No More Film Reviews. After This.

Japanese hand-held horror flick Shirome is being touted as Blair Witch meets The X-Factor, and that's something we've all been waiting for - well I know I have. The director previously made Grotesque, which has the distinction of being banned by the BBFC. Human Centipede 2 wriggled out of this, but it's a simple enough thing to remove one barbed-wire-wrapped penis. Grotesque presumably had a whole banquet of barbed-wire-wrapped penises, like macabre pigs-in-blankets, and more besides. At any rate, it was pronounced inoperable.

Shirome is not likely to go unreleased due to unadulterated gore - the question here is whether it's strong enough to rival Ghost Hunting With The Saturdays. Here's the story behind its making, as related by the man introducing the film at the ICA. Director is asked to work with up-and-coming (now famous) girl band; director protests that they can't act; director is told: don't tell them it's a film.

So the band is told that they are in a Most Haunted type TV show, and have to visit this accursed school. Then the director arranges certain 'unscheduled' mysterious events. A self-described 'relator of ghostly tales' (who comes with his own lectern and sinister theme music) rolls in to give the girls the lowdown on the accursed building. Suddenly he starts vomiting! As though possessed! The girls scream. It doesn't take a lot to make them scream, it transpires. A flickering light. The idea that someone somewhere has died. 'I'll try not to get possessed', one girl promises, bravely, before everyone starts screaming again. They scream so much that they barely need their own fans.

Shirome, who haunts the school, is an entity who grants wishes. If your wish is sincere, it will come true; if, however, there is any 'doubt in your heart', you will be dragged to Hell. The emphasis on sincerity is a nice touch, given the nature of this project. Given, also, the nature of the band, who sing awfully cute songs about their skincare routines, but, when asked if they would sell their souls to the Devil in return for worldly success, respond with an enthusiastic 'yes'.

There are amusing moments here; and there are some eerie moments, but what should be the highpoint of the whole thing - the exploration of the haunted school - is a bit of a damp squib, muddled and confusing. There are strange sounds and some mysterious gloop dripping from the walls. Perhaps, I wondered idly, it was earwax dislodged by the girls' relentless shrieking. Revenge of the Earwax: there have been stranger Japanese hauntings.

There was a party afterwards. We were assured that the 'beatboxing monk' would not start his act until the film had finished. I decided to give this a miss. A beatboxing monk did sound like the kind of thing that's best left to the imagination. And I'd just bought a dictionary. You can't go to a party carrying a dictionary. Even if it's a present for your Mum. Perhaps especially if it's a present for your Mum.

I did fill in the feedback form a Japanese woman gave me. I awarded this film three stars.

Oh. More films. Perhaps this is my life now.

Human Centipede 2 was available on DVD before it hit London cinemas (or rather, one London cinema). Nevertheless I felt the need to see it on the big screen, and hurried to the Apollo Piccadilly Circus from the Soho Curzon, where I'd just seen The Future. This is a film by Miranda July, which the critic in Time Out said made him want to gouge his own eyes out with a melon baller. He still gave it three stars. I fear for his safety should he ever see Human Centipede 2.

The designated problem with The Future was that it was too 'kooky', but - although I could never bring myself to watch an episode of Ally McBeal - I didn't have that problem here. You don't have to look far beneath the whimsy in Miranda July's work to find real sadness and vulnerability. OK, so it's narrated by a cat. But it's a dead cat.

I probably should have written SPOILER ALERT there.

Human Centipede 2 has a great idea for a sequel: demented fan of the original movie (named Martin) decides to create his own human centipede using staple gun and gaffer tape (and hysterical victims, obviously). If only Jaws 2 had gone down that route. However, whereas the original successfully balances nastiness with campy humour, this goes astray somewhere. After all, there are only so many things you do with a human centipede. You can make it bigger, you can inject it with laxative, and you can have the sole survivor run away naked while giving birth. All these boxes are ticked, in glorious black and white, but the fun has gone out of it somehow. I wish I liked it more, since nobody else does, but sheer perversity just won't stretch that far. And in terms of apocalyptic horror, the new Muller yoghurt ad easily outdoes it. Still, I'll never do the conga again. Not naked, anyway.

BFI LFF Round Up Part Two

Hors Satan

Difficult to ask for a ticket for this one, because the temptation is to say the first word with a French(ish) pronunciation and the second with an English one, which is awkward. A literal translation ('Outside Satan') doesn't help much. I found myself wishing they'd called it Satan's Whore and left it at that. It might give people the wrong idea, but on the other hand it wouldn't be all that wrong an idea.

Like most films by Bruno Dumont, this largely consists of people wandering the French countryside enigmatically, singly or in pairs. On this occasion, however, Dumont finds the time to include a couple of murders, a possible demonic possession, and (EXTREME SPOILER ALERT) a bona fide resurrection.

I have to say I found it wholly entrancing. Maybe my high point of the festival. Was anyone else convinced? It was hard to tell. There was a Q and A but it was a bit muted, perhaps because Dumont had said in advance that he wouldn't 'explain anything', though he was looking forward to hearing our 'responses' - which made it seem like it was the audience who were being judged rather than the movie. He did reveal that he prefers to work with non-professionals, because they have certain boundaries beyond which they will not go, whereas actors 'will do anything'. (He has obviously seen Human Centipede 2). This is also the philosophy behind The Only Way Is Essex, I believe, but I thought better of bringing that up.

Breathing

In this Austrian offering a young offender gets a job in an undertaker's, and exposure to dead bodies helps him comes to terms with the murder - or manslaughter - that got him banged up in the first place. Contains a very moving sequence of a corpse being washed and dressed. Am I selling it to you? Funny, because I could almost imagine someone other than myself enjoying this one. How can I put it? It's like Harry Potter, but without the magic, but with lots of dead people, who stay dead. And there's a visit to Ikea in it. You'll be anxious to know the release date by now I imagine, but I'm afraid I just can't help you.


The Monk

The only real disappointment of the festival. You would think that a version of one of the most lurid of all the Gothics, starring Vincent Cassell and directed by Dominik (Harry, Here's Here To Help) Moll would be fantastic, wouldn't you? Of course you would.

In fact, it's rather a plodding adaptation, neither hilariously over-the-top nor a genuine full-blooded Gothic. You get the odd spectral nun and a (non-human) centipede amidst the roses, but it all feels a bit half-hearted, and Cassell never really gets a chance to be properly evil. Shame, because I have fond memories of reading the novel at university, and being amused by the depiction of the fallen monk Ambrosio leering at the heroine's resplendent 'Orbs'.


We Need To Talk About Kevin

This was at the festival, but I saw it afterwards in a common cinema with only members of the public in attendance. It goes like this - Tilda Swinton gives birth to an evil child - or has she made him evil with her failure to love him? This is the debate which is meant to 'make us think', I think. But although the film is really effective as a mother's nightmare, it is just a nightmare, and tends to disintegrate in the cold light of reality.

I mean, what is Kevin? Is he a complete psychopath who, from birth, has never felt a genuine emotional attachment to anyone in his life? Surely not, because as everyone knows, complete psychopaths don't (SPOILER ALERT) go on killing sprees in high school - they become the CEO's of major multinational companies.

So is he, then, just a normal boy who has been irreparably traumatised by his mother's failure to bond with him? But Kevin appears to have a perfectly good relationship with his father. I suppose he might be faking it (see above) but if he isn't, shouldn't it ease his Weltschmerz somewhat? Enough, might I suggest, that he wouldn't feel the pressing need to murder all his classmates and the one parent he does get on with, just to spite Mom?

Then again, perhaps there are other possible explanations. Perhaps Kevin is possessed by Satan. Or he's an alien. But the film doesn't really embrace these possibilities. It remains an exquisitely made horror film that doesn't know it's a horror film. It worries that it might be. It wakes up in the night thinking about it. Finally, the horrible moment arrives when it can pretend no longer and then - it gets awarded best film of the festival by the BFI!

Phew! It was all a dream...

Horror fans will have to be content with the inevitable sequels - We Still Need To Talk About Kevin, We Really Really Need To Talk About Kevin, and the straight-to-DVD Let's Stop Talking About Kevin And Just Kill Him (starring Jason Statham).

Interval: Fireworks

We went to the fireworks in Herongate. They were banging out the Prodigy and people were waving glowing things and it was like walking into a rave. The fireworks themselves were accompanied by murky ambient music, although it could have been Westlife played through a bad sound system, I suppose. Or, to put it another way, a good sound system.

The fireworks fizzed and corkscrewed through the night; they reached up to the sky with wavering ectoplasmic fingers. A tree caught fire - always the sign of a good cutting-edge display. Then suddenly it was all over. People were rushing to the exits - so fast it was like someone had shouted 'Fire!' - leaving the hardcore few to dance naked around the flames.

We went back to Justin and Bobs' for hot dogs. Mat, chewing on one with a thoughtful expression, looked, I thought, like Sherlock Holmes eating his pipe. Later, Christopher went into meltdown over a missing cardboard 'crown' (these had been handed out to kids at the display). It was quite a performance, and we stared as though Larry Olivier had suddenly materialised in front of us to show us his Lear - an absurdist King Lear, whose tawdry crown featured the face of Shane Richie promoting his upcoming appearance in Aladdin. The letters of 'Aladdin' were made up of what I imagine were meant to be fragments of gold, but which looked more like oven chips.

For a moment it did seem that nobody would be allowed to leave until Mat had pontificated over The Case Of The Vanishing Promotional Piece of Tat With A Picture Of Shane Richie On It, all the while sucking reflectively on his hot dog. Then the natural order of things reasserted itself and Christopher was dragged off screaming into the night.

BFI LFF Round Up Part One

Because I saw so many films the other weekend, mainly at the London Film Festival, people kept asking (or at any rate my Mum did) - 'Why don't you become a film reviewer?'

Well here's why not.

Snowtown

Mum's new boyfriend brings some kind of structure into the life of directionless teenager Jamie in this true crime story from Australia, and he is soon joining his new Dad, name of John Bunting, on happy outings to the other side of the road to deface the house of Mum's previous boyfriend, a paedophile (for this reason, it didn't work out). John doesn't like paedophiles, or drug addicts, or gays and is soon making them disappear, one way or another. One way in particular.

This was quite hard to watch, not so much because of the violence and sexual abuse, but because I was sat at an awkward angle to the screen, so the characters looked too narrow, as in some of the later Tom And Jerries. I had the same trouble with The White Ribbon two years ago, but there I adapted. Here it was a continual distraction, perhaps making me more than usually critical.

And yet I enjoyed the film, which is the kind of thing I like. You know: bleak, ominous and, as the posters say, 'unflinching'.

It's so distracting when films flinch.

The director Justin Kurzel, and Lucas Pittaway who plays Jamie were on hand to answer questions. The director seemed to see killer John Bunting as a sort of community leader gone AWOL. I saw him as demonic throughout, but Australians may have different expectations. He talked about Bunting 'giving the community a voice'. This seems rather a grand term for the discussion groups he presides over, in which he encourages neighbours to say what they would like to do to paedophiles ('Well... first I think I'd skin his penis', muses one woman, as though discussing the preparation of a meal.) Having elicited these juicy fantasies, he then proceeds, more or less, to act upon them. 'It's an Australian tradition', he posits, half-humorously.

The film's main fault is that it puts far too much emphasis on the vulnerability of the teenager who comes to be complicit in Bunting's crimes. He's clearly the audience's way in to this seedy little world - his tears are our catharsis. But he's too busy reacting to do any real acting, and reacting with the horror of an outsider. But if he was really inhabiting that world, he would, on some level, accept it. It's a bleak film. But that doesn't mean it couldn't be a little bleaker.


Last Screening

A movie projectionist lives through the last days of a provincial French cinema that's about to be turned into a supermarket. He is most upset, not only because he likes his job, but because he has a shrine to his Mum in the basement, adorned with the left ears of women he has killed locally.

It may be an unlikely scenario, but an undercurrent of genuine emotion pervades this offering from Lauren Achart. Our projectionist only wants to flesh out an illusion (that the mother he worships loved him) and in many ways he is not so different from your average movie fan. The need to maintain the illusion is paramount. The hero/villain never blinks.

The murders are all the more effective for taking place offscreen, or being shown from a distance; even though the corpses pile up at a rate that makes the absence of police activity seem a little strange. That's because they couldn't afford police on their budget, the director said.

And this is exactly the kind of insight I go to the London Film Festival for.


Sleeping Sickness

This plunges us vividly into the life of an upstanding German doctor in Cameroon, then, 'three years later', drags us out of it to follow another character entirely, who has been sent out to Cameroon to monitor this doctor's sleeping sickness programme - which is fraudulent, for the doctor has been undergoing a moral decline. Or that's one way of looking at it.

This is a sort of postmodern riff on Heart Of Darkness with the darkness replaced by a deceptive twilight. In which, at the end, it is just possible to make out (SPOILER ALERT) that the doctor has been transformed into a hippopotamus. Or that's one way of looking at it.

This is a slyly oblique, curious film, and in its refusal to provide clear answers a lot like Africa itself. I suppose that's the idea anyway. I think it worked. The director, in keeping with his elusive main character, wasn't there.



Take Shelter

They were handing out free umbrellas for this one, and I didn't mind if I did. 'Ladies Umbrella', said the tag on it. I couldn't really see how it catered for the especial needs of ladies, but perhaps I'm missing something.

You get the idea though. Take Shelter. It's about a storm. Not necessarily a real storm. It might be in the head of Michael Shannon (present at the screening) who plays a perfectly ordinary family man afflicted by terrifying dreams about a ferocious tempest, dreams which soon leak into his 'real life'. Is he going mad or - well, yes I think he is going mad, or that does seem fairly likely considering his Mum's a paranoid schizophrenic.

But that doesn't mean that the storm isn't real.

Well-performed and initially scary, this becomes less like a horror film as it goes on. But I didn't mind.



The Troll Hunter

This wasn't at the festival, I saw it at the Prince Charles in between other things. I found myself resisting this because trolls are a bit, well, silly, aren't they? It took a 200 foot one to convince me otherwise.

Tongue in cheek, but the only decent 'found footage' horror film since The Blair Witch Project. If it is a horror film. Which it isn't. It is Norwegian. Is that clear?

So there you are. At least they got shorter as they went along. Maybe Part Two will be an improvement. Don't bet on it though.