Steppenwolf (2024) - Dystopian Thriller Film Review

The Adikhan Yerzhanov written and directed Steppenwolf was like a Kazakh version of Mad Max. Both films appear set in a dystopian nightmarish future where law and order have completely collapsed, and both feature complex anti-heroes. By good fortune, I am currently learning Russian, so for me, it was fun to recognise a whole bunch of words that the characters speak!

Steppenwolf takes place in a nihilistic and dystopian world, one where it appears that in the relatively recent past there was an event that led to an uprising, with the common folk and criminals alike coming together to wipe out the local police force. During an assault on a police station by a bunch of armed men, a very traumatised woman - Tamara (Anna Starchenko) stumbles in and happens upon a former detective, Brajyuk (Berik Aytzhanov). Within her incoherent mumbling the man realises she is looking for her missing son. Using his natural confidence and leadership, he ingratiates himself with the rebels and convinces them to help him find Tamara's son, promising that there is a big cash reward for doing so. It becomes clear that Brajyuk wants to find the missing boy for his own reasons, with it revealed that his family were murdered by the man responsible for the boy's abduction.

This is a very stylish film, and while in my earlier review this week of A Hard Place, I criticised it for being a bit too stylish, here that didn't get in the way of my appreciation of this at all. The film world is never explained, it starts with the country already fallen into anarchy, and there is no resolution to that aspect. Instead, this is a simpler story that takes place within that film world. Max in the Mad Max films may have been a bit deranged, but there was a compassionate side to him that often saw him helping the good people he came across. Aytzhanov's Brajyuk is an extreme anti-hero, someone who is prepared to go to any lengths to get the information he needs, and who has an extreme nihilistic approach to life. Truth be told, he is a bit of a psycho, but has some charm to him. He appears forever in an amused mood, and doesn't really take much of life seriously. He is also a cold blooded killer who has no problem killing innocents, seemingly for his own amusement. One scene has him telling a man to continue playing the instrument he was playing prior to Brajyuk shooting another man. He does so, only to then be shot dead. Another scene has a woman begging for her life, with Brajyuk letting her go when she says she has children. She doesn't get far however before he pulls out a gun and shoots her in the back. On the one hand some of his craziness was understandable, but on the other he was often shown being needlessly cruel, even to Tamara.
Due to her permanently dazed state she is hard to communicate with, the lead protagonist's method of dealing with her then is to slap her or push her, or even take the mick out of her requests. She was a fascinating character, both leads in fact were amazing cast choices. I loved how detached Tamara was, not reacting to all the bloodshed and mayhem going on about her, even just standing in the middle of large gun fights without flinching, or being aware of the danger around her.
The interactions between these characters was one of the film's highlights. You never get a strong feeling of Brajyuk's real thoughts towards her, using her time and time again, but he also seems to grudgingly look out for her, recognising her innocence underneath her insanity.

There is lots of death to be found in Steppenwolf. There is an almost road-trip type feel to the film as the two leads track down the missing boy. Elements of El Mariachi snuck into this, with key battles being rather subdued and over quickly. There are lots and lots of gun fights, a few scenes of torture, and plenty of cinematic vistas of dusty deserts and burnt out cars. It leads up to a rather tepid finale. I did like this part also, but the last ten minutes of this hundred minute thriller really slowed the pace down to a snails crawl, and an ending that I found a bit confusing truth be told. Keeping the anarchic film together was a great soundtrack that featured some lovely eighties sounding synth tracks, really worked well with the sublime looking scenes.

Steppenwolf was a great thriller. I loved the Mad Max current-apocalyptic vibe that it carried with it, and I appreciated that even though the two leads were a very weird duo, they had a strong onscreen presence to them, especially the eccentric Brajyuk. This is a thriller very well worth seeing, don't let the foreign language put you off as this has style in spades. It may be style over substance, but what style it was! Steppenwolf will be available to stream exclusively on ARROW and to own on limited edition Blu-ray from 26th May.

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Invited (2024) - Horror Film Review

Directed by Navin Ramaswaran (Poor Agnes) and written by Monica La Vella, Invited is a found footage horror that plays out entirely from the perspective of a PC screen. I thought the idea behind it was pretty cool, though even with a seventy minute run time it did feel like it slightly outstayed its welcome.

Linda's (Martina Schabron) daughter, Jessica (Beáta Imre) had been travelling around Europe with her best friend Maddy (Mandy Magnan) when she met a Russian man - Adrik (Michael Lake - Blood Child). After a whirlwind romance she decides to head back to Russia with him to get married in his home village. Linda, the now heavily pregnant Maddy, Linda's parents Susan (Kris Langille) and William (Andrew Bee - Mute), Linda's ex-husband James (Sean Irvine) and her son, Logan (Alex Di Brita) all receive a Zoom invite to watch the wedding ceremony. On the day of the wedding they all join the Zoom call, and are instructed to open the special package that each of them were sent, with a small knife and a vial of liquid included within. As part of the ceremony they are instructed to drink from the vial, which they all do, with the exception of Linda who is a recovering alcoholic. The viewers increasingly begin to be concerned with the ceremony, with it beginning to look more and like Jessica has been brainwashed into joining a dangerous cult, and before long all are caught up in horror both distant and much closer to home.

I have a fondness for found footage films that take place entirely from a PC screen, there has been some great entries over the years, with Unfriended the best example I can think of. Invited for the most part remains authentic. Outside of the Zoom call there are private message conversations going on, private video calls, rewatching old videos and searching on the internet, all provided variation which was welcome. There were concessions made to give this more of a film like feel. Most notably is that the movie has a soundtrack to it that the characters in the film are not hearing. It wasn't as distracting as I thought it might be, and it did add tension to some of the scenes. In particular I thought the track that played over the end credits was fantastic, interspersed with real photos that revealed the cult shown within the movie was actually based on a real life one that had operated out of Russia in the distant past. Cults in found footage films also are not something new, The Faith Community springs to mind as one good example. I thought the cult in Invited was an effective one, I just wish it had featured more. It is the catalyst for the horror to come, but large chunks of the movie take place on the Zoom call, which the cult itself are not part of, having not only muted the group so they can't communicate with them, but also leaving them up to their own devices for a huge part of the run-time.

While Linda is the protagonist, the view point occasionally switches outside of her PC screen, but mainly it is her perspective shown. She is set up to be a flawed protagonist, with it revealed early on that she was an alcoholic, and that her disease resulted in a car crash that left her son wheelchair bound, and possibly was the reason that her husband and her are divorced. This made her an interesting character, though due to plot elements, she is increasingly forced to carry the movie, as the other characters for various reasons start being unable to communicate. It led to Linda having to react to events taking place across the various locations the characters are at. You get a feel for her increasing panic, but the character never seemed as distraught as you would imagine she would be in real life. Her mainly reacting on her own led to the later part of the film dragging for me.
There were some decent special effects used, the film was a bit light on blood, but there are some disturbing scenes of body horror that I hadn't expected.

Invited had an interesting idea to it, and I felt that Schabron was a great fit for the flawed protagonist. I loved the cult, but did wish that they had featured more, as they made for more interesting characters than the rest of the cast, the ritual leader (Elena Zavet) in particular really stood out as a captivating character. Invited is out on Blu-ray in a collectible edition, while the film can currently be streamed for free on Tubi!, which is where I watched it.

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Eerie Fairy Tales (2019) - Horror Anthology Film Review

Eerie Fairy Tales is an Estonian horror anthology that combines four of director Mart Sander's short horror films into one whole. Any regular reader of this blog will know I love anthology films, variation is rarely a bad thing. Being films of Sander means that all four were written and directed by him, he was even responsible for the original music used here. There was only one short here I didn't enjoy too much, but by far the shortest that didn't really impact on my enjoyment.

The wraparound story has a shadowy figure reading from an old book of fairy tales, the pages are all blank so the stories he tells are from his mind. The first short is Actually which takes place on a dark and stormy night at a remote hotel. A mysterious woman (Jekaterina Novosjolva) appears and asks for a drink. Starved for company the bartender begins to tell her about the dark past the local area has had. As the twenty minute short goes on there is a back and forth between the two that makes you question from which one the horror is to come. There was a great atmosphere here, kind of a film noir vibe with the mysterious woman in her coat and hat. While the story didn't end up anywhere too surprising I did appreciate the ending that was open to interpretation as to what had actually transpired.

In a complete change of direction the second short, Abeyance takes place in modern day. Two Interpol officers (played by Tanel Saar and Mart Müürisepp) visit the location of a secret underground hanger that once belonged to the Nazis. They are greeted by the caretaker (Märt Koik) who discloses that the rumours of a UFO being housed there for the past 75 years are true. He also alleges that everyone who has ever seen it has immediately requested to have their memories of the event wiped due to the horrific experience. This was a real gem, the build-up to the reveal took up a lot of the time and was fantastic. Of course, the reveal itself couldn't live up to that but it was still an interesting story that had elements of a H.P Lovecraft story. There was an obvious twist towards the end, but then this is countered with a great final unexpected twist.

Why Don't You Just Die! (2018) - Comedy Horror Film Review

Why Don't You Just Die! (original title Papa, sdokhni) is a darkly comic Russian horror that was written and directed by Kirill Sokolov in his feature length directorial debut. It is also by far the bloodiest film I have seen in a long time, by the films conclusion the small apartment it is based in is drenched in blood on almost every surface, no bad thing! While it is in Russian the subtitles are perfectly fine.

Matvey (Aleksandr Kuznetsov) turns up at the door of detective Andrey Gennadievitch (Vitaliy Khaev) with the intention of murdering him on behalf of his daughter, Olya (Evgeniya Kregzhde). However it is fair to say things don't exactly to plan and soon he finds himself chained up in the bathroom. This is just the first in a series of events that brings mayhem and bloodshed to all involved in an ever increasing chain of double crosses and insanity...

This gets into things straight away with the film opening with Matvey just about to knock on his girlfriend's Dad's door. Motivations and explanations for all that occurs takes place as a series of flashbacks. Eventually we get brought up to speed on the mostly silent protagonists reasons. It was like the unlocking of a big puzzle, with each flashback more context is given, which impacts on future scenes. Sometimes the story plays out in an unreliable way, an early example being Matvey managing to pick the lock on his handcuffs and fleeing the flat. Then more information is provided and we go back in time to show Matvey in fact unable to pick the lock. Each character in the film is there for a specific reason and acts as part of the overall puzzle. Each subsequent visitor to the apartment adds on to the very farcical nature of what is unfolding.

Demon (2015) - Horror Film Review

Demon is a Polish horror that has a thick vein of black comedy in it. The title suggested to me something different than what is actually shown, instead this is a tale based on the Jewish legend of the dybbuk (a malicious possessing spirit believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person). This film was made more creepy for me after discovering the director and co-writer Marcin Wrona sadly committed suicide not long after the film came out.

English based Piotr (Itay Tiran) has travelled to Poland in order to marry Zaneta (Agnieszka Zulewska). The wedding reception is to be held at the home of her deceased grandparents whose property the newlyweds are going to live at. The night before the wedding Piotr discovers something alarming buried in the back garden of the house. The next day the wedding goes ahead as planned and the party gets into full swing, but as the day goes on Piotr starts to behave more and more erratically and Zaneta and her family start to worry something is seriously wrong with him...

Botched (2007) - Horror Film Review

Botched is one of the many films I got for Christmas, I have now finally gotten around to watching it. It is a horror comedy set in Russia but actually filmed in Ireland.

Ritchie Donovan; a professional thief (played well by Stephen Dorff) is sent to Russia to retrieve an ornate golden crucifix after a job he worked on in the films intro went bad. He must retrieve the crucifix or his life is forfeit to his boss. Ritchie and his two accomplices steal the crucifix from the penthouse of an office block but things start to go wrong when the lift they are making their escape in breaks down, making one of the accomplices panic and take the other people in the lift hostage. They all get out the elevator and onto a mysterious secret floor of the building. Expecting to negotiate with the police they instead discover the person they are communicating with over a security guards' radio is in fact a deranged killer who plans on killing everyone; hostages and criminals alike. It seems the floor they are trapped on is the killers playground and they must work together if they are to escape him.

Cloverfield (2008) - Horror Film Review

Cloverfield is amazing, and terrifying, and is a must see film. I never saw this when it was originally out. My sister did, but she made it sound so boring in her explanation of it that it totally put me off seeing it. While visiting her recently she convinced me to buy it.

This film is basically everything the awful Godzilla remake should have been. Godzilla managed to make the tale of a gigantic monster attacking New York really boring. The film was mediocre due to it being plain tedious. Cloverfield follows basically the same plot. A gigantic monster of unknown origins is attacking New York, rampaging through the streets destroying everything in its way. The plot follows a young group of party goers who are heading to the centre of the city to rescue one of the groups girlfriend who has gotten stuck there.

The film is shot totally by hand camera ala Blair Witch Project and Diary of the Dead style. The first fifteen minutes of the film are quite boring, nothing much happens, but this just makes the monsters emergence all the more scary. The film is virtually shot in real time. Everything shown is what was recorded by the hand camera a man in the group is using. By staying with the small group for the duration of the film you come to really care about, and like them making any of their deaths all the more tragic. You really want them to survive. There is lots of confusion in the film, this creates fear as you are as much in the dark as the characters.

The film is shot really well. I was expecting amateur style filming due to the hand held style of the film, but it is really professionally done, and the special effects are frankly amazing. The giant monster is only glimpsed in patches, the skyscrapers of the city obscuring it, making the mind conjure up what isn't shown. As the film concerns the characters heading towards the centre of New York, the action ramps up as the film progresses in a natural way, and plot devices mean exciting scenes can plausibly be shot.

Cloverfield is everything the dreadful Godzilla should have been, an instant classic which had me in literal tears by the end of it! I don't know what's wrong with me this year, but I'm finding everything super scary.

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