I’ll admit from the off that I approached this film with some trepidation.

Not that I was concerned about quality. On the contrary, I’ve been excited about the film for several reasons, foremost of which is that it is written and directed by one of my favourite current UK actors – Paddy Considine - who is always an asset to whatever he appears in, and frequently shines as charismatic and troubling characters (A Room for Romeo Brass, My Summer of Love and Dead Man’s Shoes).

However, the subject matter of Tyrannosaur presents a problem, as it’s difficult to look forward, or choose to watch a film that features a gritty depiction of spousal abuse and the inner violence of people, no matter how accomplished the film and performances might be.

This is especially difficult when the film in question doesn’t place itself within the frame of a genre – this is not a horror film, so the vicarious pleasures encountered as part of that genre, the fantastical/stylised vision of violence done to the body, is stripped away. For these reasons, I had to steel myself to get into the right frame of mind to watch it.

Tyrannosaur concerns the forming of a relationship between an aggressive and short-fused widower, Joseph (Peter Mullan), and Christian Charity shop worker, Hannah (Olivia Coleman), a younger woman whose husband, James (Eddie Marsan), is violently abusive. They first meet when Joseph bursts into the shop, only to hide himself behind a rail of coats, rigid with anger and repressed violence following an outburst at the local pub.

Hannah’s reaction informs the nature of their developing friendship, as she talks to him calmly – recognizing his vulnerability – and eventually offering to pray for him. The film follows this pairing and their apparent oppositions (divided along gender, class and religious lines), their wary appreciation of each other’s emotional and physical fragility as they become increasingly supportive and important to one another’s lives, as other people’s violence forces them both to strike out.

The performances, particularly Coleman, Marsan and Mullan, are raw and affecting, but never too big for the general quietness of the film. The narrative requires them to the emotional centre, which is certainly achieved, and not without considerable ambiguity. These are not loveable characters. And while that might go without saying for the abusive husband, or Joseph’s uncommunicative and angry lashing out (dog lovers will find him especially difficult to feel emotionally engaged with), Hannah is not presented as straightforwardly sympathetic either.

In such an unremittingly downbeat film, their fleshing out of these characters provides a crucial point of connection, giving them complexity and a fully-rounded presence, providing an all important magnetic field for the details of the plot. Indeed, this magnetism is something that Considine’s own performances so often provides – Tyrannosaur feels very much like a film he would appear in, close to the tone of Shane Meadows’ films (Considine’s friend, several of whose films he has appeared in), though without a great deal of their humour.

At the same time, I was left feeling a little unsure of what to do with the events of the film – for all the complexities of performance, the events of the film don’t sit easily (and nor should they) and while characters change, it’s hard to see whether that progression is the point of the film (in which case it suggests a ‘learning through misfortune’ or ‘highlighting social problems’ film – which it doesn’t really feel like) or whether the violence and emotional pain is it’s main purpose (which again doesn’t quite fit the bill).

Part of it’s power is to present villains as characters, to undermine the stylization (and safety) of a generic context, but this also leaves an uncomfortable gap in place of understanding why we watch, a troubling feeling which doesn’t necessarily feel at the root of the film’s purpose.

Movie Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

Trailer:

Set in a distant and barbaric past, with the backdrop of a long-fought Russian / Swedish conflict, Evil Rising is concerned with the journey of boundary markers into the wild north. The main characters are brothers: Knut (Tommi Eronen) a cartographer and the other, Eerik (Ville Virtanen) a soldier who has many deaths on his conscience. The narrative is elliptical and non-linear, beginning at the end of the story, and later featuring frequent flashbacks to the sequence where we are introduced to the brothers as they attack and pillage a family, leaving a girl locked in an underground cellar; an event which becomes pivotal to their subsequent fates. The weight of the past, and particularly that on the still unstable post-war present the characters find themselves in, is central to this film. Eerik in particular, but Knut too in his relationship with his brother and his own place in the conflict, is forced to confront the place in which his brutal past actions place him spiritually and emotionally in this apparent peacetime. These issues have already been suggested when they, accompanied by a small envoy of Russian soldiers – the mix of nationalities an attempt to ensure fairness in boundary marking – arrive at a small Finnish village in the middle of a swamp. As you might expect, it is when they arrive at this settlement, which is not only an unexpected addition to their map, but is also home to a group of people entirely cut off from the outside world (to the extent that it is an almost entirely aging population) with seemingly strange ways of doing things, that the main horror of the film kicks in.

The village includes an ominous building rising out of the swamp waters, which just happens to be the sauna of the title. In this respect, I think there is something of the film’s power that is lost in translation. For while the village sauna is an undeniably sinister space – the blankness of the modernist structure and its eerie and remote location in the water is visually arresting – its significance to a non-Finnish audience, where the sauna is not a luxury experience, but rather a necessary one that is central to national identity, is difficult to satisfyingly comprehend. On the other hand, the notion of cleansing and rebirth, in spiritual and national contexts is made plain by the film, and the post-war conscience, albeit framed in a distant past, is an interesting subject for any modern horror, regardless of its country of origin.

Cultural translations aside, the film is gruesome and creepy enough to satisfy any horror audience, while also mindful of its aesthetic impact more generally. The colour palate of the film is stark, fitting to the bleak landscape and weather conditions, and also the emotional tone of the relationships of the film; between the brothers, between them and their Russian companions and between their party and the village they come to. It also reminded me of the horror films directed by Hideo Nakata – Ring (1998), but more Dark Water (2002) – with inky blacks, damp stains and snow. Blood is not the vivid red of Giallo or Corman, but rather the darkened maroon of recent European horror; the look of the film also reminded me of the muted tones of the extremely bloody recent French film A l’Intérieur (Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury, 2007).

A more striking comparison for me, is another recent horror film I previously reviewed for this site: Van Diemen’s Land (Jonathan auf der Heide, 2009), with which it shares some thematic similarities (a journey into a dangerous space, men with terrible events on their conscience, the potential of release/freedom at the end of the journey, both physical and spiritual) and aesthetic ones. Like Van Diemen’s Land, Evil Rising employs a meditative mode of address, a narrative that is elliptical and somewhat obscure in places, and a definite air of  ‘quality’ that casts the horror as extreme but not gratuitous, and is in the service of thinking through the effect of violence and savagery on men, and what comes after.
I have some reservations about how well the film as a whole controls its tone, overall shape and our relationship to characters, which felt somewhat minimal to me. Also whether, as with Van Diemen’s Land, the feeling of ‘quality’ (and its status as a ‘foreign’ (read: ‘art’) film – though this may also be an issue of translation) buoys up the impact of this and therefore doesn’t ask us to fully interrogate what is at stake or how well it is actually working.

Movie Rating: ★★½☆☆ 

The narrative has clearly received a careful amount of thought, and the whole thing feels very purposeful, rather than something produced solely for the straight-to-dvd market, by filmmakers with one eye on the next stage of their careers. This is a film that intends to complicate engagement with its characters and tries to make its audience feel uncomfortable with what unfolds.

Yet, despite the fact there isn’t a summer camp in sight, nor a mother-fixated/paedophilic serial killer on the loose, The Final still manages to be rather disappointing.
The narrative premise of the film is a kind of Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976) meets Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003) kind of deal: bullied teenagers wreak revenge on their oppressors, staging a large-scale demonstration of their feelings (albeit in a cabin in the woods rather than in the high school itself). Like a more typical slasher, the night of revenge is a party that everyone is going too.
However, it becomes clear rather early on that the film is leaning more fully on the Elephant side of representing a high school killing, rather than one which might be more in keeping with slasher traditions, mainly through the bond between ‘the bullied’ established early on. The four (3 boys and 1 girl) are shown discussing their plans, making preparations and so on.
Whilst the clarity of this narrative decision sets the film apart, and sets the ground for a potentially very uncomfortable watching experience and dramatic reversal of sympathy from the bullied to the former-bullies,  it unfortunately makes for some rather tedious watching. This is not helped by the fact that the retribution gets underway fairly early on, so there is a lot of film to spread out their torture and its justification. In fact, the film’s biggest downfall is its complete failure to recognise that an audience might latch on to what it has carefully plotted pretty early on and thus be able to appreciate the changes in sympathy it might be inviting.
Instead we are treated to long speeches about why this is happening, some oddly unaffecting or unsuspenseful moments of torture (I guess I mean this comparatively speaking – it’s never a comfortable experience watching someone’s finger be cut off, but I can think of films which invite a great deal more tension with a lot less effort).

It also ensures that the film remains highly predictable, and not just because it is working within a highly structured generic context.

For the film’s narrative to work and engage the viewer in any way there needs to be something for us to be involved in, but as much as the bullying is horrible and relentless there is never a point in which the retribution seems justified or even dramatically balanced.
I actually got to the point where I felt like the teenagers who had been bullied ought to get over it, that they should have had the strength of character to forget about the idiots who tormented them (and they are fairly idiotic).

As a result of the film’s singlemindedness in its plotting, it makes for a rather reductive consideration of high school killings, and high school in general. One of the more powerful things about a film like Elephant, whatever you make of how the film is put together or the way the story (such as it is) is told, is the ambiguity and chilling normality of what happens.
Placing an event which is at best unpredictable and incoherent, and at worst wholly unfathomable, within the generic context of horror, with all its expectations of violence and suspense, and pleasure taken in this, severely undermines its complexity, making it subject to machinations of narrative which skew the dynamic of something that is horrific.

Movie Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ 

Trailer:

The Final Review

As such, it gives a fairly accurate impression of the experience of watching the film, which is nothing if not disconcerting, shocking, at times deeply repulsive, but also quite gripping.

I won’t go into details of the narrative, partly because after only one viewing I have to admit to not being entirely sure what was happening. The short version is that is elliptical, puzzling, very violent and definitely not for the squeamish. Meat Grinder seems to be determined to keep you on the wrong foot, turn you around and generally assault the viewer on all angles: visually, aurally and narratively.

The film changes between black and white and colour, which might seem to suggest temporal shifts, but as the film goes on this doesn’t seem to be the case, which certainly doesn’t help any sense of orientation.

The primary goal of many of the decisions around style – which also shifts rapidly between format, film stock, rhythm and register – seem to be to disorientate and profoundly affect the viewer, drawing them in to the traumas experienced by the characters.

This is definitely the kind of film that requires more than one viewing (if you can stomach it). It is a good looking film, with evident production values, a certain elegance in its evocation of a highly damaged personality (the central female character) and strong performances.

It is also extremely effective in offering an unsettling watching experience, which draws on the rapid temporal shifts but also changes in texture and moments that draw attention to the feel of events in the past or the feelings induced by the emotional states of the characters. I was particularly struck by the shifts in rhythm, the changes in texture and colour that occur within sequences.

Also the way that the violence is presented is deeply unsettling, repulsive and distressing – I spent a lot of the film flinching, squirming and crying out in disgust at the onscreen events – it is not at all slick, nor does it attempt to involve the viewer or make them collude in it through humour or energetic presentation.

This is my first brush with Thai horror, and on the strength of this I would definitely be intrigued to see more.

Movie Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Trailer:

Despite all the usual weaknesses of 70′s Italian Horror (which I know is exactly what some people like, but I find very difficult to get past); the poor synching of over-dubbing, ridiculous plot (experimental agriculture?), terribly wooden acting and rather ponderous elements of style (someone can’t work a zoom smoothly at all), The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue is atmospheric and suitably scary.

The soundtrack makes a big contribution to making the zombies less buffoonish (the underwater noises that precede the first appearance of a ghoul are particularly effective). Of course there is a graveyard close by, and spooky hospital (complete with terrifying homicidal infants, or babies smeared with blood), a suitably ominous mortuary van and a crazy heroin taking sister, but complicated (and ultimately unimportant) plot details aside, the zombies do what they should and the women aren’t completely useless. Hurrah!

The film begins with an extended montage of Manchester, which is in many ways one of the best sequences in the film. Although very different in tone, it reminded me of the views of London in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, both setting up a sense of place through a visitor’s eye.

The attention to faces, scenes of industry and ordinary life is striking in these moments (not even spoiled by the rather oddball appearance of a streaker), and draws attention to the fact that the film is made almost exclusively by Italians (apparently some of it was shot in Italy, but they did film on location in Manchester and the Peak district).

Even more striking is the quality of this new dvd release. There’s a really nicely designed menu screen, and the film itself is looking pretty tip top. The colours really pop out at you: the lush green of the countryside marking it out as almost defiantly English, and the bright post-box red of the mysterious experimental insect-killing device powered by radiation (oops!) sticks out like the sore thumb it should be.

The colour palette really has the feel of an english 70′s horror film (a little like The Wicker Man in some respects) in a way that is difficult to define, but instantly recognisable (maybe its something to do with primary colours, or blocky staging.

It’s just a shame that all those other elements of style – acting, dubbing and camera-work – can’t quite get it together in the same way.

Movie Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

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Trailer: