Terra Formars

Terra Formars is a sci-fi action movie directed by Takashi Miike and based on the popular Japanese manga series of the same name. What’s it about? A team of people with bug-based superpowers battling highly evolved, insanely deadly humanoid cockroach men on Mars. Thinking about it, the highly prolific Takashi Miike was pretty much the perfect choice of director for this sort of movie. It’s certainly very familiar territory for the man, whose cinematic oeuvre consists of a lot of adaptations, from manga, anime, videogames, books and plays. It also seems like it’d be right up his wheelhouse, with its ridiculous, violent premise. And it largely is – the movie, while nowhere near perfect and with its share of flaws, is a lot of fun in his hands. It adheres to its source material very closely with one key difference – the film seems happy to acknowledge its own silliness with a helping of campiness in its performances and production ideas. The film, with a fair few tweaks and differences, is also a shockingly faithful adaptation of the beginning of both the anime and manga.

The plot closely follows the manga/anime’s beginning. Mankind attempts to terraform Mars by sending probes full of moss and cockroaches to alter the atmosphere. Five hundred years later and Mars’ surface now has breathable air capable of sustaining human life. Eccentric scientist Dr Honda assembles a team of forcibly recruits a crew of desperate undesirables for a mission to head to Mars, ostensibly to exterminate the cockroaches so that human colonisation can eventually start. Given mysterious surgery to survive the trip, the ragtag team of the space shuttle BUGS 2 lands on Mars and promptly discover that the cockroaches have drastically evolved. Known as terraformars, they’re tall, muscular humanoids with amazing speed and strength, and a violent hate of humans. As the terraformars attack, the BUGS 2 crew must fight for survival. They’re not completely helpless – Dr Honda has spliced insect DNA into them, genetically modifying them with bug-based powers to fight the terraformars and escape the planet.

The plot is an almost 1:1 telling of the manga’s beginning, with every key plot point and development and most of its characters being brought over. Overall it works pretty well, though there are some downsides to it. Since I was familiar with the original, I knew what to expect so I can’t exactly comment on how somebody else would find it. The cast of characters is large and, for the most part, not developed at all. While a few characters have something approximating personality and backstory (particularly our hero Shokichi and the over the top Dr Honda), just as many have not much going on barring a few lines of dialogue and a broad character archetype to inhabit. Some have fun with the little they’re given, but for the most part a lot of characters are just fodder to be killed off. This is something due to the source material, which constantly introduces slews of new characters only to immediately kill them off. It does mean that you don’t really have an attachment to any of the characters, meaning some scenes typically lack tension since you don’t really care if they die or not. Of the characters, the ridiculous Dr Honda is probably the most, fun, and the most interesting in the sense that he’s completely different from his original counterpart. He’s the most camp of the lot and a lot of fun to watch.

Whenever a character uses their bug powers, through injecting a special chemical into their necks, we get a quick explanation of what bug’s powers they’re getting. I liked these moments, which were ridiculous and acted as sort of mini Richard-Attenborough-by-way-of-superpowers styled factoids for some strange insects. These moments are lifted from the manga, but I really liked how they were shown here, stylistically and visually. The transformations themselves are campy, as the characters grow insect-like appendages and transform, Power Rangers’ style. They basically become like cheesy costumed superheroes, and it’s a lot of fun. The movie doesn’t pretend that these transformations aren’t silly, and the vibrant colours and ridiculous prosthetics are a lot of fun. Towards the end things briefly touch into body-horror territory with overdosing on the bug serum, but not for long. It’s something that would have been nice to be delved deeper into.

The terraformars themselves are actually pretty damn great looking to the point I was pretty impressed (I’m not usually impressed by the CGI effects in Miike movies). Unlike the human’s insect transformations, the terraformars are completely CGI creations (though some physical gore props do show up at times), and they look pretty amazing and completely faithful to their original designs. Speaking of which, the actual terraformar designs are quite odd, being a cross between cockroaches and Neanderthal humans (they tend to carry oversized clubs as well). I will say that they’re very obviously CGI and their otherness does make them stand out, but considering the ridiculousness of their design I think it works fine. Unfortunately not all of the CGI is up to par, with some pretty bad effects at times, particularly during the bigger action moments. While the Terra Formars are impressively detailed when shown up close, any scene showing a horde of them or having them do something complicated (like scuttling over the ship) looks noticeably bad. This extends to some action moments, particularly some moments of the finale, looking pretty bad.

The action, when it happens, is fun and punchy but nothing particularly special. Humans and terraformars are crushed, torn apart and dismembered, with all the gore being bursts of CGI blood (though the terraformar’s have white blood). Since the terraformars are CGI, there can be an initial little bit of disconnect since the cast are largely punching at nothing (though the explosions of white that splash around give the idea of impact) but the overall effect works pretty well. Again it’s when things zoom out to show large groups being battled that things don’t look quite as good. The choreography is minimalistic (to the point of non-existence) but it’s classic Miike action, with big wound-up punches, dropkicks and stomps being used by both humans and terraformars alike. I will say that it isn’t quite as gruesome as the manga series.  

The sets and costumes are both pretty great and really sell the science fiction aspect of the film. Mars surface itself is suitably Mars-like, which equates to a red, rocky desert. As a result the scenes on the Mars surface tend to be a bit drab and uninteresting, particularly compared to the comforting sci-fi familiarity of the space shuttle’s interior (the control room design, mixed with holodeck technology felt like a mix of Event Horizon and Prometheus). I actually quite liked the sci-fi elements of the film. The costumes and visual effects were pretty great, with the space suits looking pretty good, the technology looking great and while a lot of the aspects are familiar (pretty much every big-budget sci-fi film has elements like these) they looked good here.

With a few exceptions, mostly tied to serious character backstory (often laid down at inopportune times), the film never takes itself particularly seriously. It’s clear pretty much instantly, with the ridiculous hair styles and basic, broad personalities of its largely disposable cast (much like the source material, most characters exists just to be slaughtered). While the tone does veer into serious territory at times and the pace tends to drag, the overall campiness of the production, with its bug transformations, its CGI humanoid cockroaches and tone it all works pretty well. It remains fun throughout, even when the tone turns more serious towards the end. In contrast, the Terra Formar manga/anime both play the premise completely straight, often to the point of unintentional bathos. I appreciated that the movie acknowledged its silliness, whether intentionally or not (some of the ridiculousness is chuckle inducing in the film, while the manga played it seriously) and it made for a fun ride.

A lot of the film’s issues, relating to characters, story and details, can be traced back to the source material. There is a big level of inconsistency as to how powerful the terraformars themselves are. They’re shown to be insanely fast and powerful, but they don’t often use their speed (barring one or two times you never see them use it again). At times they’re able to decapitate somebody in a single swipe, but at other times a punch will just knock somebody back. The biggest inconsistency, and one that stems directly from the manga, is the lethality of the terraformars themselves between an individual one and a group of them. Initially a single terraformar seems capable of slaughtering through several people effortlessly, yet in another scene a single person is able to kill a whole bunch of them. It’s inconsistent. And when there’s a group surrounding our heroes they never just swarm them, instead heading in one after the other. But these are issues stemming directly from the manga. More specific to the film is how characters rarely seem to be in a rush or a panic about the terraformars.

It contributes to the film’s weird pacing and structure issues. That’s a complaint I have for a lot of Takashi Miike films (he’s pretty consistent in his excess), and while it isn’t a dealbreaker, it is notable. For the most part it runs at a pretty steady momentum, with a few flashbacks to character’s backstories thrown around, and it gets right into its terraformar action after it sets up its world and plot. From about the halfway point, where a few twists and plot developments occur, it becomes a bit slower and meandering as it takes the time to explain to its characters (and the audience) the twists and what is happening. When some characters seem to be spending large chunks of the movie just standing around while the deadly terraformars are closing in it’s a bit weird, but the movie brings things together at the end, tying things up (though the ending feels open, due to it being the end of the beginning of the still-running manga/anime series).

I enjoyed Terra Formars. It was as ridiculous and silly as it needed to be and was a shockingly faithful adaptation. I will say that my opinion is biased – I’m a fan of Takashi Miike movies and I’m familiar with the manga series, so I went in with measured expectations. But I had a lot of fun with it. I’ve seen a lot of Takashi Miike movies, and can say a lot of them aren’t very good (it’s a coin flip whether a Miike movie will end up being good or bad) and the recent influx of manga/anime based live-action movie adaptations (like Parasyte or Attack on Titan) have been pretty awful, but this one, with its sense of fun (which feels intentional) gave an enjoyable, though uneven, ride. I could forgive its faults and had a good time with this one.

Darr @ the Mall

While I’ve dedicated about half of this blog to reviews of Asian movies, I’ve yet to really touch on India, or the wide, weird world of Bollywood and Hindi movies. I guess the reason would be that, comparatively, I haven’t seem nowhere near as many of them as I have of Japanese, Hong Kong, Malaysian and South Korean films. Another big aspect would be that a lot of the Hindi/Bollywood films I have seen have been pretty damn awful. Bollywood is a huge industry, but it ain’t exactly the most creative. You’d be surprised at how many Bollywood movies are just direct ripoffs/blatant unlicensed remakes of other successful movies. Stealing ideas, or outright copying movies plots (and even posters) is just a thing Bollywood has done for years.

Well it’s time to do a Bollywood movie anyway, and considering the other half of this blog has been dedicated to horror movies I might as well do a Bollywood Horror movie, because such a thing does exist. So we get Darr @ the Mall, an inept ‘horror’ movie that doesn’t know or care about what it’s doing but instead copies ideas and imagery from dozens of other movies and shoves them on screen. What joy.

 

The Amity Mall, the largest shopping mall in India, has just finished construction and is due to celebrate its inauguration. Despite not yet opening, it has a horrible reputation due to a series of mysteriously ‘accidental’ deaths of staff and construction workers, causing the locals and media to consider the place haunted. Vishnu is hired as the mall’s new security chief after the death of the previous one. The mall’s owners, Mr. Manchanda and Mr. Khan, are holding a party on the eve of the inauguration to celebrate with their adult children, including Manchanda’s daughter Ahana, various investors and associates. As the party goes on and Ahana and her friends explore the empty mall, Vishnu investigates mysterious apparitions and discovers a vengeful spirit is haunting the mall, killing those it crosses paths with. It traps Vishnu, Manchanda, Khan and their family members in the mall and hunts them down, as the group attempts to escape.

So it’s a pretty standard, familiar shell of a plot all things considered. It’s actually the plot of a few horror movies shoved together really – ‘trapped in a shopping mall’ is the premise of a lot, like Dawn of the Dead of Chopping Mall, but even the far more specific ‘ghost haunts shopping mall before it opens’ is stolen wholesale from the Japanese horror-thriller ‘Into the Mirror’, as well as it’s crappy American remake ‘Mirrors’ (which starred Kiefer Sutherland as an alcoholic ex-cop who just wants his kids). The movie even cribs a few visuals from it. Unoriginality of the premise aside, this set-up is actually pretty decent for a little horror movie, provided it has a few things: a good pace, entertaining characters, creepy atmosphere and great kills. Darr doesn’t have any of these things.

Darr has a horribly languid pace, prone to meandering detours into nothingness as it lazes around for most of its (unnecessarily long) two hour length. Two hours is a very long time in horror movie terms, and Darr uses it in the worst possible way – it takes a full seventy minutes before the film gets to the ‘trapped in the mall’ part. Those seventy minutes are spent mostly on characters wandering around, or Ahana and her unlikeable relatives/friends getting into underwritten relationship drama. When the ghost does turn up proper, it drags even more since it has another fifty minutes to get through, so you’re mostly watching characters wander around in the dark until they get killed off. Speaking of unlikeable, the characters are so thinly written and boring that I struggle to remember anything about them. They don’t have personalities and the cast don’t bother to give the poorly written and laughable script any effort. Darr also has a really distracting and confusing issue with dialogue. Characters switch from speaking in Hindi to English randomly, sometimes within the same sentence. It’s baffling, especially when they’ll start a sentence in English, then trail off into Hindi while occasionally throwing in an English word or phrase. I have no idea why they did it – to whose benefit is it?

 

Vishnu just seems confused for the entire movie, never really reacting the way that he should but instead standing around looking as though he doesn’t know where he is or what he’s doing. Which, considering the rest of the movie, might be closer to reality than one would think. According to the story Vishnu is meant to be in his late twenties, but the actor they chose for him is clearly in his forties which is ridiculous (his throat is so coarse with lines It looks like he survived being hanged several times). Sure, American horror movies tend to hire twentysomethings to play teens, but they at least look young. I assume he’s a well-known actor, because otherwise why the hell would they have chosen him? There’s nothing to his character but that’s true of everybody else. Nobody has any chemistry or charisma and nobody interacts in any way that makes sense. Why is Machanda so familiar with Vishnu when the latter has only been working there overnight? Why does the movie try and do a weird Vishnu x Ahana thing when they don’t even know each other and barely even speak?

The party, despite having at least forty people attending, suddenly disappears when the movie decides it’s finally time to get on with it. I don’t know what happened to any of those people, including the group of singers and dancers who do a little music number, but the movie decides that’s not important anymore even though it’s spent so long dwelling on it. I’d also like to point out just how confusing the actual geography of the mall is, and how the party itself seems to exist in some sort of pocket dimension. I’m not even entirely sure the party is in the mall at all – its interior is a nightclub, and there’s never a scene showing anybody heading into or out of the mall. Establishing shots aren’t the films forte, but then again nothing is. In fact, you never really get a sense of where anything is in the wall and even the scenes inside show it’s clearly empty and unfinished. It really feels like they shot the movie in several different places, with the cramped underground security rooms full of assorted haunted house junk (Creepy mannequins! Old pictures! Jars!) not fitting in at all with the sleek mall interior, which itself doesn’t fit right with the mall’s grassy exterior.

When spooky things happen, they’re not interesting. Because it’s about ghosts, that means we get every ghost cliché possible, and because it’s Darr it means it’s all scenes taken from other movies. Things move in the background when characters aren’t looking, people hear voices or sounds or see things and freak out. When people finally start dying, it’s even more disappointing. The vast majority of the deaths occur off-screen or are shot in such a way that you can’t see what is going on. Darr is a big fan of having the screen turn completely black in place of showing any action. It’s either that or just showing a shadow or silhouette of a death or the bloodthirsty spectre, since those are the cheapest, laziest way of doing it.

 

I haven’t talked yet of the spooky spectre, and that’s mostly because it’s absolutely pathetic. It’s a poorly animated skeleton lady in a smog cloud. Sometimes it looks like a creepy ghost lady, specifically the maiden in black from The Maiden in Black (because Darr will steal from anything). Other times it’s just a black cloud that’s barely visible in the black void most scenes tend to inhabit. Other than ghost cloud/lady, there are also ghost children which look just as bad. Effects work is never great in these sorts of movies, but it’s just so especially awful. Even worse are the random green screen effects used occasionally for no apparent reason. One, involving a flashback, has a characters silhouette against an obviously computer generated inferno, the flames, looking as though they came from a Playstation 1 game, looping over and over. The worst is in the finale, where the survivors try and run to safety towards outside, only the outside is clearly a backdrop that’s been placed there – you can visibly see that it’s a flat surface. What the hell?

The film is hard to watch, not just because of everything mentioned above but mostly because the lighting, framing and blocking is atrocious. From a technical point of view, this is amateur (two) hour(s), because it’s aggravatingly difficult to see what’s going on in most scenes. Most scenes are lit poorly, while some aren’t lit at all, so you’re staring at near pitch-blackness as you struggle to make out what you’re looking at. Sure, the mall is meant to be dark and spooky and haunted, but when you can’t see what’s happening then what’s the point of watching? When you can actually see, the film manages to screw things up anyway, often throwing blinding light sources in your face (Vishnu constantly points his flashlight directly into the camera, meaning you can’t see anything anyway), or there’ll be something in the way of the shot, blocking it. As such, it’s an ugly and cluttered movie. It’s abundantly clear that the filmmakers don’t actually understand horror movies or how tension and atmosphere are meant to work. Every attempt made has been stolen, poorly, from other horror movies. Darr is often embarrassing in the way it shamelessly steals ideas and imagery from other horror movies and shoves them on screen. You can often even pick exactly what movie they’re liberally copying, from the yellow raincoat-clad ghost from Dark Water, to the rusty nightmare realm of Silent Hill. None of these things mesh well, or even have any bearing or significance to the plot; they’re just there seemingly because the filmmakers saw it worked in other horror movies and decided to steal it. It’s not homage or a reference, it’s just taking bits and pieces form other films and stapling them onto your own. Even other small details, like how the mall is called the Amity Mall, are almost painful little references.

Because this is a movie from Bollywood, we get music numbers thrown in. No, it’s not what you’re thinking – it isn’t a musical and the characters don’t suddenly burst into song or sing their predicament. That would have at least been funny. Instead we get the equivalent of an obnoxious music video spliced into the middle of the film, a glitzy club-music track I assume to be titled Pina Colada, because that’s what the girl who looked like a pig in lipstick rolled into latex and fishnet stockings singing it kept repeating over and over again. It comes out of nowhere, has nothing to do with the story or any of the characters, fucks up the tone and is gone, never mentioned again. Another scene also has a music track, complete with lyrics, play for no reason. The scene seems to end and the song stops as we cut away and the film’s ‘plot’ continues for a few minutes, but then we cut back and the song resumes from where it’d stopped mid-lyrics, which is the weirdest thing ever. It’s important to note that these songs were apparently actually written specifically for this movie, because that’s how Bollywood works. The other music, from atmospherics to incidental pieces are often out of place or silly. The building-tension noises sound like they’re stolen from cheesy 80s cartoons, and any attempts at spooky horror sounds are almost like parody versions of the music from actual horror movies.

 

Darr @ the Mall is really, really bad. Hell, I’d say that the baffling, meaningless inclusion of the @ symbol in the title is a pretty big signifier of the sheer incompetence and laziness at play here (they seriously couldn’t have just written ‘at’? or just even named it something more interesting?). It’s a horror movie made by people who have watched other horror movies but didn’t understand them, but decided to try and copy them anyway. The Bollywood slant just makes it stranger, with so much obvious meddling (I feel like it was just a vehicle for that music number), that you can’t help but feel they weren’t even interested in making it into a horror movie. Maybe it was just made to be somebody’s tax dodge or something. That might explain what it’s such a hack job

Hatchet 3

Hatchet 3 sucks. It has an absolutely massive amount of gore (varying wildly in quality) and dozens of kills but, again, it lacks the heart, soul and fun of the original. It’s also has almost no plot and the thinnest reason to exist of them all. Adam Green no longer directs, instead producing (though he does cameo once again as a drunk, a role he also played in the first two films). His absence behind the camera is obvious, as this movie feels amateurish and much looser. The film work itself is obviously cheap and nasty, with ugly sets, poor acting and a total lack of style or atmosphere. The gore effects also look really cheap, and not in a particularly endearing way. If anything, it has the look and feel of an amateur fan film based around Hatchet, rather than a proper continuation.

 

Starting immediately at the end of Hatchet 2, sole survivor Marybeth has seemingly killed Victor Crowley, only for him to suddenly revive, establishing that he can’t be killed by conventional methods - within the swamp he’ll always resurrect.  On arrival back in town covered in blood after managing another escape, she’s quickly arrested by the cops who blame her for the massacre of the tour group from the first film and the hunting posse from the second film. While the police interrogate her, a group of paramedics are sent to the swamp to look for any survivors, only to get slaughtered themselves, but not before putting out a distress signal.

While a massive group of armed police and FBI Special Forces agents go into the swamp on a search/destroy rescue mission, Marybeth finds herself behind bars and being grilled by local journalist and self-appointed Victor Crowley expert Amanda. Amanda has a plan to finally end Victor forever by bringing him what he wants most – his father – and she needs Marybeth’s help to do it.

Danielle Harris continues to showcase why she’s never seen mainstream success. She’s just horrible, and her Marybeth is still so thoroughly unlikeable it’s insane. I didn’t think it was possible for her to get worse than she was in Hatchet 2, but somehow she manages it. She’s bitchier now than ever before, but just as whiny. Thankfully she’s sidelined for about half of the film. Seriously, she’s absent for the vast majority of the movie’s action, sent on a useless errand while the bulk of the action and killing takes place elsewhere.

 

Amanda is played by Caroline Williams, probably best known for starring in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (original, not remake and I hate how horror movies have gotten to the point where I have to mention whether a horror movie sequel is a remake or not). She gives actual energy to her character, something that is missing from everybody else in the movie. Speaking of, with only three exceptions the film seems to be made up entirely of random, forgettable actors, almost all of them amateurish and seemingly taken in off the street. Of the three, one is the same guy who played Justin and Shaun (acting as a third brother I guess, though it’s never mentioned), and another is the actor who played Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13^th remake, which seems done in a weird way to have two actors who played the iconic masked killer in the same film.

There’s an extended cameo by Sid Haig that makes up a fair amount of the weak side-plot. Sid Haig, like many old horror stars ready for cameos, can be terrible if you don’t know how to use him for something fun or interesting (something only Rob Zombie seems to know how to do). Here he just riffs off his Captain Spaulding performance from House of 1000 Corpses, being loudmouthed and racist. It’s almost as though the director saw that movie and said to him ‘just do that’. He feels so out of place here, but then again I can’t say the film has a particularly solid feel otherwise. It’s like a patchwork of disparate, amateurish parts shoved together, unsure of what its own tone should be.

The vast majority of the film then has you watching characters that are so forgettable and unrealised that they lack names wander through a forest until Victor appears and massacres them. The action is almost non-stop, and Victor kills a huge number of people, but it never really elevates above ‘meh’. I think since they’re mostly so disposable, and we don’t know anything about these random people that seeing them get hacked apart or ripped open doesn’t mean anything. The kills are brutal but less inventive and elaborate than what was in the first two films. Still, if you just want to watch a slaughter fest then it works well enough. It’s especially laughable when the movie takes a handful of digs at Hatchet 2’s plot, which was also thin and lacking in logic, but Hatchet 3 feels worse because the plot is nothing. Amanda and Marybeth’s quest has them drive to an old guy’s house for half the movie, while the meantime is spent with random extras getting killed until the two can get back to the swamp. The movie literally kills time by killing people.

 

Hatchet 2 established pretty well that Victor Crowley, burly physical presence aside, was a ghost. So watching a bunch of idiots try to kill him is sort of a null point, since we already know he can’t die conventionally, so all the guns and rockets shot at him aren’t going to work. The way they ultimately do kill Victor is actually pretty solid and works well in the makings of his origin from the original movie. Victor is undead, constantly searching for his father. To finally put him to rest, he needs to be given his father, his cremated remains conveniently being held by a racist old coot in the boonies. Once Victor is given his father’s ashes by Marybeth, his body suddenly decomposes, skin and muscle sloughing off until he’s reduced to a gnarled skeleton. Marybeth, bleeding out and wielding a shotgun, blasts his remains into nothingness. It’s a good ending to a disappointing movie, though it’s basically the same ending Hatchet 2 had.

And that’s the end of the Hatchet trilogy. Three films over about eight years, and only one of them is good. The rest sort of show the sad progression most horror series go through – the awesome first film, the second one that goes too serious or changes what people liked in the first one, and the cynically/lazily made sequels from that point on. The first Hatchet was a really fun time, and not so much a breath of fresh air, but a nostalgic one – it took horror movies back to the fun, gory little entertainers that we don’t get too often anymore. But with each sequel it became something far less interesting, slowly becoming the sort of garbage the original was initially an alternative to. I still wholeheartedly recommend the first film, which I still count as a fantastic movie. The second is disappointing, offering some cool kills and not much else, and 3 is just a bad movie altogether, despite its high body count. While I like the character of Victor Crowley, I do hope that this is the end for him, since the way these sequels have been spiralling downwards hasn’t been a good thing. 

Hatchet 2

I really liked the first Hatchet. I feel that bears repeating. So I was excited when I heard that they had made a sequel. I know horror movie sequels can often be a pissweak endeavour, but I figured that something that offered dumb, gory fun like the original Hatchet could spawn something even better if they went bigger and more ridiculous with it. It also helped that it was being made by the same director, Adam Green. It all sounded like it was going to be a massive fun time, but unfortunately Hatchet 2 is a massive disappointment.

I don’t like Hatchet 2 and the reason is simple - Hatchet 2 just isn’t fun overall. The silliness and knowing humour of the first movie are both pretty much completely gone as the sequel tries to outdo it in terms of gore and nastiness, and tries to go serious with it. There’s still some occasional humour and some characters are thrown in as comic relief, but it feels out of place with the more serious tone the movie seems to be going for. The gore and kills are pretty awesome, but it’s a nastier, uglier movie than the first, lacking the humorous charm of the original. It almost feels as though it was made by an entirely different person. The shots are closer, there’s more shakycam and it’s pretty uninspired in terms of mood and lighting, at least compared to the original’s often hokey charms. As to why this happened, I feel it’d be due to director Adam Green having a substantial change in priorities and preferences in the years since the original, stretching out even to his filmmaking style. Hatchet 2 has a more claustrophobic feel, with a lot of close ups and most locations feeling small or narrow.

The first and most noticeable change is that they replaced Marybeth’s actress with Danielle Harris, a D-class horror film actress who, despite appearing in a lot of horror movies over the last few decades, really sucks at the whole ‘acting’ thing. She’s a total bore here. More than that, she’s a funpire – she actively sucks the fun out of the movie with every scene she’s in. Being bitchy and generically ‘tough’ (swearing a lot and threatening everybody does not make for good characterisation, dialing the redneck aspect of the character up to a ridiculous degree) she plays the film ‘seriously’, and a noticeable change to the Marybeth from the original film. She also has one eyebrow raised through the entire film, making her look constantly surprised (that’s largely just Harris’ look in general though). Marybeth is too serious and brooding and whiny here and it really hurts the movie, especially since she’s the focus of it. She’s also become far less capable, spending her time being mostly useless and just screaming when shit gets real. I know it’s weird to put so much focus so early in this review on a single issue as simple as a recasting, but honestly it’s one of the film’s biggest issues for me. She’s just so awful that she sours the entire movie.

Taking place immediately at the end of the original Hatchet, Marybeth (Danielle Harris) narrowly escapes from Victor Crowley’s clutches, makes it out of the swamp and heads back to town. She immediately seeks out Reverend Zombie (Tony Todd), to learn more about Victor and how to stop him, and together they form a posse of hunters to go back into the swamp to try and kill Crowley for good. Marybeth is hoping to retrieve the bodies of her father and brother to give them a proper burial, and her uncle comes along to make sure she’s ok. But Reverend Zombie has his own plans – he believes that Victor Crowley’s spirit can only be sated if he gets revenge by killing those responsible for his death and he’s lured them into the hunting party for that purpose.

So basically it’s an excuse to have another bunch of characters head into the swamp to get killed off one by one, something that feels especially hollow considering the original’s charm. The overall far more serious tone is what hurts it the most I feel, since the scenes when people aren’t getting hacked up by Crowley are so long and interminably dull. Seeing Marybeth argue with her uncle about going into the swamp for five minutes is so dull I just feel like fast forwarding through it. It’s not even a long movie, coming in at about seventy or so minutes, but boy hell does it feel long and drawn out in those first forty minutes.

Speaking of which, the first forty minutes of the movie, barring some small callback cameos to the original and a pretty fun/gross pre-title kill, are a total freaking borefest made up of characters spouting exposition and Marybeth complaining. And this is the biggest problem with the movie: Marybeth is not an interesting or likeable character. She wasn’t interesting in the first film, and she isn’t here so focusing on her was a big mistake. In the first one her character’s lack of character wasn’t too much of an issue because she wasn’t the focus and everybody else was a ridiculous caricature. She wasn’t the lynchpin holding the movie together despite her final girl status, so she never brought it down. In this one however she’s the focus of attention and just constantly brings everything down with how endlessly serious she is. They want her struggle and issues to carry weight, and they really, really don’t, so she just comes across as annoying and whiny. She’s also an idiot to boot this time around. In the first film her trepidation made sense – she was wary of the legend of Crowley, but wanted to find her missing family so she braved it anyway, not entirely aware of what she was facing. This time she knows exactly what the danger is, and yet she comes across as dumber, more naive and less capable than she was before. And holy hell is she whiny. I feel the need to bring this up yet again, since she spends so much of the film endlessly complaining.

Once they get to the swamp and things actually start happening it improves, but it also devolves a bit and becomes a loose collection of gory kills. The hunting party instantly splits up for no reason as the various side characters go about their own little agendas. That at least is a nice little excuse for why they’d otherwise pointlessly split up (two guys want to hunt alligators for cash, which calls back to the gator hunting mentioned in the first film), and the Reverend’s ulterior motives explains why he never tries to stop them. Otherwise with everybody split up and getting killed individually it breaks the pace of the movie in a weird way, especially since the characters are all completely unaware of what happened to each other and never get mentioned - they don’t even try to stick together or check on each other, they just wander around aimlessly getting hacked apart.

This is where the film tries to bring in some humour with its side characters, but it’s pretty weird. We get a collection of hillbillies and assorted hunters, none of whom are particularly memorable. There is the one black guy who sings a song I assume to be titled ‘Chicken and Biscuits and Gravy’, since those are the sole words repeated ad infimum. He hits on Marybeth and is a goofball, and that’s his entire character. There are a few hillbillies who just talk about being hillbilliesm and also a really out of place pairing between a hunter and his almost stalker-ish ex-girlfriend who comes with him on the dangerous murder hunt so she can seduce him. They’re a weird mob, but you won’t really care or remember them. Tony Todd is good as Reverend Zombie, though it is weird to see what was a cameo role being expanded into a main character, though a secretly villainous one. His voice is still amazing, the sort of deep, evil voice that you’d expect a Disney villain to have, but the humour is gone now. In a weird little bit of casting, the guy who played hapless tour guide Shaun in the first film comes back to play Shaun’s brother Justin, which is a bit weird. Even he lacks the humour he had in the first film.

We get an updated backstory to Victor Crowley and his curse, which is a bit weird. Attempts at changing horror villain’s backstories and origins have a history of never working out too well in anything really, and there wasn’t anything wrong with his story in the first place. The additions here also don’t really change anything, other than giving an unneeded explanation to something that wasn’t particularly important. Victor’s father, Thomas Crowley, had a sick and ailing wife. He got a live-in nurse to look after her, and ended up falling in love with her and having an affair. His dying wife found out and lay down a voodoo curse on them both before dying. Some nine months later and the nurse gave birth to the disfigured Victor, the sight of which made her die of shock. It’s a pretty benign addition actually, and does very little other than explaining Victor’s appearance and apparent immortality as being due to voodoo.

Reverend Zombie thinks that Victor Crowley will only leave once his vengeful spirit has been appeased by killing off those who had wronged him – the teenagers who had burnt down his shack and indirectly caused his death. In the decades since they’ve grown into men and they’re exactly the same men Zombie invites to join the posse. In another retcon, Marybeth’s dead dad (Freddy Kreuger’s short cameo from the first film) is also one of those grown teens, purposelessly linking Marybeth to Victor. A lot of horror movies tend to do this, since linking characters is an easy way to make a dull, uninteresting character important in some way. In this case it gives an excuse as to why we’re still being subjected to Marybeth, when she could have just as easily been replaced by anybody. Reverend Zombie explicitly says at the beginning that Victor Crowley is a ghost (he calls him a ‘repeater’ as he constantly relives the night he was killed), and as such can’t be killed in conventional methods, but Marybeth sort of ignores him completely to try and shoot him to death, even though that didn’t work in the first film.

Crowley himself has undergone something of an apparent redesign, most noticeable in his face, which is larger and more leathery this time around. He even looks bigger and more hulking this time through. Kane Hodder does another great job in making Crowley exactly the sort of monster man you’d never want to be caught by. So while a lot of the other changes have been disappointing, Victor Crowley as a character is still a lot of fun and really deserved a better sequel. The film’s saving grace is the gory kills, which are brutal, gross, often creative and pretty funny. The opener sets the bar – a hillbilly is strangled with his own intestines until his head pops off – and from there the goriness continues. Faces are caved in with hatchets, heads are torn open by propellers and a massive chainsaw is used to slice through some guys groin-first. There is a lot of blood and gore thrown around, and it’s pretty cool, though some effects do look cheap. Overall though, these are some pretty awesome kills.

The ending here is one I like. It has the exact same sudden abruptness as the first film’s ending, but it’s the reverse situation. It has an air of finality about it, far better than the first film’s sudden stop, and at least ends the movie with a bang. The journey there is sadly mostly a frustrating test of patience, especially through the dull first half, but those kills and that ending at least bring it over the line. Oddly enough, despite how apparently final this ending is, yet another Hatchet sequel was made a few years later.

Hatchet

 

These days horror movies seem to be almost exclusively serious business. They’re about allegories and tension and suspense and atmosphere, which are all fine and dandy, and often lead to expertly creepy and disturbing gems, but it also means most are overly grim and serious. The dumb, simple fun of the past, where mask-clad serial killers slaughter nude teens ridiculously gorily and that’s it, is largely gone and mostly relegated to low budget indie fare that doesn’t review well. I guess that was the way back in the seventies, eighties and nineties as well, but at least back then there was a lot more of it. While I do appreciate the more serious, genuinely creepy and frightening horror genre, the movies I go back to and love the most are the dumb, gory fun ones.

Hatchet fills my itch for something dumb, gory and fun. It feels weird saying that, since Hatchet actually released ten years ago in 2006, and in the decade since has spawned two sequels. But in the time since then there really hasn’t been much like it. It’s a gory, late 80s/early 90s style slasher film that recognises what makes those films fun. It’s not meta or self-aware, it doesn’t try to reinvent or disassemble tropes or conventions and it never pretends to be above its own genre. Hatchet is an earnest slasher flick boasting ridiculous gore, a horrendous mountain man killer and humour to have fun with its ridiculous characters. It warmly embraces the slasher genre, knowing the silly conventions and gleefully throwing its characters into it all the same. It’s got its faults, and I’m sure a lot of what I consider positives will be considered negatives for a lot of other people, but I really enjoyed it.

It’s Mardi Gras in New Orleans, which means drunk, wasted partygoers have flocked to the streets. Tired of all the drinking and topless girls, recently dumped Ben convinces his best friend Marcus to give up the boobs and booze for a while and go with him on a late night ‘haunted swamp tour’. Despite the seedy, amateurish nature of the boat tour operation, and the various warnings from creepy locals not to go into the swamp at night, Ben, Marcus and a ragtag group of tour-goers, including an amateur porno director, two bickering ‘actresses’, a wholesome older married couple and Marybeth, a standoffish local girl, head off into the swamp, led by hopeless but enthusiastic tour guide Shaun. The tour itself is a bust when the clueless Shaun ends up getting them lost and sinking the boat, leaving them stranded in the swamp. But it’s no ordinary swamp, as local girl Marybeth reveals - it’s the swamp of the dreaded Victor Crowley.

A bayou legend, Victor was born a horribly disfigured child kept hidden away by his father who looked after him in a shack in the swamp. One day local teenagers set fire to the shack, trapping Victor inside. In an effort to break into the house and rescue his son, Victor’s father accidentally struck him in the face with a hatchet, killing him. Decades have passed, but the legend has it that Victor’s vengeful spirit remains in the swamp, searching for his father and bringing death to anybody that comes in his way. Since then, people have gone missing in the swamp for years, including Marybeth’s gator-hunting father and brother, whom she is searching for. It isn’t long before the hapless group come across Victor’s cabin and find themselves on the run from the massive monster man.

 

The cast is made up of people you’ll vaguely recognise from various B-grade movies and TV shows, but I don’t mean this in wholly negative way. They’re all cast perfectly, fitting expertly into their silly roles and giving it their all. Nobody is slumming it here and the acting, as over the top as it tends to be in some cases, fits the comedic vibe well. The only potential low point by necessity is Marybeth, the only character played straight and without humour. She’s there to be the competent one, to act as an exposition dump and fill the ‘final girl’ role. Of the rest, Ben is perhaps the most recognisable, being played by Joel David Moore, the lanky nerd from Dodgeball and Avatar – he’s great here. Outside of the main cast, there are a couple of cool little cameos. Robert Englund (Freddy Kreuger) and Tony Todd (Candyman) show up in little scenes, while Kane Hodder (the iconic version of Jason Voorhees) plays both Victor Crowley and Victor’s father. He does a great job in both roles, especially as the monstrous Victor. He’s under a lot of heavy make-up, but the sheer bulk of the guy and his frantic, feral body language.

Victor Crowley himself is a fun character of the old style slasher movies. Big, ugly, super strong and seemingly unstoppable, Victor is exactly the sort of freaky monster man that makes this sort of movie. He’s got a great appearance as well, the malformed, inhuman face, bulbous head and general thickness. The fact that he’s dressed in hillbilly clothes (he’s got freaking overalls on) elevates the silliness. The backstory is pretty decent for a horror villain, and being placed in a New Orleans swampland bayou gives things a slightly different flavour all around. I just really like the idea that Crowley instantly flips out and kills anything he comes across in some sort of crazed, animalistic fury for no discernible reason. A lot of horror movies like to try and make their villain iconic or memorable, or tag them as the ‘next’ something something, but I have to say I just really dig Victor Crowley’s gruesome simplicity. The look, the violence, the backstory all work for me.

The film never takes itself seriously, fully acknowledging how ridiculous the premise itself is and just has fun with it. The gore is fun and explosive, with ridiculous, creative kills. The opening kill sets the tone, as a hapless schlub suffers a mini montage of dismemberment from Victor, ending with his spinal column being torn out. The other deaths are just as brutal as Victor comes at his victims with a variety of deadly tools, the titular hatchet and, often even more brutal, his own fists. We have belt sanders hitting faces, bodies being impaled on poles, heads being twisted around and other gruesome, gory and funny stuff. I think the best kill might be to the poor, nice older married lady who has her head ripped in half horizontally, leaving her tongue flapping wildly. The gore effects are all practical awesomeness, the sort of gooey, fleshy nonsense with geysers of fake blood that makes the gore fun.

After the gory opening, it takes about forty minutes of set-up before the cast are on the run from Victor, but I enjoyed it. I don’t know why, but compared to a lot of other films I just had fun with the characters and the writing, and the change from the boozy streets of New Orleans Mardi Gras to the swamp at night gives a bit of a different atmosphere, but the film’s overall aesthetic is more in line with cheesy B horror, with creepy mist and eerie haunted house lighting. It’s almost got the feel of a particularly goofy, gory Scooby Doo episode. It has a lot of that feel, barring the somewhat jarring heavy metal music that runs over the opening and ending credits. The movie was directed by relative unknown (and still pretty much unknown outside of horror circles) Adam Green, who has made a variety of other horror movies in the time since then. As far as I can tell it was his debut feature film, and it‘s pretty impressively done.

 

The film’s ending sadly sucks though, more in execution than conception. It suddenly cuts to black mid-action during a final scare and the credits run, a sudden, jerky transition that initially had me thinking my DVD had screwed up. I understand the idea behind the ending and conceptually I actually like it, but the execution is so abrupt and flavourless it took me a while to process it. I think the fact that the sound cuts out and it turns black for a few seconds before the credits run is what makes it difficult – it’d work far better if it ended on a freeze frame with the sound still running and then having the credits start running immediately. Still the journey there is a lot of fun.

When I’m in the mood for a fun little time, Hatchet is one of my go-to movies. It’s simple, gory fun that delivers on the violence and is fun and silly enough to keep it light and entertaining throughout. It’s something of a rough gem, and a good little time if you’re in the mood for a nonsense slasher movie.

The Sniper

The Sniper is a Hong Kong action thriller directed by Dante Lam, a Hong Kong director who excels at highly stylised action/thrillers. The Sniper is another one, though it’s definitely style over substance. That’s not to say that there isn’t substance – this is a movie that bases itself on a strong central theme of rivalry amongst its three main characters, with a psychological undercurrent underlying its stylistic visuals and action. It’s a well-crafted, engaging film throughout.

OJ, a hot-headed police officer, is scouted into a Special Forces sniper team by expert sniper Hartman after demonstrating excellent marksmanship under pressure in a hostage situation. With Hartman’s professional tutelage, OJ excels in his training and becomes one of the best snipers on the team. With a strong competitive spirit, he quickly becomes fascinated by the numerous records set by Lincoln, Hartman’s disgraced former partner/rival and the best sniper the team ever had.

Lincoln’s confident but risky shooting caused his downfall when, during an intense hostage situation, he ignored orders and took a risky shot that caused the death of a hostage. In the aftermath he lost his position, his reputation was tarnished and he was sent to prison. Recently released, Lincoln harbours a deep grudge against his former unit for not backing him up, particularly feeling betrayed by Hartman. He teams up with Tao, a wanted crime lord (and the target of his failed shot), to get revenge on his former sniper team and prove he’s the best sniper of them all. While Hartman quickly tries to hunt down and stop Lincoln, OJ becomes determined to beat his records and begins to emulate Lincoln’s unorthodox shooting style, finding himself torn between Hartman’s hard, by-the-books tutelage and Lincoln’s instinct-based natural skill.

 

It’s a pretty slick action/thriller flick, boasting some great visuals, a cool premise and oodles of style. It’s also a pretty concise and precise movie, not wasting too much time outside of its own plot and keeping things moving forward at a good pace, moving from character interactions to action with a good flow. It does enough to keep itself engaging and interesting throughout, with a few twists towards the end to spice things up. The action itself, fitting its focus on snipers, is more measured than usual shoot ‘em ups. There aren’t many shootouts at all, with most sequences playing out like standoffs or operations, the sniper/s observing through a scope and firing when appropriate. The finale does go out in a big way with a sniper battle that’s bloody and claustrophobic.

If there’s one fault, and it’s a fault due to the plot’s design, it’s that the film struggles to make some of its characters compelling on their own. It’s focused mostly on the main three main snipers, meaning almost everyone else comes across as underdeveloped or simply insignificant (the rest of the sniper team are basically extras). The focus on psychology and rivalry suits the film, because outside of it the characters don’t really have a lot to them. In a weird way the conflict between characters is what makes the movie – the ideas of rivalry and revenge push the film along.

OJ ends up being almost a side character for much of it. The film doesn’t spend much time with him and he’s not actually that involved in the main plot (he’s more of an observer). The film very briefly looks at the influence of both Hartman and Lincoln on him but he doesn’t have any meaningful interactions with the latter while the former is his boss. It’s distinctly not his story, though he’s positioned as the main character. That being said, it doesn’t really matter since he fits in with the three-way rivalry plot, acting as a personification of the struggle between Hartman and Lincoln. It also helps that he gets to blast away with a sniper rifle on a few occasions.

 

There are a fair few superfluous scenes thrown in involving various characters’ families and personal lives that are meant to flesh them out a little more, but they don’t serve that function too well. Hartman’s wife tries to kill herself and OJ’s father is a washed up gambling addict who demeans his son – both of these things get a single scene’s worth of attention and then are never mentioned or referenced again. I understand why some of them are there – OJ pushes himself to excel to prove to himself, and his dad, that he’s not worthless – but they don’t really work as intended. If anything they sort of pull us away from the tension and the central three-way rivalry/relationship that makes up the heart of the film.

Despite its faults, The Sniper works due to how direct and concise it is. It’s a stylish, finely tuned film with enough substance to present a story and characters that, while simple at heart, fit together well. It’s a tight little number, and well worth watching.

The Admiral: Roaring Currents

We don’t really get that many historical dramas based around naval warfare these days. We’ve had a plethora of movies and series in recent memory regarding just about every other kind of warfare, but naval warfare is something that’s been in a little bit of short supply lately, especially old school naval battles. It’s something I’ve always thought was interesting, naval warfare that is, particularly the antiquated kind with sails, anchors, cannons and muskets and the like. Sure, I’m probably just romanticising it from old-school pirate movies, but beyond those there really haven’t been many that focus on real-world battles. That’s the spark of that led me to watch The Admiral: Roaring Currents, a South Korean historical drama focused on naval warfare.

Roaring Currents is based on a real-life historical naval battle, The Battle of Myeongnyang in which Admiral Yi Sun-Shin defended Korean from a fleet of 330 Japanese ships using only 13 ships of his own. It’s a pretty astounding story, especially since its true – Sun-Shin used knowledge of the Korean seas and superior naval skills to defeat a much larger fleet, sinking some thirty Japanese warships and repelling the rest while losing none of his ships. Roaring Currents offers a dramatic version of these events, one with presumably more explosions than the real battle had, but just as many fabulous beards.

 

Set in the late 16^th century, Korea’s Joseon Kingdom has been under attack by invading Japanese forces for several years. While the Japanese ground forces advance, its naval forces are repelled by Admiral Yi Sun-Sin (Choi Min-sik), the brilliant Naval Commander of the Korean forces. Political infighting and the work of Japanese spies however causes the paranoid Joseon King to have Yi arrested and tortured, handing the navy over to a rival admiral. Yi’s replacement proved to be completely incompetent, resulting in a single disastrous naval battle in which almost the entire Korean Navy was wiped out, leaving the Japanese Navy free to advance.

Sun-Shin is quickly pardoned and reinstated as the head of the Korean Navy, despite still recovering from injuries and illness from his torture. He gathers together the remnants of the Korean navy, 13 ships and some frightened, demoralised soldiers, to make a final stand to prevent a fleet of over three hundred Japanese ships from landing on Korean soil. Hopelessly outnumbered, Sun-Shin utilises his knowledge of the surrounding waters and mastery of naval tactics to fight back and repel the massive attacking force.

The movie assumes some familiarity with real-life Korean history, very quickly throwing the audience right into it. The opening gives a very brief, abbreviated version of the set-up before thrusting you into the thick of it, meaning most characters have little introduction. There are a lot of side characters, many of whom look the same due to their armour, face-covering helmets or even facial hair (lots of beards here). I was lost for a while, and found it hard to keep track of everybody, and barring Sun-Shin and his Japanese opponent I had a hard time telling most of them apart. It doesn’t help that most of the side characters have very little in terms of characterisation or personality, or even screen time (or plot importance if we’re being honest), with many only having a single brief scene in the first half of the film before being brought to the forefront suddenly and abruptly in the latter half of the film, usually just to give the action a sense of stakes. A sailor/spy and his mute wife are characterised solely as their descriptions, the various soldiers and officers are almost indistinguishable from each other, and the main villain, a dead-serious and dull ‘Pirate Commander’ leading the Japanese fleet, has less personality than his ornate helmet.

The focus then is on actor Choi Min-sik’s central turn as Admiral Sun-Shin, historic naval genius. Choi Min-sik is one of the best contemporary South Korean actors out there, noted for roles in films like ‘Oldboy’ and ‘I Saw the Devil’. He’s an actor with great range and talent. Unfortunately his version of Sun-Shin comes across as far too stoic, pensive and aloof, with a lot of the acting credit going to his beard. Most of his acting here involves standing or sitting silently while looking pensive, often while other characters are looking to him for orders or assurance.

While the real-life man was apparently very charismatic, a naval genius and one who commanded a great deal of respect, here he seems far too aloof and distant. None of his men have faith in him, but it’s not like he helps the situation. His response to every situation is to stand there and stare silently, often in slow motion. When his troops ask him what his plans are or what their battle strategy is, or even when looking for any words of encouragement or even a rousing speech, Sun-Shin doesn’t do or say anything. In the few occasions where he does interact with his troops, it’s not pleasant – he’s either beheading deserters, telling them that they should die protecting the navy and generally compounding the fear and panic amongst his own troops, to the point that when the battle does start most of his ships hang back. He basically fights most of the final battle on his own with one ship while his tiny fleet stay far back on the verge of retreat.

I might be a little unfair, since the man was under a lot of stress and emotional/physical pain – he was still recovering from being horribly tortured by his own King, he was physically ill, his massive awesome navy that he built from scratch was all but wiped out by incompetence from others – but this is too much of an inward portrayal of a stone-faced man who refuses to show emotion. There are a few times where we get a glimpse inside – during a fever-induced delirium he hallucinates the dead soldiers of his navy and is struck at the guilt of not being there in battle with them (not his fault, he was being tortured at the time) – but beyond that he’s a hard, harsh man, much like the ships he commands, and it makes it hard to believe he’d be able to rally his men or command a navy.  

The naval battle itself, which takes up the entire latter half of the film, is pretty impressive, with a surprising amount of variety. Changing tides, violent winds, enemy riflemen, hailing arrows, cannon fire, rocky shallows, boarding pirates and more complicate the naval battle, with every few minutes being punctuated by an explosion of cannon shot, gunpowder and bits of ship as various soldiers are thrown about violently. CGI is used to good effect (they could hardly get together some hundred plus real ships to smash into each other), and coupled with the costume and set design make the whole thing look pretty great. Actually the film on the whole looks great overall, with an authentic feel. It captures the feel I’d assume naval warfare would have, with rocky boasts, sea foam frothing up from ships smashing into each other and the oddly claustrophobic nature battle on the high seas would have. Since it’s a single battle as well, you definitely get the feel of exhaustion that comes from the constant fighting, as Sun-Sin’s signature ship gets progressively more damaged, and his men more bloodied and broken.

Since the battle takes up half the film, they pace it out pretty well, and have a few moments for breathers. They also at least give some form of explanation as to why the Japanese navy doesn’t just send all three hundred ships at once and trounce the Koreans (the battle is fought in a somewhat narrow stretch of land with swells that the smaller Japanese ships would struggle against). Actually adhering to history makes the seemingly outlandish story have more weight and truth to it. The Korean warships were larger and sturdier than their Japanese opponents and were better suited for cannon warfare forcing the Japanese to try and close distance and board them, but the odds still weren’t in their favour at all. The final battle also gets spaced out a little due to many of the side characters side plots being brought to the forefront. These things take the attention away from Sun-Sin, but at least spice up the battle without making it feel padded out. The battle does make it seem like Sun-Sin fought almost the entire battle with his one ship, and that pure chance, coincidence and a bit of luck came into play, but that might have been the case anyway.

The film actually reminded me a bit of John Woo’s ‘Red Cliff’, another historical drama based on real events, but dramatized to hell and back with a lot more romance, light humour and kung-fu swordplay. That film was much lighter and more fictionalised than The Admiral, but had a better handle on dealing with its multiple characters, giving them each enough attention and personality to make them feel real. The Admiral doesn’t manage that, and even with its focus on Sun-Sin it never really manages the personal feel it seemed to be going for. On the other hand it at least focused better on offering a more realistic, somewhat more historically accurate version of its real-life event than Red Cliff. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, and based on those merits I think I preferred Red Cliff to The Admiral, though they offer different experiences and The Admiral is definitely worth watching.

Mojin: The Lost Legend

In ancient China, during the feudal battle between three kingdoms that fractured the nation (as outlined and romanticised in various books, movies and videogames), an emperor tasked treasure hunters with raiding the tombs of past emperors and royalty for gold and treasures to fund his armies. These treasure hunters were known as the Mojin Xiaowei, trained down generations in uncovering tombs, navigating crypts, avoiding traps and gathering all sorts of riches. But beyond their raiding, the Mojin were also taught to respect those places, and to place a single candle at the southeast end of every tomb. If the candle was to go out, the spirits were displeased and the Mojin had to leave the tomb, and any treasure, immediately. Or so says Mojin: The Lost Legend, a Chinese adventure film that seems to try and tick every single box on a checklist of generic tomb-raiding genre films. It’s astoundingly by-the-numbers, with an exceptionally basic story drowning in cliches and paper thin  stock characters, but for what it is it’s a fun, diverting little romp with some cool set pieces and special effects, even if it lacks originality and a satisfying narrative. Provided you just want to shut your brain off and watch tomb raiding nonsense, Mojin is fine.

Hu and Wang are lifelong best friends and Mojin Xiaowei, or Treasure Hunters, carrying the tools and knowledge of tomb raiders passed down through generations from feudal times. But after some failed expeditions they’ve given that life up and have illegally immigrated to 1980s America where they scrape out a meagre living selling junk on the street and evading immigration police. While the two wash-ups get drunk and lament their lives, their former partner, and Hu’s former flame, Shirley (Shu Qi) attempts to get them to sort their lives out, return to tomb raiding and go legitimate, something Wang is eager to do but Hu is opposed to.

Tired of Hu’s negativity, Wang gets hired by members of a powerful, affluent cult to head back to China and hunt down an ancient artefact known as the Equinox Flower. The treasure has an important link to an integral event in both Hu and Wang’s youths, some twenty years back in rural China in the sixties when they were travelling with enthusiastic communist Red Guard students. Determined to amend for a past mistake that haunts the both of them, Wang heads to find the tomb and the treasure for closure, forcing a reluctant Hu and Shirley to follow. Together the trio will face the tomb’s deadly traps, the nefarious plans of the cult and their own pasts.

 

Speaking of pasts, a big theme in the film, and the major bulk of the character development, is about letting go of the past. It’s here that the film weirdly gets stuck. The past is discussed at length, returned to (through a lengthy flashback) or focused on, with ‘the past’ being central to almost every character’s motivations and personality. It also largely dictates the film’s structure. The first half of the film mostly just introduces Hu, Wang and Shirley, with a bulky section being made up of that lengthy flashback to Hu and Wang’s near-fatal ordeal within an abandoned, cursed Japanese military base. It’s fun, spooky stuff, but having so much focus on the past (and that event in particular) makes the rest of the movie feel thin, so the stuff in the present lacks a sense of urgency or importance. When it comes right down to the actual real-day plot events, Hu and Wang are hired to investigate a tomb and then immediately go there and do so. The links to the past also make any and every twist or revelation blindingly obvious. It’s almost ironic that a movie about letting go of the past is completely unable to let go of the past.

We have some fun cliche characters, though they’re all tried-and-true stock characters and horrifically thin. Hu is our roguish hero, the sort of expert treasure hunter with confidence and swagger that these movies get, only this version is largely washed up (at least initially). He’s got the smirking confidence, charm and skills to back it up, and works well off of the other characters. He’s sort of likeable, made more so because of the pretty great comedic chemistry he has with his co-stars. Wang is largely the comic relief, the more enthusiastic but less skilled treasure hunter (he’s a bit obnoxious). He weirdly becomes a bit of a driving force for the film. Shirley, played by Shu Qi, brings some good comedic timing and chemistry as Hu’s partner/sometime lover, giving her character a sort of kickass girl personality. Offering more comedic relief is Grill, the hapless ‘representative/agent’ who eagerly tries to sell Hu and Wang’s talents and finds himself constantly being injured as he’s forced to follow them in the tomb.

Hu and Wang share a fixation on Ding, the Red Guard girl they both had a crush on in the sixties and the reason for their issues – letting go of the past means letting go of Ding. There’s a problem with this – Ding isn’t interesting or likeable and you can’t understand why they’d be so thoroughly entranced with her to the point where twenty years later they’d still be thinking of her. She’s naïve, she comes across as ignorant, and besides a pretty face and a love of flowers she’s astoundingly not interesting. She’s played by actress/model Angelababy, who has given somewhat similar roles in the past a lot more pep and humour, but Ding is underwritten and bland, which sadly fits for a character written more as a plot device than an actual person. She’s just a bit weird and a little creepy, especially since she’s basically a hard core communist. Actually the whole ‘travelling with communists/maybe being communists’ past angle is really strange.

If there needed to be more characterisation for anybody, it’d be the villains, who are paper thin and basic. They’re a mysterious cult determined to find a powerful artefact, which is exactly the same antagonists in just about every treasure-hunting movie ever. There offer no surprises, and even their leader’s twist at the end can be seen coming from a mile away. Apart from the creepy leader, a cult-leader sort with mismatched eyes who has total control over her blindly loyal followers, there’s also a shifty businessman and a dual-hatchet wielding badass girl whose evil organisation’s outfit seems modelled on schoolgirl clothes. They fit their part, but aren’t exactly memorable. They’re also idiots, either blindly walking into or triggering every single trap.

Speaking of idiots, the Red Guard communist students in the flashback are almost wilfully stupid, blindly following their communist ideology to their deaths. The moment they come across some ominously creepy statues in an obviously sacred place they decide to stop their journey in the middle of the night to knock them over. This backfires spectacularly (blood-thirsty mosquitoes are pretty horrifying), forcing them into the abandoned military base, where they find more creepy statues and the entire dumbass dance starts again, this time with mummified Japanese WW2 soldier zombies. It’s actually pretty awesome, especially seeing those idiots get comeuppance at the hands/spears/swords/rifles of the shuffling, dried out undead.

Movies about ancient treasures and tombs are always poised to deliver some great fun with deadly traps, creepy ruins, glorious treasures and ancient thrills. Mojin delivers on all this. We get swarms of blood-drinking mosquitos, several different types of zombies (seriously, there’re a few of them), unnatural green flames and collapsing tombs. While not especially original, it’s all done exceptionally well and make for a very fun time. The mystery behind the tomb ends up being pretty simple, but the journey there is a fun one. Also adding to the fun is the weird way the Mojin Xiaowei navigate them, using a mystical compass and either Feng Shui or the Chinese zodiac (I’m not entirely sure). It’s novel and strange, though it doesn’t get much of an explanation.

If this all sounds fun as mindless adventure film fodder, then that’s because it mostly is – the movie manages to coast on the inherent enjoyment of tomb-raiding treasure-hunting stories. It’s fun enough without managing to transcend or improve on the sort of films it apes. It is a bit too long towards the end where it drags out a bit, especially because it starts to repeat itself. Hu and Wang argue about the past constantly, even being to sole focus of two consecutive scenes of them having the same argument. The romance between Hu and Shirley and whether they’ll get together is a redundant concern, same with the ‘are these cult people secretly evil?’ thing, since the answer to both is a blaringly obvious yes. And Ding! We can’t ever seem to get away from her, always popping up in flashbacks and hallucinations. In an interesting sort of twist on the usual formulae though, the main hero isn’t the one with the drive and personal stakes; instead it’s the comic relief character, Wang, who finds himself compelled to finish the job and uncover the tomb. Of course the hero, Hu, does eventually eclipse this, taking Wang’s guilt and drive and sort of stealing it for the finale, but for a while it was interesting to see the comic relief sidekick as the actual emotional core, even if only for a moment.

Mojin: The Lost Legend is fun enough. While its faults are mostly directed to the thin, basic, stock nature of its story and characters, the rest of it is pretty earnest, with some cool special effects and set/costume design. The effort is there, but not spread evenly across every aspect.