Film Review of the Week

Drama

Ella McCay (12A)

Review: In Terms Of Endearment, the impeccably crafted weepie which earned James L Brooks three Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, Shirley MacLaine stops Jack Nicholson in his tracks by asking for his reaction to her telling him that she loves him. “I was just inches from a clean getaway,” he quips, flashing a wolfish grin. Brooks prevents several characters from making quick and easy getaways from their feelings in Ella McCay, a lightweight, politically-minded comedy drama starring Emma Mackey in the title role.

The year is 2008 and Governor Bill (Albert Brooks) is excited to be shortlisted for Secretary of the Interior for the incoming administration of US president Barack Obama. Bill’s popularity is largely due to the policies of his deputy, Lieutenant Governor Ella McCay (Mackey), and consequently, he anoints her as his successor. “What’s more beautiful than two people who owe each other everything?” Bill jokes to Ella. The announcement of Ella’s succession couldn’t come at a worse time. She is facing a potentially damaging newspaper article relating to her relationship with power-hungry husband Ryan (Jack Lowden) and her philandering father Eddie (Woody Harrelson) has reappeared and is stirring up deep-rooted anger about how he mistreated Ella’s mother (Rebecca Hall).

Additionally, Ella’s younger brother Casey (Spike Fearn), who hasn’t left his apartment for months but refutes suggestions he might be agoraphobic, neglects to answer the phone and could be emotionally spiralling after an awkward attempt to date Susan (Ayo Edebiri). As the new governor’s world spins off its axis, Ella seeks counsel from her aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis).

Ella McCay is a meandering meditation on the personal cost of public service and poor choices made in the name of love, which woos Brooks back to the director’s chair for the first time in 15 years since the release of the disappointing romantic comedy How Do You Know. His script steps back in time almost as many years to the immediate aftermath of Obama’s election win on a manifesto of hope and change, when voters looked to the White House for remedies to soothe a deepening economic crisis and curb openly hostility between the two tribes of the American political establishment.

Mackey’s 34-year-old lawmaker, the third youngest woman to hold the position of governor, errs towards exasperation at key junctures and Brooks relies on Oscar-winner Curtis to inject vim and humour as the straight shooter who doesn’t mince her words. When Harrelson’s serial womaniser asks what it will take for people to believe he is a changed man, her one-word response strikes a perfect note of withering disdain: castration. The subplot involving Fearn and Edebiri is quirky and endearing but superfluous. I campaign for brevity in Ella’s adversity.

Comedy

Fackham Hall (15)

Review: If Frank Drebin from the Naked Gun series magically time-travelled back to 1931 and blundered through the beautifully appointed halls of Downton Abbey, the resulting blitzkrieg of uproarious visual gags, puns, malapropisms and misunderstandings would be considerably funnier than Fackham Hall. Credited to five screenwriters including Jimmy Carr and his brother Patrick, director Jim O’Hanlon’s potty-mouthed spoof of chocolate-box period dramas is, alas, proof that tumbleweed did exist in England.

Lord Davenport (Damian Lewis) has no surviving male heir to inherit the most lavish hall in all of Shropcestershire, which has been in the family for more than 400 years: motto – Incestus Ad Infinitum. His four sons, John, Paul, George and little Ringo met untimely ends and the prospect of a woman taking charge of the eponymous country pile is too much for stiff upper lips to bear. With the blessing of Lady Davenport (Katherine Waterston), the master of the house plots to keep the estate in the family by marrying daughter Poppy (Emma Laird) to her odious first cousin, Archibald (Tom Felton). Their other child Rose (Thomasin McKenzie) protests that her sister should marry for love, not financial benefit.

Rose follows her heart and falls under the spell of the newest addition to the downstairs staff, Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe), an orphan pickpocket who has infiltrated the household under false pretences and reciprocates Rose’s feelings, positioning himself as a potential heir. As relationships falter and Poppy openly questions the potential repercussions for her kin (“We’re aristocracy. Surely laws do not apply to us!”) the local vicar (Jimmy Carr) musters a sermon full of wisdom and insight and Great Aunt Bonaparte (Sue Johnston) purses her disapproving lips on the sidelines.

Fackham Hall has the potential to be rollicking, irreverent fun but punchlines repeatedly face-plant and a scattershot script runs the gamut of bestiality, noxious flatulence and self-pleasure in search of just one body-shaking laugh. The ensemble cast are visibly working hard to spin gold from straw, particularly Radcliffe and McKenzie, who lean heavily into the sweet innocence of their characters’ all-consuming attraction.

A couple of outlandish sight gags work – a human bike rack, a stag falling from the sky onto a manservant, rather than a pheasant, when a shooting party goes rogue – but that’s a disappointingly meagre return for more than 90 minutes of screen time. Humour is consistently raunchy with a liberal sprinkling of profanities across the class divide. An Agatha Christie-style murder mystery replete with an outrageously moustachioed detective (Tom Goodman-Hill) and a grand reveal of a killer’s identity is thrown casually into the mix of upstairs-downstairs intrigue and gooey romance.

Horror

Silent Night, Deadly Night (18)

Review: In the lyrics to Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, we’re reminded that the man in the red suit knows if we have been bad or good, “so be good for goodness sake!”. Director Mike P Nelson’s remake of the 1984 slasher horror Silent Night, Deadly Night decks the halls with blood and entrails when a serial killer dressed as Santa takes his trusty axe to anyone who strays onto the naughty list.

Young Billy Chapman (Logan Sawyer) visits his ailing grandfather in a nursing home with his parents (Erik Athavale, Cora Matheson) in tow. “Naughty boys get punished. Santa is always watching,” whispers the old man, shortly before he coughs up blood in front of the traumatised urchin. Care home janitor Charlie (Mark Acheson) subsequently murders Billy’s parents while dressed in a Santa Claus outfit and his tormented spirit transfers into Billy’s body, providing the orphan with a murder-fixated inner monologue a la symbiote Venom from the Marvel Comics universe.

Billy tumbles through the care system and Charlie educates him to become a serial killer. When he turns 17, the youngster begins to slay “naughty” people while dressed as Santa in the run up to Christmas, recording daily kills by smearing victims’ blood behind the doors of a homemade advent calendar. Now grown up, Billy (Rohan Campbell) arrives in the sleepy town of Hackett and lands a job working for Mr Tims (David Lawrence Brown) at Ida’s Trinket Tree antiques store. The drifter develops an infatuation with Mr Tims’ daughter Pamela (Ruby Modine), who suffers from violent mood swings which she explains away as Explosive Personality Disorder (EPD). Guided by Charlie, Billy punishes unsavoury residents of Hackett but Pamela’s jealous ex, police officer Max (David Tomlinson), is watching.

Silent Night, Deadly Night is a predictably gory horror from the director responsible for the 2021 reboot of Wrong Turn, which dials up the volume on Canadian trio Blitz/Berlin’s soundtrack to herald each episode of wanton carnage, bookmarked by on-screen chapter headings that explicitly state who Charlie intends to exterminate next.

In the film’s most delirious sequence, Charlie discovers one seemingly harmless resident of Hackett is dreaming of a white supremacist Christmas. He proceeds to hack and slash through a festive get-together of nameless, swastika-saluting locals, occasionally growling the word “naughty!” to underline the ‘moral’ justification for the barbarity.

Campbell milks every droplet of likeability from his unfortunate antihero. Screen chemistry with Modine is lukewarm, but sufficient to provide Charlie with a reason to stay in town as bodies pile up. Make-up, prosthetics and practical effects deliver enough glistening splatter to quench the thirst of hardcore horror fans. Nelson’s slay ride is a brisk 96 minutes but doesn’t require whitened knuckles to hold on tight.