Movie Review: Body at Brighton Rock

Body at Brighton Rock *** / *****

Directed by: Roxanne Benjamin.

Written by: Roxanne Benjamin.

Starring: Karina Fontes (Wendy), Casey Adams (Red), Emily Althaus (Maya), Miranda Bailey (Sandra), Martin Spanjers (Davey), Matt Peters (Kevin), Susan Burke (Coroner), John Getz (Sheriff), Brodie Reed (Craig).

 

Although Body at Brighton Rock is her debut feature, I was already a fan of writer/director Roxanne Benjamin, based on her segment of the omnibus horror film Southbound (and less so of her segment of the other omnibus horror film XX – which was stylish, but empty). She’s got the chops of a great horror filmmaker in a way that calls to mind the films of the 1980s, without it becoming an empty throwback to those days. Body at Brighton Rock is not great film – from a number of reasons – but it confirms Benjamin’s talent, and makes me really want to see what’s next for her.

 

The film’s opening credit sequence may be my favorite sequence of the film – a kind of perfect tribute to low rent, 1980s horror films that immediately makes you think of the films of John Carpenter, or at least the best of the recent films aping his style – Adam Wingard’s The Guest. It’s a cheque that the rest of the movie can never quite cash – because this really isn’t an exploitation movie in any way, or even a very violent one. The style is at once instantly recognizable and done well, but somewhat at odds with the content. Benjamin will settle that style down – at least for long stretches – but it’s such a rush to see her do it so well, I really want to see her really do a 1980s style slasher film – with her own take on it of course.

 

What Body at Brighton Rock is really about though is a survival tale about Wendy (Karina Fontes) – a young woman, a part time park ranger, who usually works the entrance gate or gift shop – or with children’s groups – who wants to prove something to her park ranger friends who thinks she couldn’t hack it as a real ranger – as someone really out there in the wilderness. So she switches job with her friend for the day, and heads out onto the trail – her job is to replace all of those brightly colored signed you see stapled to things in parks that we always ignore. But Wendy, well, she isn’t really good at this hiking thing, and eventually when she scales a peak and takes a selfie to share with her friends, she figures out she isn’t where she thinks she is. Even more disturbingly however, in the background of her selfie, she notices a dead body. She radios it in – and is told she’ll have to spend the night out there. Things will not go well.

 

It was smart of Benjamin to establish early on that Wendy is not much of an outdoorsman – it helps to make some of things she does seem believable, like when she loses her maps, or the moment where she sees another man, living this time, hovering of the body and is so scared of being seen that she does something that not only gets her immediately noticed, but also gives away her position. It helps that newcomer Fontes is never less than charming in the role – she isn’t portrayed as dumb, just as ill-equipped for what she has to do – which, if you’re someone like me, who would be even more ill-equipped, is relatable.

 

The film only runs about 87 minutes, and Benjamin probably has to pad things to get it to that runtime. You spend a surprising amount of time setting everything up in the daylight – and then that creepy encounter with Red, which you cannot shake, but also don’t quite know what to make of until the end. There’s also a quite a few fake-outs throughout the film – a dripping bag for instance, or all those moments when she thinks something is happening that isn’t. And the ending comes right out of left field.

 

And yet, all of that is part of its charm. I think Benjamin knows what she’s doing here – she’s making a low budget film, that is a riff on low budget films, and gives us everything you think you could want and more. It’s fun little movie – you won’t remember it for long after you’ve seen it, and its best not to think too hard while watching it – but it shows promise and skill, and is an entertaining way to spend 87 minutes. And I don’t think its ambitions were any higher than that.

Movie Review: XX

XX ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Roxanne Benjamin (Don't Fall) and Karyn Kusama (Her Only Living Son) and Anne Clark aka St. Vincent (The Birthday Cake) and Jovanka Vuckovic (The Box).

Written by: Jovanka Vuckovic based on the story by Jack Ketchum (The Box) and Roxanne Benjamin & Anne Clark aka St. Vincent (The Birthday Party) and Roxanne Benjamin (Don't Fall) and Karyn Kusama (Her Only Living Son). 

Starring: Natalie Brown (Susan Jacobs -The Box), Jonathan Watton (Robert Jacobs - The Box), Peter DaCunha (Danny Jacobs -The Box), Peyton Kennedy (Jenny Jacobs - The Box) Melanie Lynskey (Mary - The Birthday Party), Seth Duhame (David - The Birthday Party), Sanai Victoria (Lucy - The Birthday Party), Sheila Vand (Carla - The Birthday Party), Lindsay Burdge (Madeleine - The Birthday Party), Casey Adams (Paul - Don't Fall), Breeda Wool (Gretchen - Don't Fall), Angela Trimbur (Jess - Don't Fall), Morgan Krantz (Jay - Don't Fall), Christina Kirk (Cora - Her Only Living Son), Kyle Allen (Andy - Her Only Living Son), Mike Doyle (Chet - Her Only Living Son), Brenda Wehle (Principal Jenks - Her Only Living Son), Morgan Peter Brown (Mr. Dayton - Her Only Living Son).

 

XX is a film I wanted to like a whole lot more than I ended up liking it - as the film sadly ranks as a missed opportunity more than anything else. Omnibus films often are overall disappointments, but usually they offer at least a couple of segments that are worth seeing. XX – which is a horror anthology with a great premise – films made by, for and about women – has four segments, none of which are really bad, but none that really rise to the level of must see either. More disappointingly, I think the films mainly miss the mark of doing something truly outside the box in terms of its depiction on women in the horror genre. Horror has always had more female stars than most other genres – but more often than not, those female stars are used for their bodies – which are often sexuality or brutalized in the film (and more often than not, both) – for the sadistic pleasure of the men making and viewing the movie. Watching these four shorts – all of which run about 20 minutes – I never really got the sense that anything was being upended.

 

The first segment – The Box – from director Jovanka Vuckovic – is one of the better segments. A mother, riding on the subway with her two kids, sees a man holding a shiny red package. Her young son wants to know what’s in the box – and the man shows him (but no one else, including the audience). From then on, her son refused to eat – saying he isn’t hungry. Eventually he’ll tell his sister – and she’ll stop eating as well. The woman fights with her husband about how best to handle things – because they cannot agree – and then, the son will also let his dad in on the secret. Things get worse and worse for the family. This segment is effectively directed and acted – it’s never scary per se, but it’s plenty creepy and overall, quite sad – but when it’s over, you can’t help but feel let down. That’s it? There’s a fine line between ambiguous and lazy in terms of storytelling – and I think this is the later.

 

The second film – The Birthday Party – by director Annie Clark aka St. Vincent, the singer – isn’t really horror at all, but a black comedy. The wonderful Melanie Lynsky stars as a rich woman, trying to throw the perfect party for her son, but one bad thing happens after another – the worse being she finds her husband – who wasn’t even supposed to be there – dead in the study, and finds the stupidest way imaginable for dealing with it. Lynsky is, as always, game for anything – and she’s basically keeping this segment afloat solo, as I’m not sure it’s anything other than a darker vignette cut from Bad Moms.

 

The third segment Don’t Fall - directed by Roxanne Benjamin, has four young people head off into the wilderness, where they come across some hieroglyphs, before settling down for a night of drinking and talking. There are two guys and two girls on the trip – and the men spend all of their time either playing “jokes” on the women (that they don’t find funny), or mansplaining things to them. And then things take a dark and violent turn – and the men reveal themselves for who they really are. This is the bloodiest and most traditionally horror-like of the shorts, and the creature effects and gore are well handled, for what had to be a small budget. It’s also the most confused of the segments – as I’m not quite sure it knows what it’s saying about any of these paper thin characters, or much of anything else. It’s also the most disappointing – as I really like Benjamin’s segment in last year’s horror omnibus – Southbound.

 

It’s not surprising that the fourth and final segment – by Karyn Kusama – is the best of the lo – as Kusama really is the most well-known and experience of the filmmakers – and coming off last year’s horror-esque triumph The Invitation, is in the zone for something this creepy. Her segment, Her Only Living Son, is about a single mother (Christina Kirk), raising a disobedient son (Kyle Allen) – approaching his 18^th birthday, and things start to go from bad to worse. This is the only segment that I felt really delivered – the one that truly challenged the idea of motherhood in any real way (the film starts off like We Need to Talk About Kevin – and then morphs into something else), the only one that gets under your skin, and the only one where I was disappointed that the film couldn’t be longer – as I think Kusama is excellent at the slow burn build-up (like the aforementioned The Invitation) and doesn’t quite has the space to maneuver in just 20 minutes. So even this, easily the best of the bunch, doesn’t quite deliver as it should.

 

In fact, the incredibly creepy animation in between segments is probably the best damn thing about XX. The concept for women taking over the horror genre for themselves in a good one – even in an omnibus form, which is never the easiest format to make work. It’s just that this time the results do not match the good intentions behind the project.

Movie Review: Southbound

Southbound
Directed by: Roxanne Benjamin (Siren) & David Bruckner (The Accident) & Patrick Horvath (The Jailbreak) & Radio Silence (The Way Out/The Way In).
Written by: Roxanne Benjamin & Susan Burke (Siren) and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin (The Way Out/The Way In) and David Bruckner (The Accident) and Dallas Richard Hallam & Patrick Horvath (The Jailbreak)
Starring: Chad Villella (Mitch), Matt Bettinelli-Olpin (Jack), Kristina Pesic (Sutter), Fabianne Therese (Sadie), Nathalie Love (Kim), Hannah Marks (Ava), Dana Gould (Raymond Kensington), Anessa Ramsey (Bunny Kensington / Phone Operator), Susan Burke (Betty), Davey Johnson (Dale), Mather Zickel (Lucas), Karla Droege (EMT), Zoe Cooper (Dispatch), Justin Welborn (Surgeon), David Yow (Danny), Tipper Newton (Jesse), Matt Peters (Al), Maria Olsen (Sandy), Tyler Tuione (Warren), Kate Beahan (Cait), Gerald Downey (Daryl), Hassie Harrison (Jem), Tallulah Mounce (Kathryn), Courtney Bandeko (Maid), Max Folkman (The Kensington Twins), Nick Folkman (The Kensington Twins), Karina Fontes (Alex), Roxanne Benjamin (Claire), Damion Stephens (Shane), Larry Fessenden (The D.J.).

We all know that for the most part, anthology films are a much better idea in theory than they are in practice. The best ones have a few good segments, but are somewhat deflated by the bad segments they are also inevitably there – and are often marred by inconsistent style and tone from one film to the next, which means that the films can never really build to anything. Horror anthologies have always been popular – and the good ones are usually better than anthologies of other kinds, in part because they force the directors to cram what would normally be 90 minutes worth of scares into one, compact segment, which forces them to strip away all the filler, and just give the audience the good stuff. The two most popular anthology series in recent years have been the V/H/S movies (I liked the first one, was fairly indifferent to the second, and still haven’t seen the third) and The ABCs of Death (I hated the first one, and will probably never watch the second). Thankfully, the new film Southbound comes from some of the people behind the V/H/S series, and while I don’t think it reaches the heights of the best segments in those films, it is more consistent in tone, style and quality across its 4 segments. It’s hardly a great horror film, but it is a quietly creepy one – particularly in the first few segments.

The film opens with a mysterious segment – directed by the collective Radio Silence (who made one of the better segments on VHS – and then the not very good feature, Devil’s Due) as two men in a car, driving down a lonesome stretch of parched, desert highway – are haunted by mysterious wraiths, floating on the side of the road, before the stop at a rest stop, and then hit the road again, only to end up at the same rest stop again and again. This segment sets up the movie – and its themes, quite well. All of the stories will take place along this desolate highway, one leading to the other, and all will touch on themes of guilt, as the characters are haunted by things they cannot escape.

The next segment is one of the two I genuinely really liked. Directed by newcomer Roxanne Benjamin, it tells the story of an all-girl band, whose van gets a flat tire, and are seemingly trapped on the lonely highway – until a way too friendly couple stops and offers them a ride. That couple is, of course, not really that nice – and soon, one of the girls is running for her life – yet still haunted by what happened to the fourth member of the band.

The third segment is the best of the bunch – as a man, not paying attention and talking on his cellphone, runs over a young woman in the middle of the highway, and then tries to save her life – by calling 911, and then staying on the line with them as they talk him through what to do to get her to a hospital – and then what to do when he gets there, and finds it mysteriously deserted. This segment gets bloody as hell – the poor young woman’s body keeping breaking down more and more, with blood spurting all over the place. Directed by David Bruckner – who did my favorite segment, Amateur Night, of the original V/H/S – this mini body horror movie is just about perfect.

It does, unfortunately, lead into the films worst segment – The Jailbreak, directed Patrick Horvath – about a man, who enters a bar, looking for his long lost sister – who ends up getting more than he expected. This segment is the most obvious of the group (and none of them are exactly original), and dullest – which is odd, because it’s also the one that embraces the supernatural the most overtly. The segment leaves little impact however. Finally, the film loops back to Radio Silence, who do a competent, but not much more, home invasion story (set in a motel room), before returning to the beginning of the movie, and spelling things out too clearly for my taste.

So Southbound is basically five segments, and two of them are genuinely creepy and frightening, and the other are at least competently made, and executed. What’s more, none of them stand out as being off the wall or inconsistent with the rest. That is one of the problems with something like VHS, and its sequel, as each director has a wildly different take on the genre, so the frights don’t build. In Southbound, despite it being an anthology, it does feel like its all part of a cohesive whole – so even the weaker segments don’t drag the rest down that far.

Southbound is hardly a great movie – but it is a fun, low stakes horror movie, directed with style and atmosphere. Yes, it gets bloody, but it’s bloody in a clever way. The whole thing is satisfying, without ever being great. Still, if Southbound 2 ever gets made, I’ll watch it.