Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension review

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (15/R, 88 mins)
Director: Gregory Plotkin
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The advertising for the latest found footage spook-snooze in the Paranormal Activity series boasts that for the first time you will see the activity. Basically if anything at all were to happen on screen it would be an exponential increase in excitement from the thoroughly dull and lifeless affairs that the franchise has devolved into. The first was a nice surprise and for a while they were being knocked out at one a year, at the cost of about £6.50, and therefore to healthy box office returns even as audience interest started to wane. They’re less frequent now, but this one follows the same template of a family in a house being bothered by poltergeisty antics. When they find a bunch of old VHS tapes featuring two young girls who seem able to see what they're doing, they set up cameras at night to record the mysterious goings on in their daughter’s bedroom. We then get to watch that footage in all its glory, and in fairness we do get to see the activity, consisting mostly of fuzzy shapes and sudden loud noises. It’s all relentlessly, criminally boring and riddled with more plot holes than there’s room for here - do they never actually look at what they’ve filmed afterwards? And worst of all because it’s supposedly being filmed on an old 80s camera, we’re forced to watch it through a headache-inducing blur. Almost as bad is an exhausting gimmick where the 3D only kicks in when the ghost does its thing, but at least constantly putting on and taking off the glasses is a nice distraction from watching the movie.

The Last Witch Hunter review

The Last Witch Hunter (12A/PG-13, 106 mins)
Director: Breck Eisner
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

When you’re the star of what is currently the most lucrative franchise in cinema and can pretty much take your pick of projects, it looks like an odd choice for Vin Diesel to pitch himself front and centre in a hokey-looking fantasy horror.

There have been no shortage of duds involving witches and their ilk of late, and anything with a whiff of Dungeons and Dragons has been roundly rejected by audiences. And yet The Last Witch Hunter, while by no means particularly good, sets its sights on a low bar and clears it with some style. By maintaining a sense of fun and of its own silliness it stays on just the right side of ripe, and Diesel more or less manages to sell it, even through the nonsense he's forced to speak.

A meaty prologue gives us medieval Vin, where he and his beardy, leather-clad pals tackle a witch queen who has been terrorising the lands and is responsible for spreading the plague. The only way to deal with her is, of course, by sticking her through the heart. Diesel’s character, named Kaulder, manages this, but in the process the witch curses him with immortality.

There can be only one, and 800 years later we're in modern day New York where Kaulder functions as a guardian, keeping an eye on witches and making sure they stick to their code of not bothering the humans. Given that the title conjures notions of him spending most of the running time, well, hunting witches, it’s not the all out action fest that might have been expected.

Instead there’s a lot time devoted to details and backstory. There’s an old priest and a young priest, played by Michael Caine and Elijah Wood, who are known as Dolans, an order of aides who have been by Kaulder’s side through the centuries. With Caine’s Dolan 36 about to hand over the reins to Wood’s 37, he comes under attack, leading Kaulder to investigate what some bad witches may be up to in the city.

When it comes to plotting The Last Witch Hunter is largely gibberish, particularly in a final third that grows increasingly undisciplined. But there are still some worthwhile developments along the way and in terms of the mythology created, it actually contains one or two original ideas.

It's not been put together on the usual mega budget but the special effects and production design are of an accordingly decent standard, and it really does look very nice. It has a sense of humour, Diesel is a competent star, and for daft undemanding fun you could do a lot worse.

The House of Him - Glasgow Film Festival review

The House of Him
Director: Robert Florence
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Writer and comedian Robert Florence pulls off an astonishing sleight of hand with his debut feature, The House of Him, an eviscerating commentary on the scourge of domestic violence disguised as a slasher movie.

Filmed entirely in his mother's Glasgow home for £900, it may be confined and small of scale, but that lack of expansiveness is more than made up for with the thematic ambition and depth brought to it by Florence’s impassioned script.

It’s the house of a serial killer (Richard Rankin) who has been murdering young women there for years, and has just lured his latest victims, Sophie (Kirsty Strain) and Anna (Louise Stewart). At first it seems as though Anna will be the conventional “final girl”, chased around the house by Him. But it quickly becomes clear Florence has more on his mind.

Leaving the slasher antics aside for long spells, it becomes essentially a two-hander as the pair talk of Anna’s powerlessness to escape her plight. The analogy is a potent one, as their conversations delve into all the insidious ways abusers operate.

And in case you think this might sound preachy, it also works just fine as a horror film. The location never becomes limiting, imaginative and atmospheric ways are found to film it, and there are a bunch of decent jolts. A terrific, Carpenter-infused score helps considerably too.

The actors are assured and controlled, even overcoming that thing where hearing Scottish accents on screen can be like getting slapped on the ear. Rankin oozes quiet menace, while Stewart gets to display a wide emotional range, and their interactions never fail to compel.

As the film progresses, radio reports suggest what's going inside this house is happening the world over. Secret things, bad things in all the houses. And that plague is men. It's a pungent metaphor that entreats us to wake up to everyday misogyny and make us look long and accusingly at a world full of monsters.

Insidious Chapter 2 review

Insidious Chapter 2 (15/PG-13, 105 mins)
Director: James Wan
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The first Insidious a couple of years ago wasn’t the most sophisticated piece of horror cinema ever made, but it was a relentless scare machine. This sequel deepens the mythology with an awful lot of backstory, but dilutes the scares, beginning with the teenage version of Patrick Wilson’s Josh back in 1986 when his family first encountered the evil forces that still haunt them. We then pick up immediately after the events of the first film, with Lin Shaye’s medium murdered and Rose Byrne wondering whether she can trust her husband or if he’s possessed. Slow and creepy is the order of the day, and director James Wan’s skill with the frame and woozy angles still generates a handful of chilling moments, though not as many as you might think amidst a surfeit of spooky toys. This second chapter is clumsily structured, which would be less bothersome if the scares were more forthcoming, and there’s a stretch in the middle spent wandering round an old hospital that’s really sort of dull. But it’s rescued by a clever final third in which past events are neatly integrated, and there’s every indication it’s a series with the potential to run and run.

Riddick review

Riddick (15/R, 119 mins)
Director: David Twohy
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆


An under the radar near-classic was born when Vin Diesel’s hard-hitting convict antihero Riddick first appeared over a decade ago in the lean and effective Pitch Black, before an attempt to turn it into a big budget franchise saga stalled with the bloated and incomprehensible Chronicles of Riddick. This third in the series attempts to take him back to basics to an extent, and begins with Riddick left for dead on a baking and near uninhabitable planet, where no end of computer generated beasties are out to kill him. This unexpectedly extended sequence showcases some imaginative creature design and Riddick’s survival instincts before we get to the meat of the plot in which a bunch of the universe’s most ineffectual mercenaries arrive on the planet intent on collecting his head. This is more hunt and bait than straight action, and proves to be rather interesting, at least giving some relief from Diesel’s rather portentous noir voiceover. Disappointingly this can’t be sustained into a final third that runs out of ideas and relapses into uninspired evade-the-monsters shenanigans that try to recall Aliens but come up short. But Riddick remains a hulking and iconic presence throughout, and further adventures in his company wouldn’t be entirely unwelcome.

World War Z review

World War Z (15/PG-13, 116 mins)
Director: Marc Forster
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

It was almost two years ago now that the centre of Glasgow was taken over by Hollywood, as George Square and the surrounding streets were transformed into Philadelphia for Brad Pitt’s zombie-apocalypse epic World War Z.

Since then rewrites and reshoots have tarnished its reputation somewhat, to the extent that serious questions are being asked about the wisdom of spending $170m on a zombie movie, a genre that flourished in low budget, almost underground circles.

As it turns out it’s neither disaster nor total triumph, but a solidly put together thriller with plenty of entertaining scenes. And while Glasgow isn’t exactly blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, if you miss the first ten minutes, you’ll miss Glasgow.

It’s where we meet Pitt, his wife and two young daughters, stuck in Philly traffic. We’ve been hearing news reports of trouble around the world and disease outbreaks, when suddenly all hell breaks loose around them. There’s panic in the streets and people attacking each other, attacks that are close up and frantically edited to the point of confusion, compensated for by their intensity, with the sense of fear and danger real enough.

Barely escaping with their lives, the family makes it to an aircraft carrier, where it’s soon revealed that they're in the middle of a worldwide zombie infestation. Zombification is almost instantaneous, the walking dead are fast, savage and abundant, and the sustained threat in the early stages is palpable.

As a former United Nations investigator, Pitt is needed to go back into the mix with a scientist to try to find a cure or a way to stop the outbreak. This takes us to Korea for a gloomy and hard to follow sequence that’s just a stepping stone to get us to Israel.

This is where the movie really starts to gain traction. For a start everything there happens in daylight, and gives us a proper sense of the scale of the devastation. But the eye-catcher is the sheer number of zombies attacking a walled Jerusalem, and they're working together, forming undead pyramids to great effect, in those spectacular shots from the trailer.

Based on a novel by Max Brooks, World War Z is a reasonably original take on the zombie movie, focussing on the people actively fighting against the hordes, rather than just trying to survive or avoid them. There are some thrills, some tension, and a lot of impressive sights, though Pitt's family become something of an afterthought once they're separated, so emotional investment is limited.

He makes very interesting films, but this is only time outwith Troy that Pitt has been the solo anchor of a summer blockbuster. He’s fine in the lead, neither out of his depth nor particularly dynamic. His character is not a man of action, instead using his smarts to pick up clues, and this is a refreshing change.

Things grinds to a halt at the beginning of a third act that brings us back to the UK, before picking up significantly for a well-realised climax, then turning lazy again for an uninspired final outcome. It’s a pedestrian end to a patchy action horror that more or less delivers on what it set out to do.

Evil Dead II Blu-ray review

Evil Dead II (15, 84 mins)
Director: Sam Raimi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Part sequel and part remake, this delirious horror comedy sees Bruce Campbell return as Ash, as he and his girlfriend head to a secluded cabin in the mountains. The Book of the Dead features highly again, this time with added backstory as Ash listens to the tape recordings of the professor who found the book, through which evil spirits can possess the living. It doesn't mess about for a moment, with Ash’s girl possessed within the first five minutes and he forced to decapitate her. But that's only the start of his problems, and he's soon possessed himself while the daughter of the professor and her companions make their way to the cabin to add to the fun.

Director Sam Raimi creates a demented funhouse and manages the extremely rare feat of being terrifying and hilarious at the same time. Through quite astonishing camerawork, this is a movie that’s endlessly inventive and witty, with wonderful makeup effects making for sequence after sequence of breathtaking fun. In the pre-digital days in which it was made, this meant puppetry, stop-motion and sheer ingenuity, along with some lovely matte work.

It’s all driven by the human punching bag that is Campbell, as he gamely and masochistically bashes and smashes, chainsaws and chops his way through Three Stooges routines, and it’s a remarkable performance. This is horror by Looney Tunes, and it's a masterpiece.

Blu-ray: Evil Dead II has never looked or sounded this good on home video, and with over two hours of in-depth documentary and behind the scenes material plus a fun commentary with Raimi and Campbell, this is a package not to be missed.

Maniac review

Maniac (18/R, 89 mins)
Director: Franck Khalfoun
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

1980 slasher Maniac gets the remake treatment with the added hook of a first person point of view, with the slaughter seen through the eyes of Elijah Wood’s killer. We only ever see him in reflection, and it’s a clever bit of casting to present an actor known for his cuddliness as a psychopath whose thing is to scalp his victims for wigs, Vincent Price style, for his mannequins. Maniac is certainly grotesque, and sometimes that’s all horror fans ask, but getting involved in this savage and scuzzy little film is harder. The arrival of a photographer whom Wood wants badly not to kill shakes things up a little, but it’s not enough to dispel the need for a point to his journey, and repetition sets in quickly. Ed Gein, Hannibal Lecter and more are the touchstones, but simply referencing them is not enough, and no real comment on audience voyeurism is offered in the way that Michael Haneke might. Where it does succeed is in making modern day Los Angeles look like hell on earth or, at the very least, New York in the 1970s, but that’s really not enough to hang an entire movie on.

Warm Bodies review

Warm Bodies (12A/PG-13, 98 mins)
Director: Jonathan Levine
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

The apocalypse isn’t all fun and games in this surprisingly mournful comedy horror that’s on the one hand praiseworthy for doing something a bit different within the zombie genre, but on the other generates the lingering whiff of a Twilight cash-in with its romance between the living and the undead. The undead here is R (Nicholas Hoult) who, though a zombie, helps instead of eats the still-alive Julie (Teresa Palmer) and begins to feel himself change, perhaps on the way to becoming human again. With a strong thematic hook, about clinging on to humanity as long as possible, it’s a shame the rest of the plotting is so sloppy and the teen-friendly rating means any zombie-munching action is underfed. Ally that to a much too deliberately paced build-up, and a resolution that’s too easily earned, and Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead can sleep easy. But the romantic element is winning and there’s certainly some fun, if hardly a barrel of laughs, to be had with the premise, usually provided by Hoult’s zombified reactions and the always dependable Rob Corddry.

Paranormal Activity 4 review

Paranormal Activity 4 (15/R, 87 mins)
Directors: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Films like Paranormal Activity 4 are a true gift to moviegoers. Rarely do you get the opportunity to spend 90 minutes in a cinema entirely alone with your thoughts, with absolutely nothing on screen to distract you. It’s a great chance to make a start on that novel perhaps, or plan for your retirement. It’s only been three years since the first Paranormal Activity arrived as a breath of fresh air for horror fans, and became a surprise smash. With their tiny production costs and insatiable fanbase they can be churned out indefinitely, but three films down the line it’s clear the makers are all out of ideas. With the need to introduce ever more convoluted backstory into the timeline, this one kicks off in 2006 with the kidnap of a baby seen in one of the earlier movies. We then jump to 2011 and a new family, and predominantly the teenage daughter, as they start to experience strange goings on after they take in the weird young boy from across the street while his mother is in hospital. The now thoroughly redundant found footage conceit necessitates someone filming all aspects of the family’s daily life, and there’s simply no justification for some of the things shown here being filmed. It also begs the question, if this is all supposed to be home footage, why is it whenever something happens on screen it’s accompanied by a loud bang on the soundtrack? It’s all incredibly stupid and desperately tedious, with literally nothing happening for most of the running time, interspersed with nonsensical poltergeist interaction. Take along your tax forms to keep you entertained.

Dark Shadows review

Dark Shadows (12A/PG-13, 113 mins)
Director: Tim Burton
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Dark Shadows was a daytime soap opera that ran on American television from 1966 to 1971. But it was a soap with a difference, one populated with vampires, werewolves and witches, that achieved something of a cult status.

Now Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton reteam for what feels like the 257th time to bring it to the big screen, and the hope was it wouldn’t be just another in their conveyor belt of kooky fantasies that favour lavish production design and silly accents over a well told story.

While it’s undeniable that Burton has entered the most financially lucrative period of his career (Alice in Wonderland made a stupid amount of money), it’s coincided with him churning out his most vacuous and incoherent films. And, sadly, Dark Shadows is no different.

In a prologue set in 18th century Maine that recalls Coppola’s Dracula, we learn that the Collins family moved from England to America where they became rich through their fishing empire, and built the town of Collinsport. But when Barnabas Collins (Depp) spurned the advances of a witch named Angelique (Eva Green), she cursed him to be a vampire and buried him alive.

Now, in 1972, the Collins family still live in their sprawling mansion, Collinwood, Michelle Pfeiffer and Helena Bonham Carter among them, but their stock has dwindled because Angelique now runs the fishing industry in Collinsport. Meanwhile Barnabas is accidentally exhumed, and returns to Collinwood vowing to restore the family fortune.

As has so often been the case with Burton recently, glorious production values and a moderately spooky atmosphere can only take you so far. The makeup is splendid, and Depp does one of his patented English voices, his olde speake and confusion at modern ways the only source of amusement.

But everything else about Dark Shadows is nothing like funny enough, just half-baked ideas and an arid space in between the fish-out-of-time gags, and it’s an absolute dog’s dinner when it comes to coherence and consistency. None of the sorely underdeveloped characters serve the story, flitting in and out at random, Pfeiffer in particular disappearing for long stretches only to turn up when required.

It’s quite simply a badly directed mess, with flat, lazy performances, and reversals and relationships that are pulled from out of nowhere. There’s no threat, no build up of tensions, and Angelique is the only person in the entire debacle with clear motivations and goals. At some point everyone involved just threw up their hands and decided they’d just make a gothic sketch show instead. Except, you know, without the laughs.

Absent of narrative or memorable characters, it’s a series of barely connected skits with no plot to speak of, made without a jot of care or attention, but with an eye only on how the promise of Depp and some supernatural chuckles can grab enough unsuspecting punters in before audiences start to smell what they're being shovelled. The ropey special effects are just the final nail in the coffin.

If you want to see what Depp and Burton are really capable of together, revisit Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood. This is simply not good enough.

The Cabin in the Woods review

The Cabin in the Woods (15/R, 95 mins)
Director: Drew Goddard

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

For many months now, the internet has been abuzz with tales of the originality and the genius of The Cabin in the Woods.

Partly that’s because it was first slated to open in 2010, so it’s certainly been doing the rounds for long enough. For once though, a film’s years on the shelf are nothing to do with its quality, rather an abandoned 3D conversion and a bankrupt studio that left its release in limbo.

The other talking point has been about how any reviews of it should be spoiler-free. That’s how all reviews should be, but it’s made tricky in this case because the thing that could be construed as the major giveaway happens in the first twenty minutes or so and could therefore legitimately be discussed as part of the basic plot, especially if you’ve seen the trailer.

But even that much would be unfair, and much of the joy of this insane comedy horror comes in its discoveries, and so knowing as little as possible is definitely a good thing. So in the interests of playing along, let’s just say that there’s more going on than meets the eye.

It’s the directing debut of the writer of Cloverfield, Drew Goddard, who co-writes with Joss Whedon. With Whedon’s Avengers movie opening in a couple of weeks and one of that film’s stars, Chris Hemsworth (Thor), now a recognisable face appearing here, the timing seems ideal.

Outwith the ‘thing that sets it apart’, it’s a very typical setup. A bunch of students, among them Hemsworth and Kristen Connolly, head off for a weekend of partying at a cabin in the woods. We’ve seen it a thousand times before in horrors good and bad. There’s the remote location, dodgy looking locals, and stock figures within the group, like the jock and the geek.

But this isn’t cliché, it’s Goddard and Whedon putting us exactly where they want us to be, before the members of the group start to get picked off by oh, let’s say, monsters. But meanwhile we’ve also been introduced to a pair of scientists (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) in what looks like a Bond villain’s underground lair. They're clearly up to something, and there’s a good chance it’s going to involve the cabin. And the woods.

What follows is as much a deconstruction of the genre as a horror film in its own right. Like Scream was a decade and a half ago, it’s incredibly knowing yet not clever-clever for the sake of it, and plays with the tropes to remind the audience why they love horror, whether as something formulaic and jaded, or as comfortingly familiar.

But though it may seem a strange criticism for a praiseworthy horror, it’s just not very scary, certainly not providing the ferocity of something like Drag Me to Hell. But then Drag Me to Hell is nowhere near as funny as this, so it’s swings and roundabouts.

The premise, execution and laughs see it through. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Evil Dead are the most obvious touchstones, though the closest comparison is probably Evil Dead II, which so deftly manages to blend laughs and frights. But then, when this gets to a certain point, you’ll be hard pushed to find a horror that isn’t referenced in some way.

It becomes something truly demented by the final stretch, and luckily we have a very likeable cast capable of getting us there. All the actors playing the students are rock solid, but Jenkins and Whitford take it to another level. They make a brilliant double act, and their increasing exasperation as things get out of their control provides many of the film’s funniest moments.

If only it could have somehow been a more effective scare-machine, The Cabin in the Woods could have emerged as a masterpiece of the genre. Instead it’s just ridiculously entertaining, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Kevin Smith Red State Interview

Kevin Smith interviewed by Paul Greenwood, Glasgow, September 14th, 2011

Red State seems like a film made by someone with a lot to say....

Early in my career I had a lot to say and then in the middle of my career I didn’t have too much to say and now I've decided to end the career, and once you know there’s not much time to say anything, you start saying everything. It came from a place of not having had much on my mind for the last few years. I love Zack and Miri, but no one was crying for the story of that, and certainly not Cop Out, to be told, but this feels for the first time in a while I get to make a flick where there’s some real meat, some layers, and you get to enjoy it on several levels, and it’s got a bunch to say while saying nothing at all. I like the trappings of the exploitation film because it downplays what could be a very medicine-y message movie. You wrap it up in the gunfights and the fun of the chase and who’s going to get killed next, I think that takes the medicine-y edge off, and then you forget maybe it has something on its mind.

What was the catalyst for wanting to tell this story?

In the States we have to deal with the Westboro Baptist Church all the time in the media. You guys know them over here from the Louis Theroux doc, The Most Hated Family in America, these people wasting everybody’s time. They usually show up on the worst day of a person’s life, as they're putting a child in the ground and holding up their ridiculous signs and making lives miserable, and when you see that enough over the years you wish you could stop it, but you can’t stop free speech, particularly in my country, so your hands are tied to some degree. But you hate watching bullies of any kind, particularly bullies that run rampant in the name of God. So the movie is kind of my version of holding up a sign like they do, just to make their lives a little less pleasant, just irritate them a little bit. They’re monsters in real life and Red State kind of makes them cartoons, takes the idea of something like WBC and gun-toting religious nuts and throws them up on the screen - you take the monster, pull their teeth out, paint them up like clowns, and say look at these idiots. And that’s my version of them holding up a ‘God hates whatever’ sign.

If you do it all heavy handed it doesn’t work nearly as well, so you wrap it up in some entertainment at the same time. Bruce Willis said to me one time on set, ’It’s a movie, we should be moving’. And that stuck with me, so this is constantly moving forward, even when it’s not talking about issues, it’s designed to not let you get ahead of it. When I was writing it, every time I felt like I knew where it was going I just switched, jumped over to something else. I knew that if I knew where it was going, the audience would as well, so in order to make it fun for everybody you jump around and do genre mash-ups where it’s three different movies at once. That’s a great way to throw the audience, suddenly dropping one movie and picking up another. I've seen far better filmmakers than me do it for years, like the Coen brothers in Fargo - what a wonderful magic trick where it’s 30 minutes into the movie before the heroine finally joins; if you can pull that off I always thought it would be neat to have that kind of talent. And that’s kind of what Red State is, it’s me trying to do someone else’s movie, Quentin Tarantino by way of the Coens, with just enough of my sensibility in there so that people know it’s still me.

Do you want people to be surprised it’s a Kevin Smith film?

The highest compliment you can get is when some says to me ‘You didn’t direct this’. Every once in a while as an artist you should reinvent and give them something new, because once they get used to your bag of tricks, it’s so easy for everyone to go across the street and start looking for something else. If you want to maintain an audience or stay relevant or keep fresh, you’ve got to do something different every once in a while. And this was pretty drastic, I really feel like I took a nice chainsaw to the career of Kevin Smith, I took it down and then rebuilt it. But that’s a good thing, it’s not like ‘Oh, I hate my old career’, it’s just that I've done it and in order to step to the next place you obliterate the old and build something new. This is part of it, all the podcasts on the Smodcast network are part of it, and it feels neat. For the first time in a long time I feel on fire, and art should feel like if you don’t make it you’ll die, which is how I felt with Clerks and Chasing Amy and now Red State. With most of the stuff in the middle, it was more like ‘If I don’t make this movie, I'll just make another movie’.

So it’s nice to feel the desperation again, it makes you feel young. I just turned 41, so the notion of being involved in punk rock filmmaking in any shape of form, as we did with Red State, it makes you feel vital, just kind of gasses you up, and gives you enough energy to get through what will be the last flick I'll do after this, Hit Somebody. And then I'll be able to close it down. I'm kind of in love with the idea of completing a career, being able to say this was my movie period, for 20 years I made flicks, started with Clerks and ended with Hit Somebody, and there it is. That way the work never really gets a chance to start sucking, go out strong. I’d rather do that than sit around and collect a cheque. Some movies work, some don’t, but if I don’t have the fire in my belly for it, you make stuff like Cop Out and Zack and Miri, just movies. They can be fun and I love them, but they're not screaming to be made. There’s a lot of me in them but it’s not me opening up my mind and my heart and pouring it onto celluloid. When someone asks what my favourites were, it’s easy to point to the cheap ones. Clerks, $27,000, Chasing Amy $250,000, Clerks II $5m and now Red State $4m – the less money we had, the more creative we got, the riskier we could be. Jersey Girl was $35m and you can’t take any risks. The less money we had, there’s a sense of, fuck it, we can’t get in trouble, let’s go for it.

Will you pay much attention to the film’s critical response?

I got into a thing with critics after Cop Out where I had a real weird relationship with them and I’d started paying them too much attention. Even from day one with Clerks, I was always told I had to love and respect and kiss the ass of the critical community because they're the conduit between you and the audience, particularly if you’re a weird filmmaker. We’re talking pre-internet in 1994 where if you're making indie flicks, that’s the only way anyone is going to hear about it. And then the world changed, and I can now get in touch with the audience directly. I don’t have to rely on the opinions of a few people who’ve been canonised as people who can tell you whether your movie is good or bad, I can literally ask someone who bought a ticket, I can hear from anyone with an internet connection. So for years I played the game all filmmakers play where you smile through the bad reviews and engage when the reviews are good, and I got kind of sick of it. How can anyone tell me that I failed at self-expression? Art is subjective, when someone self-expresses, there’s no failure, there’s no wrong way. It got to a point where I thought ‘I'm done with this backwards nonsense’. I realised with Red State that I had to cut ties with the critical community, there’s no way I could have been as free as I was making this movie if I was worried about what people would think about it afterwards.

What were some of your horror influences going into Red State?

Rosemary’s Baby was a huge influence, because the creepiness of that flick is how normal everyone comes across. Ruth Gordon and all those senior citizens in that movie, they come across so sickeningly normal that it makes it even more terrifying. There’s also an exploitation film from the 70s I was always scared of called Race with the Devil, with Warren Oates and Peter Fonda camped out in the desert and they discover a Satanist cult who chase them across the desert in their Winnebago. So those devil worship movies really captured my imagination.

The distribution of the film in the States was unusual, where you took it on the road one city at a time. What was your thinking behind that?

The conventional wisdom is you got to spend money to make money, but I thought if I could just take this movie out there, we could make the money back without spending any more. My philosophy was we already spent the money, we made the fucking movie, but spending more than that to reach the audience in a world where I could tweet them or do a podcast or a radio or TV show for free, why are we spending all this money to get to the same place? So I then took the philosophy of less is more to the next degree in terms of marketing, just go after the audience. I've been through the release of a movie nine times prior to this, so I pretty much know what to expect. But the nice thing about Red State is it’s being going on now for almost a year since we found out we were in Sundance, so for a year without spending a dime I've just been stoking fires, showing it places, showing it over here in the UK, which brings it back to life again while it’s still live in the States. My hope is it never totally goes to sleep, like a conventional film with its theatrical run, home video and then that’s it. I want to see if, let’s say two years from now, I can still take Red State out, sell out a 500 seat venue and still charge a premium for it, even though the movie will be on DVD. I could literally go anywhere in the States or the UK and throw a screening of Red State on, I'll do a Q&A after it, 20 bucks, and people will still come out. And you put that money into a box office chart every month and that movie is still alive, generally you don’t see a two year old movie in the box office chart. I'm not doing it for financial gain, I just want to see if it can be done, and that’s the very essence of art.

Red State review

Red State (18/R, 88 mins)
Director: Kevin Smith
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Burned by the subpar box office and critical mauling of his Bruce Willis-starring action comedy from last year, Cop Out, Kevin Smith has gone back to his edgy, low budget roots with his latest, Red State, which is being actively marketed as something unexpected from the director.

To say it’s his best film in years might be damning with faint praise, like calling each new Woody Allen film a return to form, but the fact remains Smith hasn’t made something this interesting since Dogma over a decade ago.

But though ambitious and bold, it ultimately tries to be too many things. It achieves a fair level of success in its early stages as a backwoods horror, the kind we’ve seen a thousand times, where a bunch of unsuspecting teens get lost in a remote area and are preyed upon by nasty types.

The remote area in question here is Cooper’s Dell, home to the Five Points, a fundamentalist church group given to staging protests at the funerals of gay teenagers, and who are so right wing that even the neo-Nazis distance themselves from them.

Three high school friends have driven to Cooper’s Dell, seemingly by the lure of a girl on the internet. But this was a setup by the Five Points, and the boys end up drugged and held captive, possibly to be sacrificed for their wickedness.

By the time John Goodman turns up as the FBI agent in charge of what has become a hostage situation, some of the good work gets undone when events take a turn into a lengthy gun battle, lacking the sense of space and geography necessary to make a decent action film work.

The boys’ dialogue is foulmouthed and perfunctory, making it difficult for us to warm to them, though the three young actors are fine. But as Abin Cooper, the sect leader, Tarantino regular Michael Parks is sensational, leading his outwardly happy family in prayer as they declare their hatred for sinners and revel in their biblical literalism.

It’s paced at a lick and skilfully constructed, and Smith knows how to create suspense through visual storytelling and uncomfortably oppressive violence. He’s adept at pushing the right buttons, mercilessly lampooning the gun-toting Christian far right, piling on the anger and rage for the audience, albeit with a very easy target and no hint of subtlety.

Which takes us on to the next object of Smith’s ire, and what really drags the film out in its disappointing later stages. As well as having a pop at the real-life events in Waco, the Patriot Act comes under detailed scrutiny, so that what could have a tight and effective horror becomes a political diatribe full of indignation that might have been better saved for another day.

Witchfinder General Blu-ray review

Witchfinder General (18, 87 mins)
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

In the midst of the English Civil War, lawless Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Price) and his even more brutal accomplice travel the villages of East Anglia seeking practitioners of witchcraft. Apparently doing god’s work, it’s actually little more than a front for their lust and venality, using torture and logic not much more sophisticated than that in Monty Python and the Holy Grail – she weighs the same as a duck and is therefore made of wood and hence a witch. But when one young woman and her priest uncle come under threat, her fiancé (Ian Ogilvy), a soldier of Cromwell, makes it his mission to track down Hopkins.

It’s not the most intricate plot in the world but one rich with atmosphere and texture, one of several films of its time, from Blood on Satan’s Claw to The Wicker Man, that are steeped in folklore and period flavour, and that gleefully utilise the new-found tolerance in cinema for sex and violence. Price is at his most coldly menacing, possibly never less camp, and delivers a superb performance that keeps the film motoring even when it eventually becomes largely a revenge tale solved by opportune fisticuffs.
The Blu-ray provides fine detail in a picture vibrant with colour, while extras wise it’s a step up from the previous DVD release, with the mini-doc on director Michael Reeves bolstered by a commentary, a short film by Reeves and a couple of featurettes, including a delightful appearance by Price on Aspel in which he displays a great sense of humour.

The Resident review

The Resident (15, 91 mins)
Director: Antii Jokinen
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Possibly the most interesting aspect of The Resident is the first appearance in 35 years of Christopher Lee in a Hammer production. But, typical of the film’s flaws, his role as the grandfather of a creepy landlord (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) who has rented his spacious apartment to Hilary Swank’s doctor is largely irrelevant. By so readily invoking Psycho, this prurient chiller makes a rod for its own back, and though it does some interesting work in the shadows, it’s choppy and clumsily scripted and really rather listless. It plays most of its cards early, which adds some intrigue to certain characters, but leaves others out to dry, and it’s sometimes hard to tell whether its sheer grubbiness is an asset or a curse.

Saw 3D review

Saw 3D (18, 90 mins)
Director: Kevin Greutert
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Considering the star attraction of the Saw franchise, Tobin Bell’s Jigsaw, was killed off at the end of Saw III, the plot contortions necessary to allow Bell to appear in the subsequent outings have become increasingly farcical in the years since. Sensibly, he barely appears in this reportedly final entry, but given how dull every other character in the movie is, you actually kinda miss him after a while.

It’s a Saw film and, as such, it’s no better and no worse than the largely indistinguishable previous four entries in the franchise. The days of the inventive and original original, and the fairly watchable first sequel are long gone.

The only reason the Saws still exist is for another round of rusty clockwork contraptions to rip someone’s jaw apart or send spikes into throats and eyeballs. As usual, gorehounds will feel in no way short changed, with blood flowing like half price wine and buckets of flying flesh. Typically though, the 3D adds absolutely nothing, save to make the image even darker than it already was. Appalling acting across the board and rampant idiocy are a given.

After a completely unconnected and irrelevant prologue in which three people are shown trapped in a Jigsaw device in full public view, we move on to the main thrust of the story, which concerns Bobby (young Indiana Jones himself, Sean Patrick Flanery), who has made a nice living from the book and talk show circuit by his supposed status as a Jigsaw survivor. But he’s no such thing, and is brought in to Jigsaw’s game to show him the error of his ways.

Meanwhile Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), who some time ago was revealed as Jigsaw’s accomplice, is out for revenge against Jill, Jigsaw’s wife, who left him for dead at the end of Saw VI (if memory serves). It’s entirely possible that if you sat and watched all seven Saw movies back to back, this may all make some kind of sense, but in such an endeavour madness surely lies.

So while the cops look for Hoffman, Bobby negotiates Jigsaw’s traps to try to save his wife. To take things full circle, Cary Elwes from the original returns. And if you can’t work out the series’ ultimate gambit from that piece of information alone, well then you're even more stupid than the makers of this thing.

Burke and Hare review

Burke and Hare (15, 91 mins)
Director: John Landis
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

It’s Edinburgh in 1828, a time of great scientific endeavour. But the medical schools are running low on fresh cadavers, which means a fine chance for a pair of enterprising Irish immigrants like William Burke (Simon Pegg) and William Hare (Andy Serkis, who came on board after David Tennant dropped out) to make some easy money.

Beginning with their newly deceased tenant, Burke and Hare discover that Dr Robert Knox will give them £5 for each corpse. But with the bodies not all that easy to come across, they're forced to turn to murder to supply the demand.

With the subject matter, the release date and the fact it’s from the director of An American Werewolf in London, you might be going in to Burke and Hare expecting a horror. In actual fact it’s a knockabout black farce, and a reasonably funny one at that. Considering they barely scratch the morality of the situation, it’s probably the only way to make the material palatable.

Filmed mostly on location in a foggy and dank Edinburgh, the alleyways and cobbled streets of the capital look absolutely glorious. Burke and Hare themselves aren’t actually all that interesting, hence the need for loads of side characters and subplots, like Burke financing a play by the actress (Isla Fisher) he takes a fancy to.

Serkis is funnier and more invested than Pegg by some distance, but supporting players like Tom Wilkinson and Tim Curry all get a chance to try out their Scottish accents and mostly do quite well - Fisher not so much.

This is a true story expect for the parts that are not, says the blurb at the start, but that’s neither here nor there. What matters is that it’s fun, and on that count Burke and Hare just about delivers the goods.

Paranormal Activity 2 review

Paranormal Activity 2 (15, 91 mins)
Director: Tod Williams
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Released just under a year ago to decent acclaim and boffo box office (considering its miniscule budget), Paranormal Activity was a horror success story of near Blair Witch proportions. Its simple device of presenting camcorder footage of a couple, Katie and Micah, being terrorised by unseen forces was stunningly persuasive and genuinely frightening.

This quick-out-the-blocks sequel is actually a prequel, set a few weeks before the events of the first film, with the focus now on the family of Katie’s sister, Kristi. As before, everything we see is shot on their own camera, beginning with Kristi and her husband Dan returning home with their new baby, Hunter.

We get snippets of footage of Hunter going from baby to toddler, taking us up to a break-in at their home that leads to Dan and Kristi installing security cameras all around the house, which allows for the action to be covered from various vantage points at all times, rather than just when the video camera is being used.

This means we get to see the increasingly strange goings on around the house, with inanimate objects moving by themselves, and Hunter and the family dog fixated by something in the corner of the bedroom that only they can see.

In many respects it’s the same movie as the first, just done less effectively. The manifestations of malevolent force are far more physical in nature, with cupboards flying open and people being thrown about. But the overriding condition is LOUD, and this is what really cheapens PA2.

Where the original used suggestion and shadow to instil slow creeping dread by making you think you could see monsters in every corner, this simply clatters you around the head with thunderous noises every 10 minutes or so.

While this might instinctively provoke a jump the first time it happens, it soon becomes terrifically boring. In its defence, the overlap with the first film is clever when it comes, although the setup for a third entry is irritating. But, as feared, the rash of imitators in the wake of Paranormal Activity just don’t seem to know what made the original and best tick.

The Hole review

The Hole (12A, 92 mins)
Director: Joe Dante
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Has it really been 26 years since Gremlins was released? Indeed it has, but what’s just as astonishing is that its director, Joe Dante, has barely made another movie of note in the time since.

Sure, Innerspace was fun and Gremlins 2 had its moments, but outwith forgettable efforts like Small Soldiers and Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Dante has more or less been working on TV ever since. Which is a shame, because he proves with The Hole that he’s still more than capable of making a cracking family horror, albeit one with a distinctly 80s vibe.

Gremlins, along with another 80s horror classic, Poltergeist, was produced by Steven Spielberg, and The Hole is a film that seems to have his hand all over it. So it’s a surprise to learn he’s not actually involved given the Spielbergian setup of a single mother moving with her two sons to a new small town.

The boys are Dane (Chris Massoglia) and Lucas (Nathan Gamble) who discover a trapdoor in the floor of their basement not long after they move in that has a tendency to open by itself and seems to be bottomless. It’s not long before its contents and secrets are causing all manner of terrifying incidents and the result is a very well paced adventure that builds and escalates steadily, though it doesn’t quite unleash the funhouse you might be expecting, preferring to go even darker and stray into deeper themes that tap into childhood psychological trauma.

The relationship between Dane and Lucas of brothers who spend most of their time tormenting each other is wonderfully drawn and there are neat cameos as well as some nice updates on Gremlins gags. What lets it down is the 3D effects that are pretty much redundant for a good hour in the middle and then underutilised when it comes time for the action climax.

But Dante knows exactly how to deliver scares and fun in equal measure, although The Hole probably does lean more towards frights than frolics. In fact it’s profoundly creepy and really quite intense in places and though it has a child-friendly rating, be warned that youngsters could be terrified. Coulrophobes need not apply, with the scariest movie clown since Poltergeist terrorising Lucas in what is probably the best scene in the best horror of the year.