Riven (2015) -Short Horror Film Review

Riven is a short nine minute award winning Norwegian horror film which was directed by Sjoerd de Bont. The flow of this felt almost formulaic but was different enough to what I figured that I was left pleased. This has recently headed to the Dark Matters' YouTube channel.

Sara (Maike Boerdam) is a barmaid who has gone into the dusty attic of her bar in order to find some wine glasses. Once up there however she discovers an old full length mirror covered up, wiping the dust off its surface she is startled to see in the reflection a white door which isn't there. It is her subsequent exploration of where this door could be and what is on the other side that brings in the horror.

There are three actors in this short (Raymond Kurvers as Sara's partner, Willem, and Katarina Justic rounding out the small cast. The character of Sara takes centrestage and after a brief intro she is up in the atmospherically dusty attic, which was a great looking location. The stuff with the reflection being different to what is actually there I have seen before, and even seen done better. That isn't to say Riven wasn't good, I enjoyed it despite heavy use of CG to simulate a particular effect. I for one was happy it didn't end on a jumpscare ending, it had a little bit more of a sinister feel to how this wraps up. The film is in Dutch with English subtitles, but there is only really dialogue at the beginning and end with most the short playing out with Sara on her own.

At under ten minutes Riven is another short that is worth a watch. It makes effective use of a good choice of location, and while it may not feel especially new, this nonetheless  ticked a few of the right boxes.

SCORE:

Hotel Poseidon (2021) - Comedy Horror Film Review

Hotel Poseidon is a Belgian darkly comedic fantasy/horror film that was written and directed by Stefan Lernous in his feature length directorial debut. It is a hard film to describe as it follows a near nonsensical meandering format with the only real constant being the central protagonist, and a story that is nearly non-existent.

Dave (Tom Vermeir) is the owner of a very dilapidated run down hotel that has seen much better days than the trash filled dive it has become. He discovers that his elderly Aunt has died, a problem as it is her pension that was paying for the hotel to remain in a somewhat working order. Meanwhile, two men hoping to hold a bizarre private function plan for the evening.

It is quite alright to ignore that synopsis as that is only tangentially what this very strange film is going for. With the whole film taking place within the walls of the hotel, and the random and often nightmarish situations that unfold within I got a real feeling of Mother! though I would add I appreciated this a lot more than that one. This similar feel is no more apparent than during my very favourite scene of the movie, a disorientating ten to fifteen minute section that takes place during the private function. This scene if it had been on its own as a short film would have scored very highly with me. In it, Dave bounces from group to group in the packed room, many characters speaking utter nonsense, and with a hostile atmosphere, such as a man that Dave keeps accidentally bumping into, a prolonged sequence of Dave crawling on the floor, and the finale for this section in which the patrons all turn on Dave. All of this set to the accompiment of some great music being played by a band in the room, and features some great direction, best of which were several long single shot sequences that had the man interacting with a whole host of characters in his dizzying journey around the room.

Yummy (2019) - Comedy Zombie Horror Film Review

It feels so good to mostly be up to date on my blog. It means that I get to choose the films I watch for review, at least for the time being until a backlog starts to form again. I had my eye for a while on Belgian zombie horror comedy, Lars Damoiseaux's Yummy, and as it is on Shudder I decided to check it out.

Michael (Bart Hollanders) is taking his girlfriend, Alison (Maaike Neuville) and her mother, Sylvia (Annick Christiaens) to a Eastern European hospital so that they can get some cosmetic surgery done. Sylvia is obsessed with trying to stay young, but Alison is there for a breast reduction, fed up of the back pain being large chested has caused her, and sick of the never ending unwanted attention her chest size has gotten her. Michael is worried about the operation being done correctly and ends up causing a scene, so to distract him, the clinic assistant, Daniel (Benjamin Ramon) takes him off on the pretence of giving him a tour of the facility. In actuality Daniel is a junkie who is looking for drugs. His search takes them to a restricted wing of the clinic where Michael stumbles across a bound woman seeming to be in distress, he helps to free her, realising too late there is something very wrong with the woman. It isn't long before the zombie (for that is what she is) has escaped the wing and started to infect the staff and patients. Soon, with the hospital under lockdown, Michael, Alison, Sylvia, Daniel, as well as head physician, Dr. K (Eric Godon) and his assistant, Janja (Clara Cleymans) team up together in order to find a way out of the now zombie infested clinic...

Rather than have a critical look at the folly of unneeded plastic surgery Yummy instead makes little to no comment on it. The female protagonist might want to not be objectified, yet that is exactly what the movie does on many occasions, not only with her, but with quite a few of the other females in the film, there's more than one female zombie stumbling around half naked for instance. While this is a comedic horror it doesn't dial down on the horror part. Truth be told, as the film goes on the comedy gets reduced somewhat, by the films final act the only comedy on show is jet black and Yummy is a lot better for it. This is a nasty film with regards to the treatment of the protagonists, but often that is exactly what you need with a zombie film. On more than one occasion I was really wincing at what was unfolding on screen, from a character whose arm gets jammed in a paper shredder, to someone who has their fingers crushed under a manhole cover (subsequently having to have their fingers sliced off to free them) this is some splatterstick stuff on show (I don't know if that is an actual term, but I mean slapstick with added blood and gore).

We (2018) - Film Review

We (original title Wij) is a film that is more drama than horror. However, due to what takes place in it there was an uncomfortable feeling watching this, I was both repulsed by the protagonists, and also drawn to see just how the story would all play out. This is in Dutch and Flemish, with English subtitles, and refreshingly the subtitles are actually decent (after a run of films I have seen recently that had dodgy ones). This was directed and written by Rene Eller, and was adapted by the book of the same name by author Elvis Peeters. It is also quite out there with what it decides to show on screen, and while it is mostly relevant to the subject matter I did think on a few occasions things got a bit gratuitous.

It is summer and eight teenage friends in a Belgian-Dutch border village are looking to have fun. What starts out as a series of seemingly harmless pranks eventually escalate into far more serious crimes, including prostitution, blackmail, assault and death. The movie is split into four chapters, each one dealing with a different character from the group, these include innocent looking Simon (Tijen Govaerts), Ruth (Maxime Jacobs), artistic Liesl (Pauline Castelyn), and aggressive Thomas (Aimé Claeys).

First off, and what I think has given this a bit of a controversial edge to it is the amount of nudity this film shows. All of the eight characters are naked on quite a few occasions, with full frontal nudity shown. There is even a scene early on that shows explicit sex scenes. Now sex is a big part of We's story and so its inclusion in some form is essential, however I really didn't think some moments of this were all that necessary, the explicit sex scene in particular could have been edited around rather than showing insert shots of genitalia. Being teens, and being into experimenting, all the friends routinely sleep with each other, the girls in particular seems to think it empowers them, and so the descent into selling their bodies for money is one the majority of them are more than happy to do. This fits in with the very nihilistic view the characters have. They see adults as worker ants, and do everything they can to rebel against law and order. This made it hard to like any of them, I found their actions to be very questionable, but then it isn't We's intention to give the viewer nice characters.