Horror
Evil Dead Rise (18)
Review: The volume of blood in the human body varies depending on a person’s size, but can be around 10 pints. Writer-director Lee Cronin’s relentlessly grim horror thriller, the fifth chapter of the Evil Dead series, sprays every last drop of that glossy liquor across the screen as residents of a rundown Los Angeles apartment block fall victim to demonic forces which have been terrorising the big screen for more than 40 years. Anyone of a nervous or squeamish disposition will face a rollercoaster 97-minute ride of impressive make-up effects and splatter that treats the human body as a vessel for torture and evisceration.
The wanton carnage begins in a tense prologue set at a picturesque lakeside retreat where friends Jessica (Anna-Maree Thomas), Teresa (Mirabai Pease) and Caleb (Richard Crouchley) read Wuthering Heights, fly a drone and take a dip in the cooling waters that none of them will forget. Cronin’s script rewinds 24 hours to focus on seemingly unconnected characters in peril, who have the misfortune to come into close contact with an ancient book of the dead, the Naturom Demonto, bound in human flesh.
Previous Evil Dead films have unleashed malevolent forces in isolated locations but the latest instalment transplants the terror into the heart of a bustling city in a similar fashion to Scream VI, which also found there is no safety in numbers – just a larger volume of potential victims. As an exercise in gratuitous gore, Evil Dead Rise utilises a multitude of sharp objects to flood interiors in glistening crimson and rapidly shorten the life expectancy of everyone on screen, including cherubic children and household pets.
Guitar technician Beth (Lily Sullivan) abandons life on tour to visit her estranged sister Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland), a single mother with three kids Bridget (Gabrielle Echols), Danny (Morgan Davies) and Kassie (Nell Fisher) and an urgent need to find a new apartment. A 5.5 magnitude earthquake rocks the city, causing structural failures in the basement that expose an old bank vault and a copy of the Naturom Demonto, once safely entombed beneath crucifixes and other totems of protection. Danny secretly takes the tome and some vinyl recordings and unwittingly unleashes hell in the building with the family stranded on an upper floor without stairs or a functioning lift to spirit them away to safety.
Evil Dead Rise sacrifices nerve-shredding scares at the altar of slaughter, steadily increasing the body count with scenes of intense violence that fully justify an 18 certificate. Flecks of macabre humour (“Mummy’s with the maggots!”) are a welcome relief from the copious bloodletting as the cast scream and whimper through stomach-churning set pieces.
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Thriller
Missing (15)
Review: In 2018, writer-director Aneesh Chaganty visualised a father’s quest to find his missing 16-year-old daughter as overlapping windows on a desktop computer screen in the smartly executed thriller Searching. Chaganty’s film found an audience and turned a tidy profit, laying the foundations of this standalone sequel, written and directed by Will Merrick and Nick Johnson, which unfolds on computer, phone and smartwatch screens. The stylistic conceit which worked well five years ago has been polished in Missing, tumbling down a rabbit hole of electronic data and correspondence via email accounts, messaging applications, live camera streams, GPS services, mapping software and other apps.
Merrick and Johnson’s script seldom pauses for breath between cursors clicks, swipes and word-perfect keystrokes to sustain prickling tension, cranking up the emotional stakes with tears from lead actress Storm Reid as high-tech sleuthing uncovers disturbing facts about her family’s past. Narrative twists are copious, giving birth to poisonous conspiracy theories on social media channels that draw uncomfortable parallels to recent real-life cases where outlandish supposition and rumours have been widely traded as fact.
Twelve years have passed since June Allen (Reid) lost her father James (Tim Griffin) to a brain tumour and the truculent 18-year-old repeatedly spars with her protective mother. “You don’t understand the sacrifices I’ve made to give you the life you’ve had,” despairs Grace (Nia Long) during a heated exchange that precedes a week-long holiday in Colombia with her new boyfriend Kevin Lim (Ken Leung). Grace’s lawyer friend Heather (Amy Landecker) keeps an eye on home alone June during the break and on Monday morning, as instructed, the teenager waits at arrivals at Los Angeles International Airport to collect her mother.
Grace never materialises and enquiries to Colombian authorities via FBI Agent Park (Daniel Henney) fail to turn up solid leads. With the help of best friend Veena (Megan Suri), June ‘acquires’ Kevin’s email account password and sifts through a data trail of electronic correspondence to exhume disturbing facts about her mother’s beau. Utilising an array of digital tools and first-hand observations from local hire Javier (Joaquim de Almeida), who charges eight dollars an hour for his services, June turns private detective to find her mother. “Just because someone is your parent, it doesn’t mean they do not make mistakes,” warns Javier as the case warps everything June believes to be true.
Missing is a satisfyingly, suspenseful and serpentine thriller that allows us to stay one step ahead of June as she pieces together clues in real time on her devices. Reid’s engaging performance illuminates her character’s predictable arc from belligerence to terror and regret. Unravelling the mystery of Grace’s disappearance, including a conversation with a Colombian hotel receptionist conducted via translation software, is more satisfying than the film’s high-stakes final destination but the journey comfortably holds our interest.
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Action
The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan (15)
Review: Swashes buckle, blades clash and female characters defy 17th-century gender norms in director Martin Bourboulon’s handsomely staged two-part romp through the pages of Alexandre Dumas’s novel. The Three Musketeers: Milady will be released in France at the end of the year, glimpsing courtly intrigue through the eyes of the seductive spy. First, we are treated to two hours of breathlessly staged sword fights and chases on horseback in the company of Francois Civil’s dashing D’Artagnan as he joins the ranks of the valiant Musketeers.
Screenwriters Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patelliere retain core narrative bookmarks involving a diamond necklace but they offer subtle shifts in perspective with an emphasis on depicting intelligent, independent and resourceful women as the power behind the French throne. Dialogue is respectful to the rhythms and poetry of the era but retains a modern sheen. One Musketeer’s penchant for lovers of both genders is neatly summarised (“A thigh is a thigh”) and on-screen courtship is blush-inducingly sweet. An early skirmish between men loyal to King Louis XIII and the Cardinal de Richelieu is seemingly shot in a single take, the camera careening between D’Artagnan, Athos, Aramis and Porthos as they engage enemies in bruising, mud-smeared combat. It’s a breath-taking spectacle of technical virtuosity and impeccable choreography that leaves lead actor Civil visibly out of breath and us in a similar state of thrilling exhaustion.
The year is 1627 and gifted swordsman D’Artagnan (Civil) heads to Paris with a letter of recommendation addressed to Captain De Treville (Marc Barbe), commander of the Musketeers, who are sworn to protect King Louis XIII (Louis Garrel) and the queen, Anne Of Austria (Vicky Krieps). En route, D’Artagnan unknowingly interrupts a diabolical plot orchestrated by Milady (Eva Green) and suffers what appears to be a fatal blow in blade-wielding battle. Thankfully, news of the hero’s demise is greatly exaggerated and he arrives in the French capital to make unfortunate first impressions on Athos (Vincent Cassel), Aramis (Romain Duris) and Porthos (Pio Marmai).
As divisions between Protestants and Catholics threaten war between France and England, the Cardinal de Richelieu (Eric Ruf) secretly colludes with Milady to smear the queen’s reputation by exposing her relationship with the dashing Duke Of Buckingham (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd). The queen’s seamstress and confidante Constance (Lyna Khoudri) entangles D’Artagnan in the courtly intrigue, setting in motion a series of daring missions to protect the French throne from Machiavellian machinations.
The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan is a lavish retelling that doesn’t deviate greatly from expectations but spares no expenses with production design, costumes and fight choreography. Civil’s whippersnapper is the dramatic fulcrum but co-stars share screen time to develop their full-blooded characters to the point that a climactic use of storytelling convention – “To be continued…” – leaves us pleasantly hungry for more.
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