Horror
Cobweb (15)
Review:
In a key scene from director Samuel Bodin’s suspenseful horror thriller, father and son carefully lay down rat poison in response to scratching behind the walls of the boy’s bedroom and the tyke observes the pellets’ heady aroma of cinnamon. “Be careful. Not everything is as sweet as it seems,” remarks his father. This sage counsel has multiple applications in Cobweb, an unsettling tale of things that go bump in the night penned by Chris Thomas Devlin, which exploits universal fears of the dark and the creaks, sighs and groans that are part of the fabric of older houses.
Clocking in under 90 minutes, Bodin’s picture unfolds in the week leading up to Halloween and delights in the witching season’s iconography, including carved pumpkins and costumed trick or treaters. Horror fans are well versed in the dangers of this time of year and after a sustained period of tension, Cobweb reveals what is actually making the nocturnal noises and leans heavily on special effects and splatter to cut the small ensemble cast down to the bare and bloodied bones. Lead actor Woody Norman, who was deservedly Bafta nominated for his tour-de-force supporting performance in C’mon C’mon, finesses a repertoire of terrified, wide-eyed stares and silent shrieks at the blackened heart of the mystery.
He plays eight-year-old Peter, who is emotionally distant from secretive and protective parents Mark (Antony Starr) and Carol (Lizzy Caplan). They are oblivious to the relentless bullying their son suffers at the hands of a classmate (Luke Busey). The only people who care are supply teacher Miss Devine (Cleopatra Coleman), who is urged to stop meddling by the elementary school’s concerned principal (Jay Rincon), and a girl called Sarah (Aleksandra Dragova), whose voice emanates through the walls.
Peter tries in vain to tell his parents about this guardian angel but they dismiss his concerns as an overly active imagination. “This is an old house. There’s bound to be bumps in the night,” coos Carol. After an argument with his parents about trick or treating, Peter learns an 11-year-old girl disappeared from the neighbourhood at Halloween and reflects tearfully on his insolence with a brief stay in the basement. In his hour of need, Sarah is Peter’s sole comfort and the boy vows to help his sympathetic phantom escape from her prison between the walls.
Cobweb is genuinely unnerving for an opening hour of inference and menace before screenwriter Devlin clarifies whether Peter’s monsters are real or imagined. Additional characters are hurriedly introduced for the third act to inflate the potential body count without any emotional investment on our behalf. The dramatic set-up before the screaming begins is the treat. A conventional payoff is the trick we have seen many times before.
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Action
The Equalizer 3 (15)
Review: Bookended by bloodbaths, The Equalizer 3 completes a gratuitously gory trilogy which reunited two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington with his Training Day director Antoine Fuqua to portray a former government assassin turned vigilante made famous on the small screen by Edward Woodward. Returning screenwriter Robert Wenk stitches loose narrative threads between the three instalments as he transplants Robert McCall to the cobblestoned lanes and charming piazzas of picture postcard southern Italy, where locals congregate to watch films projected on to a whitewashed building facade.
Death and dismemberment run rampant through paradise and the wanton bloodshed is exhausting. It is not enough for Fuqua to luxuriate over the aftermath of one rampage through a vineyard masseria – a gory tableaux of lifeless goons whose eye sockets and craniums have been forcibly introduced to every sharp object in the establishment. The Equalizer 3 needlessly flashes back to the slaughter through McCall’s jaded eyes, replaying each grisly kill computer-game stylee and bombarding us with cruelty and carnage until we wave a white flag in wearied submission. Washington’s committed performance, recuperating from his tormented character’s life-threatening wounds with a walking cane, delays the inevitable butchery and a protracted showdown with the Camorra that flirts uncomfortably with risibility as McCall singlehandedly neutralises a small army of gun-toting thugs.
The titular crusader is badly hurt during a high-stakes job in Sicily and loses consciousness on the outskirts of the picturesque fishing village of Altamonte. An off-duty Carabinieri (Eugenio Mastrandrea) spirits Robert to local doctor Enzo (Remo Girone), who performs surgery behind closed doors, removing bullets and dressing Robert’s deep wounds. “Will the bad men come looking for you?” asks Enzo. “No,” softly replies Robert. The American regains his strength and humanity in the close-knit community and befriends locals including warm-hearted waitress Aminah (Gaia Scodellaro) and family-oriented fishmonger Angelo (Daniele Perrone).
Alas, sadistic crime boss Vincent Quaranta (Andrea Scarduzio) is targeting Altamonte for a lucrative development of hotels and casinos and despatches younger brother Marco (Andrea Dodero) to terrorise the residents into submission through extortion and intimidation. Robert witnesses the bullying and refuses to turn a blind eye to the insidious threat of the criminal fraternity. “They’re like cancer, and like cancer – no cure,” laments Enzo, pushing the medical metaphor. Meanwhile, Robert lures CIA agent Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning) to Naples to investigate shipments of amphetamines connected to an active Syrian terrorist cell.
The Equalizer 3 numbs us with relentless destruction against a backdrop of unspoilt European beauty. One smouldering ember of potential romance with Scodellaro’s waitress is extinguished by a tsunami of glossy crimson spewing from severed arteries as Fuqua and cinematographer Robert Richardson conceive elaborate shots to fixate on the exterminations. Be grateful this final chapter has the shortest running time of a saga of steadily diminishing returns.
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