Moana Waialiki (Catherine Laga’aia) has been groomed since birth to lead her people on the lush South Pacific island of Motunui and proudly continue the legacy of her father (John Tui). However, Moana feels a strong calling to the sea and the girl’s wise grandmother, Tala (Rena Owen), fills the youngster’s head with wild stories about demi-god Maui (Johnson), who stole the heart of the island goddess Te Fiti and lost this precious green stone during a battle with ferocious lava demon Te Ka.
Chief Tui and his wife Sina (Frankie Adams) urge Moana to put her people before her personal ambitions but Tala sympathises with her granddaughter’s inner turmoil. “Sometimes, who we wish we were and who we need to be, they don’t match up,” counsels the elder. As Tala’s time on the island nears its end, the grandmother urges Moana to seek out Maui, return Te Fiti’s missing heart and restore prosperity to the island before an insidious darkness infects all crops on the island. This daring odyssey takes Moana far from home in the company of comically clumsy rooster Heihei. Along the way, Moana and Maui descend into the realm of monsters to pull wool over the googly eyes of giant crab Tamatoa (voiced by Jemaine Clement).
Moana is anchored by newcomer Laga’aia’s luminous portrayal of the resourceful heroine. She has a sparkling voice for solos and catalyses delightful screen chemistry with Johnson and Owen. The intergenerational heartache is sensitively handled when Tala’s benevolent spirit manifests as a manta ray. Original songs written by Mark Mancina, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Opetaia Foaʻi, including How Far I’ll Go, You’re Welcome and Where You Are, warrant energetically staged set pieces. Shiny welcomes back Clement as the trinket-obsessed crustacean whose crowning lyrical glory remains rhyming demi-god with decapod. Miranda contributes a new song, Along The Way, which washes pleasantly over the end credits.
Returning screenwriter Jared Bush and co-writer Dana Ledoux Miller retain some original lines of dialogue (“If you wear a dress and have an animal sidekick, you’re a princess!”) but they also cut loose gags that haven’t aged well and mine fresh humour, like when Maui considers fattening up Heihei as a tasty snack on the high seas: “His name is Yum-Yum when he goes in my tum tum!” As digitally rendered flesh and feathers, the live action version of the rooster is even more ha-ha and ho-ho performing the same impeccably timed visual gags. Hamilton director Kail maintains an even keel through each gathering storm of dizzying digital effects.
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