Cherry Tree Lane (2010)

Not NW10...

This is an English movie, even if one variation of the artwork clearly shows an American-style house and a white picket fence. It's actually set in North West London, and was written and directed by Paul Andrew Williams (another of his horror outings was darkly comic The Cottage).

That's... better...?

Cherry Tree Lane reminded me of both Funny Games and Eden Lake, and though it's neither as cerebral as the former nor as devastating as the latter, it still manages to be pretty riveting and successfully create tension with "only" a mostly one-room setting and a lot of dialogue. 

It never truly reaches heights of being scary (or at least, it didn't for me) but home invasion is always going to be unsettling... and here the invaders are not dramatic, masked, silent ghouls of unknown motive; they are loud kids with bad attitudes, little empathy, and when it comes to leader Rian (Jumayn Hunter, who actually starred in Eden Lake also) a real streak of cruelty.

The plot couldn't get much simpler; married couple Christine and Mike (Rachael Blake and Tom Butcher) settle down for an evening in - if I had one complaint, it was that the setting up of their dislike for one another was done so painstakingly, we were led to believe something would happen later to explain this, but it doesn't - and while they're eating dinner, a group of teens ring the doorbell and push their way into the house, taking the pair hostage. They say they want to speak to Sebastian, Christine and Mike's son. He's due home within the hour and they're going to wait. They assault Mike to subdue him and tie both up with gaffer tape.

What follows is a slow, stressful climb in unease as time passes, tempers fray and cruelties heighten. Much is done with off-screen violence, using the classic "we'll just have you hear what's happening and imagining far worse than we could ever show/afford to show" to great effect. Screaming and thumping reverberate through the house on a couple of occasions, and it makes up the nastier moments of the film as both the audience and other characters grimace and think about what's happening.

Even though this is a white middle-class couple up against working class kids, it never particularly feels like A Statement On Class. Honestly it feels more straightforward than that. It feels real in the sense that you can imagine Sebastian (whom we wait the entire runtime to see and barely catch a real glimpse of, a touch that I liked) is a mouthy little shit who acts like he's a big deal and got caught saying the wrong thing about the wrong person. I have known people like this - I think we all have. 

As nasty as Cherry Tree Lane gets, it never feels over the top. There are also some stand-out singular moments and shot compositions; watching one of the gang browse the DVD shelf in slow motion, tossing them aside, and the appearance of Christine in the foreground towards the end.

This one was a bit of a grower, but ultimately it left me feeling satisfied that I'd checked it out. I've been feeling pretty uninspired by horror movies of late... or locked into a perpetual scroll of streaming services through fear of wasting time on something shitty. There's so much shit out there! This piqued my interest - the clincher being it runs less than 90mins - and I'm glad it did. Oh, and anyone remember UNKLE? They did the music!

Cherry Tree Lane is currently streaming on Tubi! Honestly, Tubi is making me re-evaluate some life choices. It's free, their catalogue is MASSIVE and even if you have to wade through some crap, they have gems hidden in there too. 

I'd recommend giving this a spin if you want a short, sharp, English take on home invasion.*

*I feel I ought to say, however, CW: sexual assault. It's handled without exploitation, or lingering on the abuse like many movies tend to, but heads up that it happens here. 

Hounds of Love (2016)

Content warning: Abduction, abuse, rape.

Hounds of Love is the debut feature from Australian writer/director Ben Young and another I'd heard whispers about from the festival circuit. It's been floating around on the edges of my radar ever since. There's a special kind of thrill when a movie you've had your eye on for a long while appears on a streaming service.

Anyway.

Supposedly based on several different true crime stories (I thought it echoed Fred and Rose West quite a lot) it most closely resembles the real-life experiences of Kate Moir, and her abduction and abuse by David and Catherine Birnie in Perth, Western Australia.

Like the Birnies, Evelyn and John White (Emma Booth and Stephen Curry) have a disturbing, mutually fucked up and co-dependent hobby of kidnapping, raping and murdering young girls. 

Their latest victim and the one whose story we see unfold in full is Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings), who almost immediately spots the weaknesses in the White's relationship. John, a rapist and probable paedophile with a violent temper, needs Evelyn's help to abduct and deal with the girls; Evelyn, seemingly a victim of abuse from an early age herself, is damaged and manipulated to the point of believing these horrifying deeds count as acts of love. There's an awful lot of awful stuff going on behind the closed doors of this house.

Maybe it's my true crime obsession showing, or that my resistance to bleakness is pretty high, but I didn't find this as soul-crushing as others seemed to (want bleak Australian realism/nihilism? May I suggest The Snowtown Murders. Note "suggest" and not "recommend"). 

Hounds of Love is some of the worst of what humans are capable of, shown convincingly and without exploitation (at least in tone, as Kate Moir has gone on record as saying she was upset at the startling similarities). All three leads are incredibly strong, with a special mention for Cummings, who manages to convey so much when most of the time she's bound and gagged.

Young's vision for this is pretty spectacular, given it was shot in 20 days and was his first feature. He knows what to linger on: the stillness, hopelessness, the surrounding suburban normality; and what is going to be more upsetting to imply than outright show: the detritus left after a rape, the killing of a dog ☹. The cinematography (hat tip to Michael McDermott) is beautiful, dare I say it. It's as stunning as the subject matter is stomach-churning, looking almost fashion editorial/music video perfect in some moments.

It's not without a problematic cloud around it, but if you don't mind that and feeling like your heart is in your throat for 90mins, it's streaming on Hulu now.

Killing Ground (2016)

Killing Ground is an Australian Eden Lake, only with some timeline quirks, rape, baby violence, and a dog that actually survives (as far as we know).

To be honest I'm currently experiencing some fatigue from depictions of rape on screen. The moment I realised just how toxic the toxic males in this film were, it was downhill from there. Once that veil drops, that switch goes in their eyes (and credit to the actor Aaron Glenane for portraying this so well here) that's it, we know what comes next.

It's hard watching women sexually brutalised over and over, y'know? No matter how well it's done, no matter if the story sees the survivor exact revenge. It's still a narrative choice that depresses and drains. I wouldn't have knowingly chosen a "rape film" the night I watched this, and yet there I was, again, watching one.

So... I'm sorry, I'm tired. This is going to be a quick/lazy review. Here, have a look at some of the different artwork used for this movie...

I'll admit that first image was the one I saw and that's mostly why I gave this a chance. As these images suggest, Killing Ground is a nasty, competently-told tale of really awful shit happening on a camping trip. 

It's written and directed by Damien Power and it's streaming on Netflix now.

Angst (1983)

Coming off the back of a true crime binge (I pretty much constantly listen to true crime stuff, but recently it's been particularly intense) I've been tempering my desire to watch home invasion horror movies. This is a sub-genre I really enjoy, but part of that enjoyment stems from the fact it's one of the most terrifying.

Nevertheless! Once I realised it was on Shudder, I couldn't put off watching Angst (alternative title Schizophrenia) for very long. This may well be the granddaddy of home invasion movies, and it is a relentlessly unsettling experience.

Made in Austria (in German, with subtitles) and directed by Gerald Kargl - causing such controversy and box office backlash upon its release that he never made another movie - Angst is based on the true case of mass murderer Werner Kniesek and even utilizes phrasing from real confessions...

(How do you know you're too deep into true crime? When you can identify real confession dialogue without being told...)

The story chronicles the first 24 hours of freedom of "K", a psychopathic murderer. We not only follow K (an astonishing performance by Erwin Leder, whose other roles include Das Boot, and er, Underworld) but we're inside his head, too; hearing all of the manic thoughts, twisted leaps of logic and sickening plans that pass through his damaged brain.

Angst has us witness, in painstaking detail and intimacy, every single moment of this man's mania; the entire spectrum from an almost hysterical bloodlust, through sweat (and semen :/) drenched murders, to the post-kill clean up and groggy comedown, to thinking about doing it all over again.

We see him leave prison and immediately begin the hunt. Like a true addict, he's desperately uncomfortable and barely able to function, he needs to spill blood so much. We watch as one-by-one he chooses victims and dismisses them, finally finding a satisfactory set-up: a huge but strangely devoid of furniture house to break into, and a family to terrorize.

Sparse of dialogue in-scene, much of the exposition comes from either a doctor, giving comprehensive background and the medical/criminal diagnoses of K; or the man himself, narrating his obsessive frenzy.

He speaks incessantly of his "plan", although this spree repeatedly plays out like he's close to losing control of the situation. In one of many choices made that tinge the film with horrible realism, K is not a "cool" looking dude (see: most serial killers are awkward, conventionally unattractive individuals). He is a thin, sweaty, rat-faced man. His strength comes from his psychosis, not from his physical stature, and so even though he possess a terrifying presence, he is also barely able to move his hostages, alive or dead. There are numerous, uncomfortably protracted scenes of him dragging his victims from room to room.

"Visceral" is a word that gets thrown around a lot in this genre, and there are definitely a couple of instances in this movie where that word springs to mind.

Learning that Gaspar Noé is a fan of Angst came as absolutely no shock, and the sickening violence and profound sadness of Irreversible now makes a little more sense. Tonally both films are brutal in subject matter and uncompromising in their portrayal of it. They're also both aggressively visual pieces of cinema.

The cinematography in Angst was by Zbigniew Rybczynski who, I was excited to learn, was the director of a short I became slightly obsessed with a couple of months ago! 

The camerawork often takes on a dynamic, experimental style: when K runs, the vertigo-inducing "SnorriCam" is used; our viewpoint appears abnormally high up in some scenes, and too low to the ground in others; outside, what today would be a simple drone shot, must have taken some doing in the early 80s to achieve, as the camera lifts so high we're able to watch K from a bird's eye view as he runs around the house's estate opening gates and jumping over walls. 

And good luck forgetting the faces of Angst, in all of their grotesque close-up glory.

Every aspect of this film was a choice to provoke unease. Even the soundscapes are unnerving, with the score a repetitive synth march or a low-note dread-filled dirge, and normally innocuous noises such as footsteps and chewing food are blown up on the soundtrack to monstrous versions of the real thing.

Films that dwell so heavily on the viewpoint of a cold-blooded killer are always going to be for the strong of stomach, and the depths to which K sinks are matched only by the fact that we sink there too, in witnessing every painful second of it. If you want a truly soul-destroying double bill, Angst and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer would be a hell of a way to spend an evening. If the thought of taking stock of what you just participated in doesn't appeal, then maybe give this a hard pass.

Personally, as deeply grim as this film gets, I "enjoyed" it an awful lot for its full on commitment to making me feel so uncomfortable. Like Irreversible, it'll leave you with an empty feeling afterwards - but it's a beautifully constructed, frightening representation of the mind of a psychopath. It's a fucking travesty Kargl never made another movie. I cannot imagine the sights he would have shown us, if THIS was the first thing he had in his head. 

On Shudder right now, and you'll get a content warning if you decide to watch it!

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

For the past few years I've been meaning to get hold of Silent Night, Deadly Night. My collection is sadly lacking in Christmas-themed horror and this always seems to be doing the rounds with my horror friends and acquaintances.

(Black Christmas is the only spooky xmas movie I know well, so if you have any suggestions I am excited to hear them!).

Silent Night, Deadly Night was more or less what I was expecting:

• that immediately greasy, scuzzy feel of an 80s horror movie
• a fair amount of boobs
• some pretty creative/amusing kills
• optimistic setting up for a sequel - I didn't even know there was one sequel to this - turns out there are FOUR more SNDN films!

This film gives a very comprehensive lead-up to exactly why the killer has the motivation he does. We don't just see Billy at the moment his life completely derailed (the day he witnessed his parents assaulted and murdered by a guy dressed as Santa); we see the mid-point of his journey, too. And maybe if he'd been shown some human decency, care and love, he might have grown up to be faintly okay. Unfortunately for him, he's at a home for orphans run by a sadistic bitch of a Mother Superior.

In wonderful, classic 80s horror style, some superb groundwork is laid to monumentally fuck Billy up. This nun will have none of Billy's troubled past, and instead beats and berates him into submission. She thinks she is molding this poor kid into behaving (not that he is ever shown as being actually naughty), when really she is creating a perfect, messed up monster.

When we finally cut to Billy as a man, one of the nuns is getting him a job in a local toy shop. We're treated to a jarring musical montage of him successfully getting along in his new employment, that is... until the day comes that he's asked to dress as Santa. Already sweaty and freaking out, his true trigger moment comes when he witnesses his shithead coworker raping the girl Billy has a crush on. He kills him, obviously, and when she reacts (understandably) hysterical at this, he kills her too!

And so we continue with Billy making his way through workplaces and households, killing as he goes, and murmuring "naughty..." and "punish..." as he does so(!). The apparently one good nun in the orphanage is onto him though, and so are the police. This creates a fantastic narrative twist of innocent Santas all over town paying the price for Billy's homicidal tendencies.

Stand-out kills - and surely everyone's favourites who've seen this - are Denise (Linnea Quigley) being impaled on the antlers of a mounted deer head, and Billy decapitating a sledder as he comes down a hill.

This is a so-dumb-it's-kind-of-great movie. It may well become a fun yearly tradition to put on and giggle at it by the light of the xmas tree.

Gerald's Game (2017)

One of my least favourite Stephen King books makes a pretty great film, thanks to the two leads and director Mike Flanagan (of Hush, Oculus, and Ouija: Origin of Evil fame). He's been a fan of the book for a long time, and it shows.

I always thought the premise of this story had such great potential, but found the book overly self-indulgent and too plodding in pace. Adapted into a film with some necessary tweaks, this plays like the frightening, disturbing tale it always should have been.

Jessie (Carla Gugino, who is amazing in this) is away for the weekend at a remote cabin with her husband, and when he wants to use real handcuffs to restrain her during sex, this begins an episode of multi-leveled trauma for Jessie which she must overcome if she stands any chance of making it out alive. 

Just for starters, husband Gerald (Bruce Greenwood, thoroughly charismatic and unpleasant here) seems to want to instigate a non-consensual rape fantasy, then shortly afterwards suffers a fatal heart attack, leaving Jessie helpless with the house wide open to whomever/whatever wants to come inside.

Stand-out quote from repulsive character Gerald (paraphrased): "A vulnerable woman is like an open door." Utterly disgusting and disturbing, and cuts right to the true heart of the man Jessie married.

Stand out Gerald moment: When Jessie's imagined Gerald absentmindedly licks his lips and takes one of the accumulating flies into his mouth without missing a beat. Such a tiny detail but perfectly unsettling.

While the idea of being cuffed to a bed with no one to help you is scary enough, all of the plot drive of Gerald's Game comes from Jessie having to finally face the abuse she suffered from her father when she was a pre-teen - and a lifetime of repression and poor decisions following this abuse. There are two instances in this film that make you feel sick, and the flashbacks to young Jessie with her father is one of them.

The blood-red light of a solar eclipse washes over this moment.

The film is shot almost romantically, at times. Certainly in the beginning the dreamy quality of the lighting and cinematography is such that it almost appears to be in soft focus. This was the first thing I noticed when I watched the trailer, and I found it an interesting and commendable choice, given the themes of the story. It's far from a new approach, but presenting horror in a visually non-horrific way just makes it seem so much more frightening, no?

Gerald's Game in fact gives us a range of different horrors; from the gut-wrenchingly sad abuse, to the pure terror of feeling a presence in the room with you, just out of sight in the shadows - I'd actually forgotten about the "Space Cowboy" aspect of the story, which I found to be the most frightening parts of the book and they have DEFINITELY been translated successfully to film - and finally, Jessie's visceral final fight for survival.

There is lots to love about this adaptation, and much to keep you awake in the dark. Highly recommended - catch it on Netflix now.

Five Across The Eyes (2006).

Five high school girls get lost in the backwoods and are chased for the entirety of the film by a psychopathic killer (also female - here's a nice promo image of her).

Even though the DVD artwork hints at a higher budget, the moment I saw the Imagination Worldwide logo glowing on screen, I got flashbacks of The Hamiltons (review here) and knew exactly what was in store: not the worst movie ever but more than likely one which, a couple more drafts and edits down the line, could have been greatly improved upon.

To start with the good: the low budget look and feel does lend itself nicely to the more grisly moments. Watching someone getting their teeth bashed in on what looks like a home video is always going to have more impact.

Smaller scoped flicks like this are also prone to push the envelope with what type of atrocities are committed, and how. Five Across The Eyes has a rape by screwdriver in it, downplayed to the extent you almost miss it. You've got to respect that.

Now, the less good.

The running time of 95mins feels much longer and considering that the action in the movie amounts to watching these kids drive, cry, scream, get tortured, retaliate, repeat... a huge chunk of this should have been sheared off to make for a tighter, tauter story. This isn't rocket science and I don't know why it happens so bloody often.

By all means have much of the story take place in (and all of it shot from, apparently) the van, but realise that over an hour and a half of this is going to get a bit repetitive? Kill your babies in the edit people, c'mon!

There's also the fact that - and maybe I'm just speaking with my gender representation hard-on here - all of the characters are women, but nothing is ever really done with this. Yes okay, on the one hand that's cool, because why should it be an issue? Can't they just be characters in a narrative, women are people too, etc etc? And yet I still feel the tagline of this film should have been "An Opportunity Wasted".

I don't need something to write a thesis on, but a little more depth and a lot less screaming wouldn't have gone amiss.

There's a glint of something here, which makes it all the more frustrating. Although it may feel like it for the most part, not all characters are screamers. Within the group there is a spectrum of toughness and like the previously reviewed Eden Lake, as the ordeal becomes worse and more prolonged, the likelihood of vengeance wreaking from the good guys increases.

Indeed, a leveling shift in all of the girls at the end of the film means they've experienced enough to be able to fight back, setting upon their enemy like a pack of dogs.

And they really go to town on this bitch. Not stopping at beating her; they also repeatedly stab and... set her alight.

Intense! Yet the above doesn't happen until the final twenty minutes or so - AND another mistake is made of not ending with this bleak, cold sequence. Instead, everyone clambers back into the van, we're treated to more driving and a really lame joke before the credits finally roll.

The film feels like someone trying to pick up a ball but every time they get close to it, their big clumsy feet kick it away again.

Last House On The Left (2009).

--This review has a cap from one of the more sexually unsavoury scenes of the film. Just a warning--

First, let's get the frivolity out of the way. People I recognised in this version of The Last House On The Left and where I found out they were from:

• Monica Potter - Nic Cage's wife in Con Air
• 'Justin' - the son in Unbreakable
• 'Paige' - Michael Cera's love interest in Superbad (remember "blow-jay"?)

Okay now that's done, we can get serious.

To be honest, I wasn't even going to bother with this film until my LOVEFiLM list was a wee bit lighter. Nothing against remakes per se; I've come out the other side of the seething hatred for them and into numb acceptance, with the realisation that they can be good, on occasion. They rarely make it to the top of my films to-do list though.

Then a friend offered me his DVD on loan and ultimately, I liked it a lot more than I anticipated doing. Well, "liked" is perhaps an inappropriate word... "respected" is possibly better. Just so long as I never have to see the end sequence again - but more on that later.

This is a stunningly shot "re imagining" if you will, of Wes Craven's 1972 film. I've not watched the original in a while so this isn't going to be a comparison-based review, unless I can't help but draw parallels. The director this time around is Dennis Iliadis and yes, it was a new name to me, too. But if there's any justice in the world, this won't be the last we hear of him.

We know the plot, but in a nutshell this is a tale of three parts: Establishing the Collingwood family as a happy, supportive unit of three; following the daughter, Mari, as she meets with a friend but then falls into the hands of some truly fucked up villains; the final acts of vengeance committed by Mari's parents as they learn of her earlier ordeal.

The scene-setting shots of "normality" and family life reminded me very much of Sofia Coppola's Virgin Suicides. Such beauty, exquisitely framed and lit. They are almost otherworldly in their feel but also unnerving, somehow. Even if this were a film we didn't already know the outcome of, there is a distinct sense of foreboding hanging over every minute of this opening act.

Together with the outstanding score by John Murphy - an Englishman! - we are very aware that this lovely family, in this lovely house, is not gonna be so for very much longer.

Before Mari heads out to meet her friend Paige, there is a long sequence following her getting out of the shower and getting dressed. To start with, I found the inclusion of this confusing. If this were a slasher film or anything of that ilk, then the ubiquitous shower scene (and tit shot - although we don't get one of those here) is a given; but this film isn't like that and I wondered why we were being made to watch this girl being blatantly fetishised?

In the context of the whole film, all becomes clear. When the gang later attempt to force the youngest member and Krug's son, Justin, into sex with Mari, again we have close-ups of hands on her skin and clothes - but this time they aren't her own.

Justin succeeds in refusing to force himself onto her and so his father then steps up. The images that follow shed new light on the earlier collection of post-shower shots. We see them to be a direct reference and a forbear to when we are forced to watch Mari's clothes being ripped from her, first for Justin's benefit, then for Krug's.

It's really very clever and makes what is a harrowing scene of sexual assault all the more disturbing. We are a part of it, we become complicit, because we remember her underwear, for christ's sake, from earlier on. We regarded her dewy skin as she pulled on her clothes not minutes (our time, not hers) before - now we watch as she has those same items pulled from her. It's a brilliant and horrifying way of entangling the audience with the act.

This whole section of the film is difficult to watch, obviously. It is genuinely uncomfortable stuff. When Justin is being pushed towards Mari, screaming, when Paige gets stabbed before we, or indeed even she knows what's happening... and then Krug rapes Mari.

It's not graphic in the slightest, but it's one of the most prolonged rape scenes I think I've ever seen. Like Mari herself, we are given no get-out from this nightmare. We are forced (unless we turn off the DVD of course) to sit and endure every intensely awful moment. My god, IMDb trivia says that the rape scene took seventeen hours to film, I can't even imagine.

After this attack is when - what I took to be at least - an homage to the original takes place. Remember the post rape moment in Wes Craven's film? The villains survey one another sheepishly and wipe the blood from their hands, bringing to mind naughty children?

The equivalent here is when Krug stands up from raping Mari, Sadie (who had participated, in that she'd held the girl down and removed her clothes) slowly raises her eyes to meet his. She then smiles, awkwardly. It's a tiny thing but pretty much shattering in its inclusion.

Mari being shot at in the lake brings about more stunning shots that I have to include here:

The final act of this story always takes me by surprise, somehow. It's perverse really, as the whole weight of the movie is really behind the "middle class gone feral in vengeance" idea; and yet it always slips my mind for a second that there is more to see after we have witnessed the girls being tortured.

It is interesting to note that the earlier technique of laying civilised, wholesome groundwork is repeated here. When Krug and his gang take shelter in the Collingwood house, before either party know exactly how they are related, we are once again treated to scene-setting static shots of a cosy family home. Drink it in chaps, drink it in before the blood starts splashing the walls.

The tension resulting from the coming together of these six individuals is handled perfectly. It's an exercise in baby-step sized increments of suspense.

The gang initially remain just the right side of weird, provoking thoughtful looks and the odd comment between the Collingwood's, but not much else. The actors nail it to be honest. They are less histrionic than their 1972 equivalents - but that is what's needed here. Alternatively, they are quiet, menacing and most frightening of all: strange. Something about them is off. For instance, when Mrs Collingwood is showing them to the guesthouse, they cram into the bathroom behind her.

It's not psychopathic behaviour by any means, it just doesn't seem quite right. Nothing too out of the ordinary to set the alarm bells ringing but enough to wake the spidey senses.

And then comes the climatic bloodbath.

If Sadie's tight-lipped smile to her beloved is my first favourite moment of the film, then the glance exchanged between Mr and Mrs Collingwood, as they both realise they are about to commit murder, is my second.

No words are exchanged, because none are needed. We also know by their grim determination that neither want to, nor will, back down from this. This is the step they must take to avenge their daughter. "We have to be ready to do... anything."

It's a simple but powerful moment - which is quite something, coming from someone who can't usually look at Monica Potter without getting LeAnn Rimes stuck in her head.

The final dispatching of the gang is again, right on the money. Until Krug. Oh god, why. Heed my advice and turn this film off once you hit the 1:40:04 mark, because something ridiculous and uncalled for happens that just undermines all the great work before it. I get angry just thinking about it!

I'm not going to tell you what it is. All I am going to say is that it pissed me off this was allowed to be included and I hope that Iliadis' hand was forced into doing so. He cannot have made a movie this good, then thought that ending was a suitable way to finish it.

This movie comes highly recommended, however I repeat: turn off at 1:40:04 and save yourself from the jarring, superfluous final scene and the use of 'Dirge' by Death In Vegas (one of my favourite songs) directly afterwards. Putting a silly hat on a great flick is one thing... but don't soundtrack it with a song I adore as well, argh!