By: Addison Wylie In Fear marks the first time in a while where a film has really scared me using traditional minimalist tactics. We’re paired with Tom and Lucy – a complicated couple played by Iain De Caestecker and Alice Englert – as they head towards a secluded hotel via their tiny vehicle. The search for the hotel brings them deeper into the woods and directional signs send them on a wild goose chase as the…
By: Addison Wylie Solo starts out on an “A” game, but ends up finishing with a generous “C” grade. Isaac Cravit’s independent thriller is a straight-up campfire story – and, the filmmaker knows it. Gillian (played by former Degrassi: The Next Generation co-star Annie Clark) needs to prove herself to be a capable camp counsellor in order to obtain a summer job. The newbie needs to pull a “solo”, a two-night experience on a secluded…
By: Addison Wylie It’s easy to see why Quentin Tarantino named Big Bad Wolves as the best film of 2013. It’s basically a love letter to the filmmaker’s earlier work – an elaboration on that infamous torture scene in Reservoir Dogs. Filmmakers Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s bottled thriller has three men (a father who’s daughter has been kidnapped and murdered, a renegade cop, and a tied up potential criminal) spar with one another to…
By: Addison Wylie Antisocial is middle-of-the-road fare, which I’m sure director/co-writer Cody Calahan doesn’t want to hear. He wants his film to act as a commentary for how immersed we are with technology and social media. In order to drive home the social satire, he and co-writer Chad Archibald use networking devices as a means to drag the living to a state of infection. Tech junkies start to hallucinate and graphically bleed out of the…
By: Addison Wylie Jason Osder has taken on an anti-talking heads format with his striking documentary Let the Fire Burn and it pays off big time. The filmmaker chronicles the societal shakes that took place in Philadelphia during the late seventies through to the mid-eighties initiated by MOVE. Members of MOVE would call the collective an organization inhabiting a peaceful, non-violent state-of-mind. Others wouldn’t hesitate to call MOVE a cult with harassing methods bordering on…
By: Addison Wylie While it’s not a horror, the scariest aspect of The Purge is how seriously the concept is taken. James DeMonaco issues a smart move and doesn’t make the idea of a 12-hour violent free-for-all campy by any means. He plays his role as writer/director with a straight face and watches that his thriller and its screenplay keeps its realism but doesn’t come off as oppressive or stuffy. This warped way of communal…
By: Addison Wylie Your preconceived notions that Gravity will make your heart leap out of your chest and your stomach lurch are right on the money. The disorienting sci-fi separates the weak from the willing with its prolonged, wandering introduction to the team aboard the Explorer. We see mission specialist Dr. Ryan Stone (played by Sandra Bullock) hard at work while astronaut/commander Matt Kowalski (played by George Clooney) supervises. The operation is going as planned…
If you’ve been keeping up with my writing at Film Army, you would’ve been more than acquainted with our coverage of this year’s Toronto After Dark Film Festival. The festival which focuses on bringing hardcore genre films (short and feature length) to eager audiences has been stronger than last year but still hit-and-miss. While gems like We Are What We Are and Big Ass Spider! had audiences glued, other horrors like Silent Retreat and Septic…
By: Addison Wylie The Frozen Ground tells a harrowing true story in a plain Jane conventional way. The emotional weight and stress in the hunt for a notorious Alaskan serial killer rings, but its narrative formatting is determined to make it unmemorable, placing Scott Walker’s film awash in a homicidal sea with other generic crime thrillers. The Frozen Ground feels dialled back regarding its aggressiveness towards the audience and its lead performance from Nicolas Cage…
By: Addison Wylie Europa Report made my head throb from boredom and ache from excessive visual irritations. But before all that negativity, Sebastián Cordero’s found footage sci-fi opened my mind with its art direction and effects. Europa Report’s most impressive strength is its ability to make the audience feel as if we’re in that same spaceship as the featured crew members heading to Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. Cordero has used subtleties to blend numerous…