TERRIFIER 3

CONTAINS SPOILERS

Well, I've only myself to blame. I did wonder, when I saw Terrifier 2 a couple of years ago, whether I'd bother with a third instalment in a series that started very unremarkably and plummeted immediately into the lowest kind of loathsome, noxious sludge. It seemed unlikely that the series would immediately improve to the point where it suddenly became quality horror and its bogeyman figure Art The Clown would attain the status of bona fide slasher icon, up there at the top table with Michael and Jason and Leatherface. Yet even with the lowest of expectations, I was unprepared for just what a miserable, joyless and utterly boring experience this film turned out to be. On at least two occasions I was tempted to walk out because this is easily one of the worst, most despicable horror movies I've seen in years, if not decades. If there is such a thing as the pornography of violence then Terrifier 3 is probably as close as you'll get. 

The synopsis of this mindless, infantile drivel is basically: Art The Clown turns up yet again and butchers a bunch of people. He seems to be targeting Sienna (Lauren LaVera) from the first two movies, but will happily also hack to pieces pretty much anyone who turns up. Sienna has been in a psychiatric hospital since Terrifier 2 and is now released to extended family; meanwhile the reborn Art has sat in a chair for five years until a couple of demolition guys turn up to knock his hideout down. Then it's carnage galore: it's Christmas so Art dresses up as Santa... and butchers a bunch of people.

The trouble with Terrifier 3 is exactly the same as with Terrifier 2: it doesn't know when to stop. That's because Damien Leone, the auteur responsible for this utter garbage, doesn't know either. He's not even aware that there is actually a line in the sand, or that the line might be there for a good reason. Art's first victim here is a boy of about nine, hacked to death with an axe for absolutely no narrative reason at all. (The actual killing happens off camera, but the bloody mutilated corpse is presented for us all to enjoy, hahaha, pass the popcorn.) And midway through the film is a scene in which Art The Clown leaves a parcel bomb in a shopping centre Santa's Grotto to be opened by a small child. It's a cheap, tawdry shock moment that's only there for a sick laugh: if this is a joke, it's an Arthur Fleck joke. Even Leone is surely aware at this point of that line being crossed as one character reacts to the news coverage: "was it a terrorist incident?". To which the answer is actually yes, it was, and Art The Clown is actually a figure that should be dealt with by the FBI, SWAT teams, the Secret Service and Chuck Norris, and not a traumatised teenage mental patient with a magic sword.

The result is a film that wallows in its bloodshed and slaughter, that rejoices in the carnage and dismemberment, because that's all it knows how to do and that's all it wants to do. It doesn't have a charismatic villain: Art The Clown is a boring zero of a wannabe slasher icon: just pure unreasoning evil. In Halloween, Dr Loomis suggets that what was living behind Michael Myers' eyes was pure evil, but, as Kim Newman observes in Nightmare Movies (an essential tome, by the way), Myers "seems to enjoy scaring people more than killing them." Art is not interested in scaring people, merely killing them as bloodily and viciously as possible. Nothing Art ever does is remotely funny: granted, nothing Jason and Michael do are particularly funny either but the crucial difference is they're not supposed to be (let's ignore the fact that clowns aren't funny anyway). Art is enjoying himself far too much with the random killings and if we're supposed to be joining in the fun, we need some semblance of a reason. All the other horror icons of that pantheon, that Art so desperately and pathetically wants to join, have just enough story to make them scary - hell, just a few sentences - but (at least in their earlier episodes) not enough story to diminish them. Art has nothing, and is nothing.

So why do it? Leone must surely know that he can't actually make a good film, nor even a half-decent one, but what he can do is pile up the blood and entrails. He doesn't give a damn about character, about nuance, about storytelling: all he's interested in is getting to the next brutal overkill as quickly as possible and then gloating over it. Because that's all he's got. Like the previous instalment, this exists purely as a showcase for the prosthetics and make-up work and yes, that's a very impressive rendering of a guy being rectally chainsawed. But making the bloodiest slasher movie is like shooting the most explicit porn film, or playing the longest jazz accordian solo. These just aren't records anyone's really interested in breaking any more. Leone seems unaware that the highlights of the horror genre do not, as a rule, dwell on the splat for reels at a time: Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre operate on almost Merchant Ivory levels of bloodshed, and are acknowledged classics.

The great gore movies use their gore for a reason, to make a social comment or a satirical point, but they never use it for wanton cruelty and heartless sadism the way Terrifier 3 does. Merely emptying the steaming offal bucket over the audience does not make a horror classic, but empty schlock rubbish of the Olaf Ittenbach and Andreas Schnaas ilk. This is not a film from a Romero or a Carpenter or a Hooper or a Cronenberg or a Craven, it's a film from the mind of a fourteen-year-old boy who's spent too long under the bedcovers with the dregs of Troma Films and has no conception of the word "Enough", and he really, really needs to grow up. Terrifier 3 ends as a setup for Terrifier 4, and while I wondered whether I would come back for this instalment, I can guarantee that I won't be there for the next. Unlike Damien Leone, I've got better things to do with my time.

*

JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX

CONTAINS SOME MAJOR SPOILERS AND A LITTLE SADNESS

Maybe in hindsight it's hardly surprising that the new Joker movie didn't exactly wow me. Firstly, I wasn't a huge fan of the first one: it seemed to be as deliberately offputting as possible, a film that set out solely to make the viewer (and specifically me) uncomfortable and uneasy. Secondly, I have largely given up on Marvel and DC comicbook movies anyway on the grounds that I'm just fed up with them (The Flash still remains the only film I can think that's killed an entire subgenre stone dead for me). And I was largely right in my preconceptions: while I remain ambivalent about Joker I'm absolutely not so both-sides about Joker: Folie A Deux, a film that annoyed me far more than it entertained me, and a film which didn't do anything I might have liked but did a whole lot of things I definitely didn't. The main one of those is that it's a musical, one my my very least favourite genres: there are maybe five musicals that I can actually take and this absolutely is not one of them. 

We are back in the miserable world of hopeless standup Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), in the midst of being assessed for competency to stand trial for the five (or six) murders Fleck/Joker committed in the first film. Is he sane enough to face the death penalty or is he unfit to plead, sending him to proper psychiatric care? In a music therapy group he meets and connects with Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), who's obviously some version of Harley Quinn - but is she connecting with him or Joker? Is it actual love, or just the obsession of a superfan? Even as the trial proceeds (with Harvey Dent as prosecutor, lest we forget this is a Batman spinoff), the chanting mob gathers outside...

Much of Joker: Folie A Deux is a prison drama and courtroom drama, but interspersed with stylised song and dance numbers taking place within Fleck's mind. Personally I found this distracting and with a running time of 138 minutes I could have cheerfully lost them, especially since there seem to be so many of them. (There were three points at which I almost said out loud "Oh, no, they're going to sing again, aren't they?" And they did!) And for a reported budget of $190 million plus: where's there big screen spectacle? A dialogue heavy film taking place in two main interior locations, and with no huge setpieces or endless CGI overkill, really should cost half that much at most. Worse: for any of us who might have actually been invested in Fleck's story and character, and who had given them 260 minutes over two films, the ending will feel like a swindle. Still, at least it rules out Joker 3...

Is it at least better than Joker? I'm not sure that it even clears that fairly modest bar. The first one was obviously trying to do something different with the whole DC/Batman mythos, but neither the Joker nor the perpetually downtrodden Fleck were particularly enjoyable company and to be honest it's the same here. It's hopelessly grim throughout (Hildur Gudnadottir gives us yet another glum cello-led score that's not going on any of my playlists), devoid of joy and lightness - why so serious? Frankly it's small wonder Fleck keeps escaping into showtune fantasias. That's obviously the point, but if you want to smuggle in an Author's Message about mental illness and insanity pleas then maybe this isn't the right vehicle for it.

As for the sadness: this was the last film at the Bedford Cineworld which closed Sunday night after thirty-three years. Since New Year's Eve 1990 I've seen precisely 1,037 films in that sixplex and it's a shame it's closing. Obviously I had to be there for the last house, whatever they were showing. But it's also a shame that they bowed out on such a whatever of a film: underwhelming, far too long, occasionally unbelievable, riddled with annoying songs and with a sour ending even for the sourest of characters. Though I liked the visual palette of the film, and I'm not about to deny the performances, it never wowed me, it never came to life and, even though one of the characters actually sets light to the building, it never catches fire. Maybe the joke's on me, maybe it's on all of us. But no-one's laughing.

**

MEGALOPOLIS

CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS

Well, it's a failure: a frequently ludicrous spectacular that has more going on in its excessive length and scope than any mainstream studio release this year, or indeed from the last few years. It's an allegorical fable that seeks to draw parallels (not necessarily subtly: some are less drawing parallels and more screaming "Do You Get It???" into your face through a luminous bullhorn) between the fall of the Roman Empire and the decline of the modern/future America, but there's also a pleasing parallel between the smaller story of a man determined to build his Megalopolis City Of The Future at whatever cost, his way, and Francis Ford Coppola's 40-year determination to make his beloved Megalopolis movie, at whatever cost, his way. Because that's what Coppola's done: sold his wineries and put up all the $120 million himself rather than compromise his vision for the moneymen. He is the moneyman: his dime, his rules, there is no-one standing behind him with a big stick telling him to stop it. And frankly I'd like this to happen a lot more: for films to be made by filmmakers with a need to tell stories rather than accountants with a need for a new Porsche.

Adam Driver is Cesar Catalina, chairman of the Design Authority of New Rome, trying to build his dream city from this revolutionary new material he's either discovered or invented called Megalon. He's fiercely opposed by the corrupt and unpopular Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) who just wants to build a casino there; his banker is Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), his mistress is TV presenter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), and his new-found muse is the relatively normal-named Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), who just happens to be Cicero's daughter. Oh, and he has a superpower for some reason.

So it's part The Fountainhead, part Caligula (only without all the humping). Much of it is actually pretty interesting and enjoyable, though there are times when Coppola feels the need to chuck in weird and surreal visual touches, like he did with his Dracula but he absolutely didn't do with The Godfather. (One of those is a great film, one of them isn't, and you know which is which.) The political machinations should be the most interesting thing, but sadly some of the dialogue is howling at the moon terrible, plot threads which should be seismic are resolved quickly and simply abandoned (Cesar is involved in a fake sex tape; ten minutes later it's forgotten), and Cesar himself isn't a sufficiently engaging character to make us care very much. Even a brilliantly timed shock moment doesn't really have any impact.

There's no question that it's a mess. Yet it's constantly fascinating, occasionally baffling, frequently barking mad and genuinely unique. And it's only out there at all because of the way FFC has done it: if he'd kept his wineries and let Netflix dictate terms for a limited series it would have just disappeared into the vague noise of a thousand other streaming shows. In the end, Megalopolis might be remembered more as a colossal financial and critical flop, or one crazy old man's last roll of the dice, rather than for its own merits. And it's a lot better than Twixt or Youth Without Youth. (I've never seen Jack: should I?) Some have said Megalopolis is one of the worst movies they've ever seen: all I can say is that they need to see more films because this isn't the worst movie I've seen this week. By a long shot.

***

HUNT KER KILL HER

CONTAINS SPOILERS

Tedious, arguably misogynistic drivel in which a young woman is chased round a factory by homicidal maniacs for no reason other than what might charitably be described as a study of toxic masculinity, and less charitably as brutal, knuckleheaded entertainment for lowlifes and sadists, suggesting that we really haven't moved on since the despicable likes of I Spit On Your Grave. "Women in peril" has been a staple of cinema for over a century but rarely has it been as crass, thuddingly nasty and devoid of entertainment value as it is here. If this had come out forty years ago it would have been straight on the banned list before you could say Deodato. Now it's somehow escaped with a 15 certificate. That's progress, I suppose.

Halfway through divorce proceedings and with an unwell child, young mother Karen (Natalie Terrazzino) takes a job as a night cleaner at a local factory. But on her first shift she is menaced by masked intruders intent on killing her. Why? Because one of them is her violent wifebeating ex and the others are his equally violent (and incredibly stupid) buddies out to murder her so he can get custody back. Extended scenes of run, hide and fight ensue: mostly shot in semi-darkness at best and none of them having any real impact.

You could wonder why his dumbass buddies continue to chase her after she starts fighting back and killing them - indeed you could wonder why they showed up at all as accessories to murder - and you could wonder how the hell the dumbass ex-husband thinks he's not going to be a suspect given that he's already murdered someone else. While we're at it, why didn't these idiots just bring a bunch of shotguns? Finally, you might ask why anyone thought this tiresome, thicko macho garbage was any kind of good idea: it's not as if there's anything more to their persecution than "kill the bitch". Of course she's the Final Girl, but she's the Only Girl. She's going to win out at the end, but she has to go through Hell to get there and the balance between them is off: there's too much victimisation and nowhere near enough vengeance.

Hunt Her Kill Her (there's no comma in there) is honestly a chore. Story and character this thin and shallow and simple-minded means you don't have to think about them, but there's nothing else in there to think about, so all that's left is chasing and fighting and none of that's remotely interesting here. Coralie Fargeut's Revenge, as an example, was done with energy any vitality and style, but there's nothing like that here: it's just nasty and unpleasant, like its male characters. And also like its male characters, I hated the time spent on it and was glad when it was finished with.

*

WINNIE THE POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY II

CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS

The atrocity continues. Not content with making a sleazy and senseless splatter movie out of (supposedly) beloved childrens' characters purely because the copyright had expired, they've done it again: gorier, stupider, nastier and, for all the increased body count and upfront flesh-ripping, far duller. Reimagining Pooh, Tigger, Owl etc as homicidal maniacs dismembering pretty young idiots is a one-joke idea that would make for a semi-decent post-watershed sketch on Comic Relief, but not a full feature film and sure as hell not an ongoing saga that looks to be leading to a cinematic Poohniverse.

Christopher Robin (a different actor, but no less punchable) is now in therapy, not just for the massacre from the first film but also the childhood disappearance of his younger brother. He and his family are still hounded and blamed for the events of the first film: a succession of bellends keep wandering into the killing grounds of Hundred Acre Wood and getting ripped to pieces, and a bunch of local teens are planning a massive rave. But then Christopher's therapy uncovers a lost memory of his brother's abduction, ultimately leading to the horrifying truth about those creatures in the wood...

Obviously Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey II is utterly terrible. Whether it's better or worse than the first one is like asking whether Alsatians or Golden Retrievers produce the turds you'd least like to step in. Mean-spirited, with dozens of teens wheeled on merely to be slaughtered, and indifferently staged outside of the splatter highlights, it boasts an appearance by Simon Callow for no obvious reason, a search engine called Milne, occasional narration from the kind of voice that normally recommends Mr Kipling's Almond Slices, and a hilarious instance of Chekhov's Dishwasher. Fans of decapitations and wanton bloodshed might get a few laughs out of it, but really it's just poo(h).

*

PANDEMONIUM

AVEC LES SPOILIERES

The first 25 minutes of this French afterlife horror are brilliant: a dialogue on a snowy mountain road between Nathan and Daniel: two men realising they've both been killed in a car accident and that they're suddenly ghosts. What to do now? Are they stuck at the crash site for eternity? Or will they be guided into an afterlife? Heaven or Hell? What a crying shame that Pandemonium immediately nosedives into two thoroughly uninteresting stories of death, a surprise nod to Lucio Fulci and a genuinely bleak view of what comes post-bucket kicking.

While Daniel walks reluctantly through the (definitely not pearly) gateway and is never seen again, Nathan follows and finds himself in the last scene of The Beyond: a desolate corpse-strewn wasteland. And he discovers he can experience the crimes and cruelties that led those people there. One is a child who murdered her family, one is a woman who ignored her daughter's schoolyard persecutions. And then he finds the true meaning of hell and the punishment for his own crimes...

It's not as if either of the two illustrative stories had some kind of ghoulish twist in the tale a la Creepshow. You just watch these extended vignettes thinking there must be more to them that this - but there isn't. But it's not as if either of them had any bearing on Nathan's own story or there are any lessons to be learned because the film's own take on the afterlife is eternal suffering and despair regardless of earthly conduct (even though that explicitly doesn't happen at the start, although this is Hell and the demons might be lying), which makes no sense at all. And the final coda is completely out of nowhere and makes even less sense.

Some would argue that ghost stories are optimistic: they suggest life after death, that (as Stanley Kubrick said) oblivion is not the end. This depiction of What Happens Next emphatically is not optimistic: eternal, meaningless punishment without purpose or reason. Thanks for sharing your vision, Quarxx (whose real name is the far more normal Alexandre Claudin, apparently). Sadly, the intriguing promise of the first half hour is completely lost and the result is a film which got steadily more annoyed and irritated with, to the extent that I only just managed to resist the temptation to switch it off.

*