Silent Night (2012)

Jaime King might not be the reigning Queen of horror (that honour goes to Danielle Harris, of course) but she's certainly the Queen of holiday-themed horror films: first with My Bloody Valentine 3D, then Mother's Day and now Silent Night. All she has to do next is Halloween 3D and a remake of April Fool's Day and she'll have covered all of the major holidays. If someone ever decides to make an Easter-themed slasher, you can bet that she'll be the director's first choice to play the final girl.

As for Silent Night, it's a semi-remake of the infamous 1984 film Silent Night, Deadly Night, which attracted massive controversy, spawned four sequels and attracted a sizeable cult following. In reality, the only thing that connects Silent Night to its predecessor is that it's about a man in a Father Christmas costume who goes round killing people. In the original, disturbed Billy Chapman is the main character and we follow his journey from traumatised young boy to serial killer. In this offering, Deputy Aubrey Bradimore (King) is the protagonist and the identity of the murderous Santa Claus is a mystery, as is his motivation for the killings. To be honest, it's an improvement. Far too many horror films these days (remakes or otherwise) give us endless flashbacks to something that happened in the murderer's childhood that turned them into a sadistic killer. It makes for such a nice change to see a killer whose identity and motivation are unknown. I'm not saying that the killer's identity and motivation are never revealed, just that for most of the film, we're as clueless as everyone else in the film is.

Instead, we follow Aubrey and Sheriff James Cooper (Malcolm McDowell) as they try and track down the bearded maniac. Finding a man in a Santa suit in a small Wisconsin town? No problem! Except that it's Christmas Eve and there's no chance of backup arriving. Oh, and the town's hosting an annual "best Santa" competition, so there are 499 other bearded men in red suits walking around the place.

Things get off to a promising start, with Santa electrocuting a man with Christmas lights and then paying a visit to a bitchy little girl. In a scene that nods at My Bloody Valentine 3D, he also drops in on a local pornographer. After dispatching the camerawoman and the director, the model, Maria (Cortney Palm), runs away and he gives pursuit. Did I mention she was topless? Yes, it's clearly influenced by Betty Rue's very memorable scene in the earlier film, although Palm does at least keep her underwear on (booooo!).

While it may only be a loose remake, there are a few nods to the original films. The catatonic Grandfather is present, but it's not the killer who visits him. Rather, the skeezy boyfriend of the mayor's slutty daughter (Courtney-Jane White). Later on, Santa visits the two of them and fans of the original will be pleased to see that the most memorable kill from the original is also present here. Finally, in a throwaway moment that will probably pass quite a few people by, Sheriff Cooper asks Deputy Jordan (Brendan Fehr) to take out the trash. "What is this, garbage day?" he asks.

Belying the film's undoubtedly small budget, it's well made, nicely shot and the acting varies only between good and competent. King is her usual resilient self, bringing depth and sympathy to her character and McDowell looks like he had great fun playing Sheriff Cooper. A parody of small town sheriffs, he has some of the best lines of the film. The kills are also very well done and include, in addition to those mentioned above, a very, very good head-splitting, someone getting their face punched in with knuckle dusters embossed with the words "ho ho ho", and death by woodchipper. 

It's not a perfect film by any means. There are a few plot holes and logical inconsistencies (a little girl is murdered in the morning and her mother doesn't report it until the evening?); the final confrontation isn't quite up to scratch; and the ending feels hurried. But, on the whole, a good slasher film. More importantly, perfect seasonal viewing!

7 out of 10.

Looper (2012)

Hype can be a dangerous thing. The posters and trailers for Looper were covered in lashings of quotes about how brilliant it is and studded with stars in clusters of four and five. One critic's hyperbolic review even suggested that it was "the new Matrix". With a build-up like that, how could the film possibly disappoint me!

In hindsight, perhaps it was always going to disappoint me. That's not to say that the film's bad, it's certainly not. It's good. But that's all it is: good.

Joe (Joseph-Gordon-Levitt) is an eponymous Looper: an assassin hired by criminals living in the future to kill people they send back in time and then dispose of their bodies. He lives in Kansas in 2044. They live in 2074 when time travel has been invented and, according to his boss Abe (Jeff Daniels), who has moved permanently from the future to run the looper operation, it is apparently advantageous to know Mandarin. Loopers are paid in silver bars strapped to the people that are sent back in time for them to kill, except for when they are released from their service and gold bars are strapped to their future selves. After killing themselves, they have a few decades to live as they please before their future self is abducted and sent back in time for their past self to kill. Failure to kill your future self is punishable by death and is brutally enforced. Everything's going fine until a mysterious figure in the future called "the Rainman" decides to start having all of the loopers kill themselves off. After Joe fails to kill his future self (Bruce Willis), the two go on the run from Abe's goons whilst trying to solve the mystery of who the Rainmaker is and why he is shutting the looper programme down.

The film, to its credit, doesn't get into complex metaphysical discussions of the inner workings of time travel and give us a conversation we've already seen and had many times before. In a scene in a diner, Future Joe tells Present Joe that it makes his head hurt and the younger man drops the subject. It also presents an interesting argument: that if your future self came back in time and told you to change your actions, you'd probably carry on and do what you thought was right anyway. Still, for pleasing moments like those, there are some very dumb ones as well. Particularly, the fact that in the future time travel has been banned and is operated only by crime lords who use it to dispose of their victims. Joe gives us some reason about people in the future being "chipped" and the film brushes it off, but it's not a satisfying explanation and makes you really wonder what's going on with these gangs that possess incredibly complex and illegal technology like time travel, but haven't mastered the art of surgically removing tracking chips or throwing bodies in the ocean à la Dexter Morgan. Furthermore, requiring loopers to kill themselves presents myriad problems and results in both Joe and a looper friend of his (Paul Dano) failing to kill themselves. The much simpler idea of loopers at the end of their contract receiving a pile of gold bars and their future self being sent to a different looper to be killed apparently went over the heads of the criminals from the future.

After the two Joes meet, the younger man fails to kill himself. They later meet in a diner and Future Joe tells Present Joe that someone called "the Rainmaker" is killing off the loopers and he's going to find out who he is and kill him as a child. After the diner they're meeting at is attacked by Abe's men, Present Joe nearly gets caught and ends up hiding at a farm owned by Sara (Emily Blunt), who lives with her young son, Cid (Pierce Gagnon).

Some parts of the film may feel superfluous but turn out to play a necessary part in the film, namely Joe's stripper friend and lover Suzie (Piper Perabo) and the mutation that affects one tenth of the world's population and gives them the power to make small objects like coins and cigarette lighters levitate. Both of these feel like pointless plot additions when they come up but don't pass them off as such. Instead, there are plenty of other pointless characters - Kid Blue (Noah Segan), an incompetent employee of Abe who more than outstays his welcome and Future Joe's wife (Xu Qing), who serves only to highlight that the film has serious problems with plot holes. Additionally, the main problem is that the film pretty much comes to a grinding halt just over half way through. When Present Joe arrives at Sara's farm, he decides to hide there while Future Joe does his thing and spends most of the rest of the film hiding and talking to Sara and her son and, quite frankly, it's a bit boring.

In contrast with a fantastic first act full of action, great visuals and effective storytelling, the second act sees the film going round in circles, like Present Joe lost in Sara's corn field. It apes The Terminator as Future Joe tries to change the world and Present Joe hides out with a woman and develops feelings for her. If you've seen that film, you should be able to see the "twist" that arrives in this one. When the third act rolls around, director Rian Johnson throws in a couple of shootouts and tries to cobble things together but the damage has already been done. The resolution is different but still feels unsatisfying. I'd like to see if there's an alternate ending provided with the DVD release.

Plot holes, logical inconsistencies and a rambling middle section detract from interesting ideas and good performances. Jeff Bridges in particular is very good and Joseph Gordon-Levitt does a decent Bruce Willis impression. It's just a pity the two share so little screen time after their meeting in the diner.

It's not the new Matrix but it's better than both of that film's sequels put together. An infuriating case of what might have been.

7 out of 10.

We Bought a Zoo (2011)

After watching Battleship, I remarked to a friend that "I should have watched We Bought a Zoo instead". She replied, "so why don't you watch it now?" So I did.

Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) is a recently widowed single parent with two children: teenage son Dylan (Colin Ford) and younger daughter Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones). Unhappy, with everything in the city reminding him of his late wife and Dylan expelled from school after he acts out, Benjamin quits his job, rebuffs the advances of the attractive single moms at his kids' school and tells his brother Duncan (Thomas Haden Church) that he's moving into the countryside. He and Rosie find the perfect place, their dream home. There's just one problem: it's a zoo. The place badly needs owners who care and have the time, money and effort to bring the place up to scratch in time for its next inspection. If it fails, the animals will be sent elsewhere and the zookeepers will lose their jobs. Fortunately, this is Hollywood so the issue of money is brushed over as Benjamin conveniently finds that his wife left him thousands of dollars. He cashes the cheque and everyone gets to work. In struggling to turn the place around in time, Ben finds himself falling for beautiful zookeeper Kelly (Scarlett Johansson) and Kelly's younger cousin Lily (Elle Fanning) flirts with the seemingly oblivious Dylan. As the family work to save the zoo's future, they examine their relationships with each other and how the loss of their mother has affected them.

If only every widower could quit his job, drop everything, buy a dream house in the sunny California countryside and spend his days quietly tending to a small zoo with Scarlett Johansson for company. It's a lovely fantasy and it could have made for a silly, hokey film but thanks to a combination of a good screenplay and warm, genuine performances, it works. Matt Damon's convincing and sympathetic as the grieving widower and Scarlett Johansson is very good, both witty and compassionate with an underlying steely determination. The child actors are uniformly good and I loved J. B. Smoove's cameo as the estate agent, although it was a bit strange to see him playing someone other than Leon from Curb. As for the inevitable life lessons about love, loss and so on that the family must go through, they're not preachy and they weren't so sickly sweet that they made me roll my eyes.

Sure, it's not groundbreaking and the ending's not exactly a surprise but it's a good, honest piece of family entertainment. It's funny, well acted and just darn enjoyable. How anyone could possibly dislike this film is utterly beyond me. Oh, and it's a damn sight better than Battleship.

7 out of 10.

The Pact (2012)

Caity Lotz first came to my attention when she played ass-kicking Officer Kirsten Landry in MTV's horror mockumentary series Death Valley. The series is a parody of the COPS-style shows that follow law enforcement round as they do their jobs. Death Valley was slightly different. Instead of chasing bad guys, the members of the UTF (Undead Task Force) pursued vampires, werewolves and zombies. It was brilliant and I was gutted when MTV decided not to renew it for a second series. Lotz not only performed all her own stunts on the show but has a background in dance, stunt-doubling and martial arts and before becoming an actress, was a member of a girl group that had top ten hits in Germany. A talented young woman, I kept my eye on The Pact when I heard that she had been cast in it and I watched as it debuted at Sundance and was picked up for distribution. Having expected it to go straight to DVD, I was delighted to hear that not only would it be coming to the cinemas but that I had been invited to a preview screening. Brilliant!

The film begins with Nicole (Agnes Bruckner) at her childhood home, planning her mother's funeral and arguing with her sister over the phone. Her sister doesn't plan on coming to the funeral because of the way their mother treated them when they were younger. Nicole hangs up and skypes their cousin Liz (Kathleen Rose Perkins) to speak to her daughter, Eva (Dakota Bright). Eva sees someone behind Nicole and Nicole enters a darkened room. Annie (Caity Lotz) arrives at the house and finds that Nicole has vanished. Liz hasn't heard from her either and they speculate that as a former drug addict, Nicole has perhaps fallen off the wagon. Annie goes to sleep in her old room but is awoken by strange goings on.

The next day, after her mother's funeral, Annie meets up with Liz and Eva. There's still no word from Nicole and they go back to the house. That night, Annie dreams about the house, about a shadowy figure in it and her phone suddenly delivers her an address. When she wakes to go to the bathroom, Annie thinks she sees someone and investigates. What she finds is that Liz has disappeared. Suddenly, she is violently thrown around the living room by an invisible force and she runs from the house, re-entering to rescue Eva. Annie turns to the police, telling her story to detective Bill Creek (Casper Van Dien). He is unhelpful but after a series of ghost-filled dreams, mysterious addresses appearing on her phone and finding a room in the house that she had never seen before, she visits Stevie (Haley Hudson), a frail young psychic. Whatever the presence is in the house, it's pissed off and it's somehow connected to Annie's mother.

The Pact starts very well. It's creepy and has a good atmosphere and there are even a couple of good jumps too. Caity Lotz is very good as Annie, steely but also vulnerable. Haley Hudson is also excellent as the psychic Stevie. An emaciated waif, she looks as though she barely has enough strength to stand up, let alone contact the dead. Casper Van Dien is so haggard-looking that he's almost unrecognisable from the rugged young actor who played Rico in Starship Troopers. However, his role as the initially uninterested detective is mostly unnecessary and he's pretty superfluous. As a whole, the film is surprisingly well made, considering its low budget and it's sufficiently creepy with both a new idea and an interesting ending, somewhat of a rarity in the haunted house genre. It does slip a little towards the end when it resorts to the obligatory Ouija board scene but it's a good first effort from director Nicholas McCarthy.

A fresh and interesting idea, good performances and solidly executed. What more could you ask for?

7 out of 10.

A Lonely Place to Die (2011)

It wasn't until after I watched A Lonely Place to Die that I realised that the only films of Scream Queen Melissa George's that I've seen have been her horror and thriller films - The Amityville Horror, Turistas, WAZ, 30 Days of Night, Triangle and now A Lonely Place to Die. There's not much you need to know about it before you watch it other than that it's a thriller about five people who go hiking.

First of all, I must say that the cinematography is simply wonderful. The opening scene, with its sweeping, bird's-eye view of the Scottish highlands is superb and the action, with Alison (Melissa George) and her friends Rob (Alec Newman) and Ed (Ed Speelers) rappelling up the side of a mountain draws favourable comparisons with the opening scene of Mission: Impossible II. The three head off to their cabin to meet up with couple Alex (Garry Sweeney) and Jenny (Kate Magowan). After a night of drinking and card games in their cabin, the five head off into the mountains, hiking through woods and across streams as they go. When they pause for a break, Ed heads off for a piss and hears what sounds like a distant, echoing voice. They spread out and Alison finds a pipe sticking out of the ground. From that moment on, their holiday is turned upside down.

Digging into the earth, they uncover a lid, which they pull open, revealing a small box with a little girl alone inside it. Terrified, the girl cannot speak a word of English and the group have no idea what to do. Eventually, they decide to split up. Alison and Rob, the best climbers, head off on the most direct route to the nearest village while the other three take the girl with them on the slower, safer route. Rob and Alison rappel down a cliff in a scene reminiscent of the opening scene from Wrong Turn. It's nerve-jangling and has a fantastic twist in it. Meanwhile, the others hike their way across open country. Two men in camouflage gear draw beads on them with their rifles but an excellent bait-and-switch sees them taken out by the men who are really tracking the group, led by Mr. Kidd (Sean Harris, who plays Micheletto Corellla in The Borgias). Alison changes course and heads off up the river and meets up with the others just as their pursuers find them. From the river, they sprint through the woods, still pursued, until they finally lose them. This is the hour-mark and what a fantastic hour it has been. Wonderfully shot and truly gripping. It's just a shame that the following thirty-nine minutes can't match it.

We're properly introduced to two new characters, Darko (Karel Roden) and Andy (Eamonn Walker), who are also trying to track down the girl, but for different reasons. The survivors finally make their way to the village and they go to the police station. There's a carnival on and only one old policeman on duty so they have to wait. Suspicious, they wonder if they should make a break for it. At the same time, Darko and Mr. Kidd meet each other in the village pub. It's a very strange scene and it completely lacks any resonance and feels very out of place with the fast-paced thrill-ride that the film has been up until this point. It's almost as if the film takes a break, pausing to introduce a completely divergent plot line. It serves only to make the film meander to its conclusion rather than barrel into it, full-throttle. It's a shame because when the end does come, a brutal and uncompromising one, it jars and feels tacked on, something the filmmakers would not have been hoping to achieve.

A film of two halves; the first is fantastic, right up there as one of the best thrillers of the last ten years and the second is a disappointing about-turn. The film pretty much comes to a screeching halt and we're forced to wait for the resolution while two characters we barely know and have no emotional attachment to have a chat in the pub over a pint. That aside, the film itself is gorgeous, wonderfully shot against the contrasting backdrops of the majestic Scottish highlands and a fiery night-time carnival in the streets of a little village. Melissa George is her usual excellent self, giving her character absolutely everything and throwing herself head-first (sometimes literally) into the action.

All in all, A Lonely Place to Die is a very good thriller with some exasperating faults. Don't see this as anything less than an endorsement of the film, however, because I would certainly encourage you to check it out.

7 out of 10.

(500) Days of Summer (2009)

Sometimes all it takes for a film to rise above dozens or hundreds of similar films is a gimmick. With (500) Days of Summer, that gimmick is a nonlinear narrative. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Tom Hansen, a depressed and lonely greeting card writer who meets Summer, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype played by perhaps the archetypical MPDG, Zooey Deschanel. We are told straight away that Tom and Summer broke up and that this is the story of what happened. The film skips back and forth over the span of their 500 day relationship, examining their differing attitudes to love, commitment and their relationship.

Gimmick aside, (500) Days of Summer is your standard bittersweet romantic comedy. Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel are very good as the doomed lovers and the shifts back and forward make for a refreshing change, but it's all been done before: boy finds girl, boy looses girl, boy moves on with new girl. There are, however, two stand-out scenes in the film.

The first is an absolutely fantastic and completely spontaneous song-and-dance number after Tom and Summer have sex for the first time. Tom emerges from his house, smiling and strutting down the street to You Make My Dreams by Hall & Oates. Fountains burst into life and strangers high-five and shake hands with him before a brilliantly choreographed flashmob-style dance erupts around him accompanied by a marching band and a pair of animated birds. As the number ends and everyone drifts away, Tom smiles at the camera, breaking the fourth wall and bringing to an end the ultimate "just had sex" scene.

The second is a scene later in the film. Tom and Summer have drifted apart, but she has invited him to her flat for a party. He puts on his finest, wraps her a gift and sets off. "He believed that this time, his expectations would align with reality", the narrator tells us. The screen splits in two, with the left-hand side labelled "Expectations" and the right-hand side labelled "Reality". They occasionally match up, but mostly they are the mirror opposite of each other. His expectation of sitting and talking quietly with Summer is contrasted with the reality of sitting at the opposite end of the table from her, making inane small talk with her friends about the job he hates; his expectation of looking out over the city with her contrasts with his reality of gazing out over the balcony, alone, as Summer chats with other guests and his expectation of the two of them moving somewhere more private and kissing is overwhelmed by reality. As the camera pulls back and turns to show reality from Tom's perspective, expectations is slowly wiped away and the split screen ends just as his expectations are overtaken by reality - she has become engaged to another man. Heartbroken, Tom storms out, walking off down the road and stopping in the middle of it. As he stands alone, his back to the camera, the image is painted over with a black and white drawing of the scene and then everything else is erased, leaving a single black figure standing in the shadowy, foggy remnants of the drawing, before he too, fades. The scene is accompanied by Hero by Regina Spektor, a haunting song that makes for the perfect accompaniment.

(500) Days of Summer is a fairly ordinary story lifted up by strong performances, an unusual narrative structure and two really memorable scenes. The whole is often greater than the sum of its parts. Here, the whole is made greater by some of the parts.

7 out of 10.

Is Anybody There? (2008)

Bill Milner has quite a career ahead of him. Nominated for four young performer or newcomer of the year awards for Son of Rambow, Is Anybody There? and Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and playing Young Magneto in X-Men: First Class, the sixteen-year-old already has an impressive body of work to his name. In Is Anybody There? Milner stars alongside some fantastic actors: Sir Michael Caine, David Morrissey, Anne-Marie Duff, Leslie Phillips, Sylvia Syms, Peter Vaughan, Thelma Barlow, Rosemary Harris and the late Elizabeth Spriggs.

Milner plays Edward, a lonely young boy whose parents (David Morrissey and Anne-Marie Duff) have turned their house into a struggling old people's home. Confronted by death and in the presence of the slowly dying, Edward has become fascinated in the paranormal and he keeps a diary of "paranormal happenings", in which he sadly makes daily entries of "no recorded evadense". When a resident dies, Edward recovers his recording equipment from the old man's room so he can listen to his last breaths and try and hear his ghost leaving his body, a practice his father later remarks is "how the Yorkshire Ripper must have started". Edward's morbid fascination with the recently departed is not driven by a desire to kill things but by a need, a desperate need, to know what happens after you die. It is the new resident, retired magician Clarence (Michael Caine), who clashes with Edward over this.

Ordered by the council to move into the home, widower Clarence is deeply unhappy and he and Edward clash immediately. When Edward saves Clarence's life after he tries to kill himself, the two make up. After Edward takes it upon himself to confiscate Clarence's belts, stand watch underneath his window and give him some helpful leaflets (including "Coping with bereavement" and "Information on cervical smears"), the two, helped along by their mutual disdain for the house, become closer. To satiate Edward's desire for contact with the dead, Clarence arranges a seemingly successful seance in the basement, leading Edward to happily write "A MANAFESTATION!" in his diary.

When the two take a trip to an old storage room Clarence owns to pick up some of his old equipment for a performance for Edward's birthday, Clarence gets confused and gets into a minor collision with another vehicle. As the two push the campervan back to the house, Clarence starts to get irritated with Edward's repeated talk of the afterlife. When Clarence says he'd come back as a badger because being a person is a pain in the arse, Edward asks him to come back and see him if he dies, prompting Clarence to tell him, "You don't come back, son! Once they've gone, you can't talk to them!" and laments that he was never able to tell his wife he was sorry before she died, revealing that she divorced him because of his infidelity and confessing that he even missed her funeral. Edward storms off but at his birthday party, the two reconcile and Clarence performs his show, which goes well until he gets confused again and accidentally severs a fellow resident's finger. After his father questions his friendship with Clarence, Edward shouts that he wishes Clarence was his father and plays a recording of his father making sexual advances towards their young helper, Tanya (Linzey Cocker), prompting his parents to separate. After the two take a trip to the graveyard where his ex-wife is buried, the rapidity with which Clarence's dementia is overcoming him becomes clear.

The ending is quite predictable and overall the film does feel like it's going through the motions, but two great performances from Cain and Milner really lift the proceedings. It's a pity that the likes of Leslie Philips and Rosemary Harris are underused, being often little more than background characters, but they are most welcome. Morrissey and Duff are very good as Edward's parents and the film is directed capably by John Crowley, full of touching moments like the scene where Clarence speaks his ex-wife's name into the mirror as the camera focuses one by one on old pictures of the two. Is Anybody There? might not be the most original or ground-breaking drama, but it does what it sets out to do and if you don't raise your expectations too high, you'll have an enjoyable ninety-four minutes.

7 out of 10.

Final Destination 5 (2011)

I was under the impression that The Final Destination was to be the last film in the franchise. How naive of me. The first four films in the series made over half a billion dollars from a combined budget of just one hundred and seventy-three million dollars. Why on Earth would they stop after just four films!

The problem facing the series is the same problem that the makers of Friday the 13th faced - you can only make so many films about Jason going around killing people before even the hardcore fans become disillusioned. What did they do after three films of stalk-kill-repeat ad nauseum? They killed Jason. Then they had a copy-cat Jason. Then they had zombie Jason. Then they had Jason vs Carrie and so on. But how can the Final Destination films do anything like that? The killer is death. Not a physical manifestation of death that the characters can challenge to a chess game but the disembodied, immaterial, "force" of death. Well, for a start, they can change the characters. Instead of a film full of teenagers, the characters are adults with jobs, spouses and career ambitions. Is that enough to stop the series from becoming stale and boring?

Yes. The characters are more fleshed out, more sympathetic, more... interesting. The cheap laughs are gone but the death scenes are better than ever. I don't think I'll ever be able to watch gymnastics at the Olympics again and I've always had the idea that at some point I'll get laser eye surgery. Yeah, not so much now. As with the rest of the films in the series, it begins with a premonition of a catastrophe, and this catastrophe is the best since the motorway pile-up of Final Destination 2. It's utterly brilliant and totally believable, a marvel of CGI and expertly directed. I haven't seen it in 3D, but from what I've read, the 3D actually enhances the effect, rather than being an annoying after-thought. The death scenes, as mentioned, are better than ever with some innovative twists and downright shocking ways for the characters to come to a sticky end. The demise of a particularly odious character during an acupuncture session provides perhaps the best thrill of all.

Tony Todd's return as William Bludworth is a welcome one and with him having signed up for Final Destination parts 6 and 7, it will be interesting to see if the creators take the series in a different direction or if they waste the opportunity. The ending is an excellent way to link the film to the preceding instalments and create new avenues for the series to explore.

In conclusion, Final Destination 5 is a much better film than I had anticipated. It's formulaic, but a spectacular disaster scene, effective characterisation and fresh and bloody deaths combine to make a worthy entry in the series.

7 out of 10.

Superbad (2007)

Having completely forgotten about this blog for 2 days short of 2 years, now is as good a time as any to start it up again. Having recently graduated from university and with the economy in the toilet (thanks, Dave), it seems that a lot of my time will be devoted to watching films. With that in mind, here's my first review. Well, it's more of a double review, actually. When I first began this blog, I wrote a review of Superbad, but didn't publish it for whatever reason. Having recently watched Superbad for the second time a short while ago, I thought it would be interesting to publish my initial review alongside what I think of it having seen it again.

Here's my initial review:

A few days ago I settled down to watch Superbad. Having heard nothing but good things about it, and having enjoyed two of Judd Apatow's other films (The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up) I figured it would be a good way to ease myself in to the world of blog reviews.

The film stars Michael Cera and Jonah Hill as Evan and Seth, two best friends in their final year of High School. With both of them about to graduate and go to different universities, they decide to try and lose their virginity with their respective crushes: Becca and Jules. Their plan revolves around getting their friend Fogell (played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to use his new fake I.D. buy all the alcohol for the party at Jules' house, and get the two girls drunk enough to sleep with them. However, when Fogell reveals his fake I.D. lists him as a 25-year-old Hawaiian named "McLovin", things start going downhill. When Fogell appears to be busted by the police and Evan and Seth enlist the help of an ex-con to secure the booze, things hit rock bottom.

As it turns out, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Not once did I have to stop the film because I was laughing too much. In fact, I didn't really laugh that much at all. The funniest part of the film is probably the moment the stain on Seth's jeans is revealed to have originated from a rather "intimate" dance he had with a drunk girl earlier on.

Yes, McLovin is a classic character and Christopher Mintz-Plasse was superb, but the trailers for Superbad seemed to be nothing but McLovin clips. Having seen the trailer ad nauseum when it was on TV back in 2007, the film suffered from that classic problem of "putting the funniest bits in the trailer". McLovin being interrupted in bed with a girl? Seen it. McLovin revealing his fake I.D. lists his name as just McLovin? Seen it. McLovin saying "I am McLovin"? Seen it. McLovin tackling someone in a kitchen? Seen it.

That feeling of familiarity carries on throughout most of the film. Guys desperate to lose their virginity before they all go off to college? Where have we seen that before?

Resemblances to American Pie aside, the film was a fairly easy watch. The first hour or so seemed to breeze by. McLovin is a brilliant character; Cera and Hill have real chemistry as the two leads and Seth Rogen is his usual brash self. However, once the trio reunited and got to the party, it began to drag. Apatow and co-writer Evan Goldberg don't seem to quite know how to end the film and it meanders to a very predictable conclusion.

7 out of 10.

And here are my thoughts from almost two years later, having seen it recently for a second time:

I enjoyed it much more than the first time I watched it. Yes, the same feeling of familiarity with other films was there, but I laughed more and the ending is better than I gave it credit for. Rather than having the trio lose their virginities, the film has a much more authentic ending: they don't. Mintz-Plasse is superb and Cera and Hill have great chemistry. Emma Stone also shines out as not only very sharp and funny but one of the most beautiful young actresses in Hollywood today and it's tantamount to her considerable talent that she has gone on to give such good performances in a wide variety of films.

Yes, it's familiar and yes, it meanders at the end but it's warm, realistic, very funny and features some marvellous performances from four fantastic young actors.

8 out of 10.