Sea Fever (2020)

Director: Neasa Hardiman

Notable Cast: Hermione Corfield, Dougray Scott, Connie Nielsen, Jack Hickey, Dag Malmberg, Ardalan Esmaili, Olwen Fourere, Elie Bouakaze

In a time where most of the world is quarantined due to a massive pandemic, releasing a film about infections, quarantines, death, and the mental anguish of all the above is one hell of a flex. Watching Sea Fever is a harrowing experience that hits very close to home and certainly plays on the anxieties of the current state of affairs. Isn’t that the appeal of horror cinema though? Working through social and personal fears in a “safe” medium from the comfort of your home or communal theater in a slightly heightened narrative format? It’s definitely the main appeal for me. This is why, while Sea Fever seems almost too perfectly timed, it’s release is only fitting.

The Hunt (2020)

Directed by: Craig Zobel

Notable cast: Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Ike Barinholtz, Ethan Suplee, Emma Roberts

The Most Dangerous Game, as a genre archetype has always been used as a metaphor for class divide as long as the story has existed. The bored rich hunting a downtrodden, but clever, human being makes for extremely compelling bones to any story. This has found great success in films as diverse as Surviving The Game, featuring an unforgettable Ice T performance and hairdo, to the generic but fun 90s Van Damme actioner Hard Target, to the insane and cartoonish John Leguizamo vehicle The Pest. There is something inherently compelling about the idea of hunting a thinking person, which I believe relates to motivation. Michael Meyers is scary because you never understand the motivation, the rich hunting the poor out of boredom? That’s scary because it’s so mundane. We’ve all been bored, and we’ve all imagined what we’d do with infinite resources, so there is something inherently dark about coming to the “hunting human beings” conclusion.

Bloodshot (2020)

Director: David S.F. Wilson

Notable Cast: Vin Diesel, Eiza Gonzalez, Guy Pearce, Lamorne Morris, Toby Kebbell, Sam Heughan, Johannes Haukur Johannesson, Alex Hernandez, Talulah Riley, Siddharth Dhananjay

The fact that Vin Diesel is the main draw for me is not something I regularly admit. However, I have had to come to terms with it over the last few years as he continually unleashes A-budget B-films in between Fast & Furious sequels. The results of these weird genre films is wildly hit or miss. Not just hit or miss in terms of good and bad, but some hit every level between. Babylon AD is trash, but Riddick is badass. XXX: The Return of Xander Cage is batshit insane wink-wink, but The Last Witch Hunter is…well, also batshit insane just not wink-wink. Regardless, I’m a sucker for whatever wild shit he’s throwing down and his latest, Bloodshot – based on the Valiant comic book, is just one more for the books. The problem with this latest one is that, despite some valiant efforts to give Vin Diesel fans all of the Vin Diesel-isms they want, it’s a film that parallels the character arc of its hero. It lacks a real identity and it’s desperately trying to find one.

Hitch Hike to Hell (1977/1983)

Director: Irvin Berwick

Notable Cast: Robert Gribbin, Russell Johnson, John Harmon, Randy Echols, Dorothy Bennett, Mary Ellen Christie

Going into a film named Hitch Hike to Hell is certainly a gamble. Knowing it’s an incredibly low budget 70s schlock exploitation film only makes those feelings of a gamble more intense. However, if there is one thing that we have found is that if Arrow Video is releasing the film, then there is probably some key reason for it. While the quality of Hitch Hike to Hell is, well, it’s shifty at best, there is something of an intriguing element to its approach that makes one understand why Arrow Video would want to give this the pristine Blu Ray treatment. On the surface, this film is fairly awkward. The low budget and the obvious amateurish elements of the writing and performances make for a film that’s a relative chore to sit through, but there are things to discuss in the film – even if the execution leaves most of those thin too.

Red Peony Gambler 6: Oryu's Return (1970)

Director: Tai Kato

Notable Cast: Junko Fuji, Bunta Sugawara, Tomisaburo Wakayama, Kanjuro Arashi, Toru Abe, Bin Amatsu, Mikiko Asamatsu, Shogo Egami

One of the more effective tactics that have become part of the formula of the Red Peony Gambler franchise is how the writing is structured. Each entry slowly builds its story, adding in seemingly random characters or plots, and then ties them in for the third act. While the second film in the franchise, Gambler’s Obligation, did it with the most impact, it has become a tactic that I enjoy seeing unfold time and time again. The sixth entry of the series, under the subtitle Oryu’s Return, sees the franchise once again double down on this structure and writing. Unlike some of its predecessors, the results are a bit more mixed than expected, but Red Peony Gambler 6 is still a film that pays off wildly in its third act.

Sadako (2019)

Director: Hideo Nakata

Notable Cast: Elaiza Ikeda, Himeka Himejima, Hiroya Shimizu, Ren Kiriyama, Rie Tomosaka, Takashi Tsukamoto

In terms of franchises, the Ring franchise still might now be the wildest – despite intensive efforts to continually reboot it in some wild ways. It’s a weird one, often perplexing at times, but not necessarily the strangest one I’ve seen. After a relatively successful reboot in Japan of the series with Sadako 3D and Sadako 3D 2, the franchise took a wild swing with the entertaining Sadako Vs Kayako which serves as more of a “fan service” film rather than a true part of the original or the reboot franchise. It’s not that surprising then that the latest film, under the rather confusing title Sadako, also serves as something of a soft reboot. It’s a film that attempts to go back to the original’s tone and feeling with a few new themes thrown in as it strips back the wild aspects of the newer films for something a bit more traditional. This leaves Sadako feeling a bit anemic in its narrative, repetitive and unmemorable as it runs through many of the tropes, but disregards many of the other elements that made Sadako and her films horror classics.

The big reason that fans should be intrigued about Sadako is that it marks a return to the franchise by its directorial creator, Hideo Nakata since the disastrous The Ring Two. Dabbling on and off in horror for the last 20+ years, his track record can be hit or miss, but his return does perk a lot of interest. Perhaps it shouldn’t be so shocking that the film is more akin to the original run of Japanese films (including his own Ring and Ring 2 entries) in tone. It’s a shift that certainly sounds tempting on paper – being a loose reboot that only hints at being part of the same universe as previous films. Still, the execution of its ideas seems thin at best and leaves so much to be desired.

Brahms: The Boy II (2020)

Director: William Brent Bell

Notable Cast: Katie Holmes, Owain Yeoman, Christopher Convery, Ralph Ineson, Anjali Jay

The Boy became something of a surprise success. It did some bank in the box office, compared to its budget, and generated quite the word of mouth, particularly from its finale. However, it was a film that existed too firmly in a generic blue print for most of its run time. In my opinion, even its fantastic third act couldn’t quite lift it above being a mediocre horror film. The shock of this recently released sequel wasn’t that it existed, the original was a hit, but that it took four years for it to finally come out in theaters.

The big question of the sequel is how does one follow up the first film’s reveal and still maintain the concept without diverting the idea and tone in drastic ways? If you were to judge by what Brahms: The Boy II is delivering to its audiences, you can’t. Where the first film generated a lot of fun moments with some decent performances and slick production, Brahms fails to generate, well, anything. It’s a snoozer that meanders through its formula with such a wooden sense of purpose, one would be surprised that everyone working on the film wasn’t a puppet.

Possum (2018)

Director: Matthew Holness

Notable Cast: Sean Harris, Alun Armstrong, Simon Bubb, Andy Blithe

This 2018 English psychological horror piece is all at once confusing and terrifying, unsettling and harrowing, and vague; until it’s suddenly not. I spent the majority of this film bathed in curious resentment for the harrowing and nonlinear narratives, only to be ripped into blinding clarity in a resolution that is as uncomfortable as the rest of the film.

Director Matthew Holness makes his feature film debut in this darkly gripping story about trauma, mental illness, and freaking terrifying puppets. Prior to Possum, he had written and directed many pieces for TV, but this film seems like a stark departure from what one would generally consider “tv” type entertainment. One can only hope that we see more of his work in the future, as anyone who watches Possum, will attest that it is a novel approach to storytelling, regardless of their preference for the subject matter.

Guns Akimbo (2020)

Directed by: Jason Lei Howden

Notable cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Samara Weaving, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Ned Dennehey

Occasionally a film asks a question, a question that frightens you, cuts you to your core. Something that rattles your very humanity.  Guns Akimbo, the new film by Deathgasm writer/director Jason Lei Howden, is brave enough to ask such a question. What if you woke up with pistols bolted to your hands? Truly, haunting.

If the above thought didn’t make it immediately apparent, we are diving into true grindhouse cinema. After the Tarantino/Rodriguez double-feature Grindhouse, a whole generation was exposed to the concept, sort of. For specificities’ sake, a grindhouse theater was a cheap theater that played, usually as double features, low-budget action, horror, and exploitation films. Exploitation, as a genre, is any film that exploits some popular thing, movement, or person and makes a low-budget (usually) horror or action movie out of it. Women-in-prison, nunsploitation, and nazi-sploitation are all prime examples of exploitation sub-genres. They also tended to be crassly sexual and gory, basically the “gutter punk” of the cinematic world... and like all counterculture movements, the quality varies wildly. A quick litmus test for you: if what I just said sounds cool to you, you’re right and it’s probably for you. If what I said sounds repulsive? You’re right, and it’s probably not for you. Casting the brief aside aside now, let’s talk about Guns Akimbo.

The Witch: Subversion (2020)

Director: Park Hoon-jung

Notable Cast: Kim Da-mi, Jo Min-su, Choi Woo-shik, Park Hee-soon, Go Min-si, Choi Jung-woo, Oh Mi-hee, Daeun, Kim Byeong-ok

At this point, it might be safe to say that after Parasite swept its Oscar categories that we will – at least for a short time – be living in a post-Parasite world. A world where South Korean cinema will finally be getting some attention from more casual cinephiles and where the mainstream will keep a meandering eye on the big films from the SK industry. For our writers here at Blood Brothers and thus, our readers too, it’s an exciting time to see all of the new fans discover just how wild and awesome SK cinema has been for quite some time. Even films like The Witch: Subversion or The Witch Part 1: Subversion if you go by the original English title for the film, showcases just how dark and twisty the films can be. It’s a film with a ton of heart and mainstream appeal but does not hesitate to take its concept into the incredibly dark and violent recesses of its own psyche – particularly in a brutal and shocking third act. It’s a film that takes such a solid and impressively genre-favored turn that even its mundane narrative of the first two acts is saved. Yes, it’s a twist like this that makes me very excited for new people to discover SK cinema in more depth.