Film Review of the Week

Sci-Fi

Bugonia (15)

Review: Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and actor Emma Stone began their wildly imaginative creative collaboration with acid-tongued period comedy The Favourite, which deservedly garnered them individual Oscar nominations as Best Director and Best Supporting Actress. They intensified the wonderful weirdness in Poor Things, which earned Stone her second golden statuette as Best Actress (after La La Land), and the pair kept pushing narrative boundaries in the twisted triptych, Kinds Of Kindness.

Director and actor shoot for the stars – figuratively and literally – in the unabashedly bonkers black comedy Bugonia about a nature-loving conspiracy theorist, who is convinced that aliens live among us on Earth. Jesse Plemons delivers an electrifying performance as this mentally unstable warrior, who goes to extreme lengths to prove his outlandish theory by abducting, interrogating and torturing innocent strangers who he asserts carry the hallmarks of ETs in disguise.

Stone gamely shaved her head for her eye-catching role as his latest target and she is utterly fearless in physically and emotionally demanding scenes of psychological warfare and manipulation to secure her freedom. Will Tracy’s script, based on Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 film Save The Green Planet!, pitches a curveball in the closing 15 minutes that will sharply divide audiences. I appreciated the full-throttled audacity and boldness.

Beekeeper Teddy Gatz (Plemons) has spent years identifying markers that reveal if someone is truly human or an otherworldly interloper known as an Andromedan. His studies identify Michelle Fuller (Stone), CEO of pharmaceutical company Auxolith, as a parasitic invader. Aided by his sweet-natured cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), Teddy kidnaps Michelle from outside her home and holds her captive in his basement. They shave off her hair and torture Michelle ahead of the forthcoming lunar eclipse, when Teddy is convinced an Andromedan mothership will enter Earth’s atmosphere.

Michelle rejects Teddy’s wild assertions and begs to be released, but her pleas fall on deaf ears. Consequently, she changes tack and pretends to be a high-ranking member of the Andromedan royal family in the hope that feeding her captor’s delusion will allow her to escape. Meanwhile, local police officer Casey (Stavros Halkias) investigates Michelle’s kidnapping and Teddy’s mother Sandy (Alicia Silverstone), who was a test subject for one of Auxolith’s experimental drugs, languishes in a coma at the company’s expense.

Bugonia is a wicked and wild ride that falls short of the brilliance of The Favourite and Poor Things but still boasts two of the best performances you will see all year. Plemons and Stone are expertly matched and the shifting power dynamic of their on-screen relationship is riveting. Lanthimos will never be a filmmaker who shies away from discomfort and despair and this latest work shipwrecks up in that bittersweet spot.

Thriller

Relay (15)

Review: How do you communicate safely and securely when big brother is always listening and watching? Director David Mackenzie’s ingenious thriller engineers a high-stakes game of cats and mice on the streets of New York using a real-life messaging relay service, which facilitates lively discourse between deaf and hearing communities. A deaf person uses a special keyboard to type out their half of a conversation and a relay assistant with a similar terminal reads aloud the typed message to the hearing person. The call recipient replies verbally and the relay assistant types the response word for word so the deaf person can read it. Back and forth it goes.

Screenwriter Justin Piasecki ruthlessly exploits the simple mechanics of a relay service to conceal the identity of the film’s crusading hero until exposure becomes an inevitability. The big twist relies on misdirection that feels like a blatant cheat in hindsight. Leading man Riz Ahmed barely utters a word on screen for the opening hour and his performance is magnetic. Through facial expressions and gestures, he conveys every emotion churning under the calm façade of his fixer, who lurks in the shadows and protects the innocent to atone for his own failings. He kindles palpable chemistry with co-star Lily James from a tantalising distance.

Ash (Ahmed) is a silent fixer, who supports and protects whistleblowers that have stolen evidence of corporate malfeasance and are terrified they will be permanently silenced to suppress the truth. Using a relay service to conceal his voice and identity, Ash acts as an invisible go-between, negotiating terms that ensure his client escapes punishment in return for keeping evidence under lock and key. Bioengineering company employee Sarah Grant (James) has damning proof that her corporate behemoth intends to sell genetically engineered grain, which could revitalise farming communities in developing countries and end global famine, but will have harmful side effects in the human food chain.

She reaches out to Ash through an intermediary and he cautiously takes up her case. Covert surveillance confirms that Sarah is being watched by Dawson (Sam Worthington) and his associates Rosetti (Willa Fitzgerald), Ryan (Jared Abrahamson) and Lee (Pun Bandhu). They are stationed outside her apartment and have bugged her phone. Using a series of disguises and technical failsafes, Ash sends Dawson and co down a rabbit hole of bogus leads to distract the high-tech pursuers while he shepherds Sarah to safety.

Relay successfully mines the deep-rooted paranoia of classic big screen thrillers and is satisfyingly plausible until the frenetic final act. Screenwriter Piasecki can’t quite nail the landing and he relies on outrageous good fortune rather than cunning and logic to facilitate Ash’s hastily conceived masterplan. Ahmed is fiercely compelling even when the film around him threatens to derail.

Horror

Shelby Oaks (15)

Review: The Blair Witch Project popularised found footage horror in 1999 and generated copious headlines about audience members fainting or feeling nauseous. That nightmarish expedition into the Appalachian Mountains spawned countless imitators and writer-director Chris Stuckmann’s feature debut leaps on to the rickety bandwagon. Shelby Oaks melds found footage, documentary-style interviews and a conventional third person narrative to explore the grim fates of a four-strong team of paranormal investigators, who share their exploits on a YouTube channel.

Initially financed through a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign, which raised almost 1.4 million dollars, and bolstered by additional budget from the film’s distributor for reshoots and more on-screen gore, Stuckmann’s picture leaks tension at an alarming rate in a messy and disjointed closing act which loudly references Barbarian and Rosemary’s Baby. The nervy, handheld faux-reality of four internet sleuths exploring an abandoned town in Darke County, Ohio, is the most compelling aspect of Shelby Oaks and the intentionally imperfect and grainy footage achieves one satisfying if wholly predictable jump scare.

Once the film’s heroine begins running around spooky locations in the dead of night, armed just with a handheld torch that inevitably loses power at a critical moment, it’s hard to muster heartfelt concern for the character’s wellbeing in the midst of demonic madness. Narrative dives into the occult are disappointingly predictable, paired with a pack of hell hounds that can’t be taught new tricks.

Twelve long, painful years have passed since the disappearance of Riley Brennan (Sarah Durn), host of the Paranormal Paranoids, from a house in the town of Shelby Oaks in the dead of night. Found footage of Riley’s last known whereabouts show her leaving her bedroom and disappearing into a hallway as wolves howl in unison. Her ghost-hunting partners in crime, David Reynolds (Eric Francis Melaragni), Laura Tucker (Caisey Cole) and Peter Bailey (Anthony Baldasare), are found murdered inside the house. Riley’s whereabouts remain unknown.

Documentary filmmaker Janet (Emily Bennett) interviews Riley’s older sister, Mia Brennan-Walker (Camille Sullivan), who is still obsessed with finding her sibling. Interest in the case is reignited when a strange man (Charlie Talbert) turns up on Mia’s doorstep holding a blood-smeared camcorder cassette. Against the advice of her husband Robert (Brendan Sexton III), Mia reignites the search for Riley and the shadowy history of Shelby Oaks reveals a sinister connection to a turbulent childhood.

Shelby Oaks won’t be inducing any sleepless nights this Halloween. Stuckmann’s script trades in familiar backwoods folklore and Sexton III’s concerned spouse could be divorced entirely from the plot. Sullivan delivers a solid lead performance and trembles convincingly on screen but her crusading older sister shows such reckless disregard for personal safety that her escalating misery is entirely self-inflicted.