Author of sci-fi/fantasy, horror and adventure/thriller fiction

LIFE (2017)

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I’d put off watching LIFE (2017, streaming on Netflix) as I hadn’t heard much good about it and it seemed an updated Hollywood spin on ALIEN. Despite both being true, I enjoyed it quite a bit and recommend it for sci-fi and horror fans looking for something engaging and punchy in familiar territory.

The film opens with a probe returning from Mars with soil samples, which is caught by the International Space Station with its six-person crew played by solid actors like Jake Gyllenhaal (of course playing a somewhat melancholy earnest guy) and Ryan Reynolds (of course playing a wisecracking astronaut). They find an organism in the soil, which they nurture and experiment with, fascinated by its ability to adapt, grow, and learn. Predictably, it breaks out of the lab, threatens everybody on the station, and poses a threat to Earth.

As far as horror and action go, it’s all pretty solid and follows a familiar path if you’ve ever seen ALIEN. It doesn’t make you jump in your seat, but it’s fun. The ending is an easy guess but nicely done as it took some courage to go there. Where the film shined for me is in its world building.

The space station is very well crafted. It lacks the lived-in grunge of ALIEN’S NOSTROMO but makes you feel like they really shot it in the space station. But that’s not the best part. I love sci-fi films where a space station, planet, spaceship, whatever offers a sandbox for the characters to face challenges and then solve their problems using the available tools. While I may not be surprised that little critter will escape and kill people, I can be surprised with the little problems and solutions the characters face and come up with due to their unique environment.

Besides that, I liked how the writers didn’t try to snare me with international rivalries or contrived conflicts between the characters. They’re all happy to be up there, they work together well, and they’re bonded by their joint mission to explore. They all behave somewhat realistically under stress, and nobody does anything stupid purely to advance the plot. The storytelling is sparse but also very tight and focused.

As for the monster, it’s pretty cool, though not as cool as other, far more creepier and menacing space monsters in other films. Still, it comes across as somewhat believable.

So overall, for me, LIFE only suffers in its comparison to its horror ancestry. Taken by itself, it’s a solid survival horror flick and sci-fi thriller.

UNTHINKABLE (2018)

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In UNTHINKABLE (2018, Netflix), a Swedish thriller disaster film, a dysfunctional family splits apart and rediscovers each other during an invasion by a mysterious power. The action is surprising, realistic, and packs a ton of punch, though the film is dragged down a bit by the main protagonist, who is sympathetic but kinda unlikable.

In 2005, a teenager named Alex lives with his mother and Björn, a retired soldier prone to conspiracy theories about the Russians. Björn suffers from deep anger and paranoia, which he lacks the control to prevent from spilling onto his family. Alex’s best friend Anna, whom he’s in love with, is about to move away from the village. At Christmas, Björn goes too far, driving his wife away, and then Alex leaves too, showing signs he too now has a deep anger that threatens his ability to show or receive love.

Fast forward some years, and an adult Alex is on his way back to his village to buy something valuable to him. Along the way, a series of disasters builds, threatening Sweden’s government and much of its population. Clearly, this is a massive terrorist operation, but who is doing it, and why? The disaster forces Alex to reconnect with the people he left behind, and each of them will find resolution if not ultimate happiness in the horror.

The film is gritty in its realism, with plenty of wow moments in the violent bursts of action. Once things really get going, there is an overwhelming sense of doom, stripping the characters to the moral and psychological bone. The war itself is fascinating, depicting a large-scale sabotage operation to defeat a foreign power without actually invading it. The film is dark right to the end, though each of its characters finds a small bit of redemption for their mistakes.

Overall, I really liked this one and recommend it for those looking for something engaging and off-kilter in an apocalyptic or disaster/war film.

DEADPOOL (2016)

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I’m very late to the DEADPOOL (2016) party but finally caught it the other night at DisneyPlus. I heard a lot of raves about the film and found it largely lived up to the hype. The wisecracking is overplayed a bit, but overall, it nails its mission, which is to deliver a fast-paced superhero story for adults with plenty of action, fun, and just enough comedy.

Starring Ryan Reynolds (basically playing himself in a costume), the film is about a wisecracking hit man who undergoes an experimental treatment after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. The treatment works, basically making him immortal, though at the cost of being made ugly. Taking the name Deadpool, he goes on a tear to find the man who did this to him and restore his looks, so he can have the confidence to reconnect with his girlfriend.

The film is innovative in its genre for several reasons. With nudity, plenty of cussing, killing sprees, and an antihero superhero, it’s clearly a film for adults. Reynolds delivers charm and humor with his character, even if it’s laid on thick to the point of realizing if I knew this guy in real life, I’d be mentally exhausted in about ten minutes. The comedy goes everywhere, even breaking the fourth wall and making fun of the X-MEN movies–with Stan Lee doing one of his cameos, this one pretty funny. A few minor X-Men characters are pulled in to good effect.

One thing I’d like to call out is the love interest, played by Morena Baccarin. On the one hand, she’s a prostitute who’s hot, loves sex, and is a nerd, leading Reynolds to say at one point, “It’s like I created you with a computer,” which uh, yeah, some dude did. Still, she’s more well rounded and likeable than the typical movie Love Interest, who is usually fleshed out just enough to be a MacGuffin prompting the protagonist into action. This is in no small part due to Baccarin’s acting. I usually find her wooden, but she really pours it on and has fun with this role.

Overall, DEADPOOL is a really fun movie, a standout in the Marvel genre, and I’m hoping to catch the sequel when it becomes available on one of my streaming services.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE RULEZ (2018)

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In SLAUGHTERHOUSE RULEZ (2018, streaming on Netflix), troubled teens attending a dysfunctional elite boarding school find themselves fighting for their lives after a nearby fracking operation unleashes subterranean monsters. Another horror-comedy creation of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost of SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ fame, SLAUGHTERHOUSE RULEZ doesn’t accomplish much as either horror or comedy, resulting in a passable if forgettable movie, one you’d put in the “turn off your brain and kill some time” category.

The film focuses on Wallace, a teenager from a working-class family given the chance to enroll at an exclusive public school called Slaughterhouse, an opulent institution oppressed by brutal traditions. As he struggles to fit in, a nearby fracking operation unleashes a swarm of hungry monsters from the depths of the earth, and now it’s up to a small group of teens to save the day, with a little help from a teacher (Pegg) and a local environmental protester (Frost).

Writing this, I realize this is going to be a short review. It’s not very funny, lacking the humorous charm of Pegg and Frost’s previous work, and the monsters are hardly menacing. As usual, Pegg plays his role with plenty of raw nerves, being a teacher whose love interest, another teacher, left England to do volunteer work in the Sudan, and he can’t handle the separation. I kind of wanted to see THAT movie, him and Frost doing their thing, and leave out those meddling kids who are likeable enough but acting out a plot that is mostly going through the motions.

Anyway, again, SLAUGHTERHOUSE RULEZ is fine. It was nothing special for me, but it made a passable watch on yet another night in lockdown.

HOMUNCULUS (2021)

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In HOMUNCULUS (2021, streaming on Netflix), a Japanese film based on the manga by Hideo Yamamoto, the line between truth and illusion dissolves when a homeless amnesiac undergoes a medical procedure that gives him the ability to visualize people’s innermost traumas. Packed with interesting ideas and enough human drama to be engaging, this is one of those films I tried on a lark with minimal expectations and found to be a real gem.

Nokoshi lives in his car next to a park, unable to remember much about his past, unable to feel much of anything. One night, he is visited by Ito, a strange young man who is a medical intern experimenting with trepanning, an ancient medical procedure of drilling a hole in the skull that goes back to the age of Neanderthals. (Some theorize it was a medical procedure to relieve brain swelling, but there is substantial evidence is was ritually performed among some peoples to allow spirits to pass in and out of the body. Today, some believe trepanning increases brain metabolism and can be used to achieve a higher state of consciousness, allowing one to experience the world like a child.) Nokoshi agrees to the procedure in the hope he will be cured of his amnesia and be able to feel again.

The procedure slowly works, but with a catch: Nokoshi can now see people’s traumas visualized as a symbolic part of themselves–a man visualized as a child encased in a robot, and so on. Further, he is able to dissect this trauma, called a homunculus, and take it away from people. A gift and a curse, which lead him back to the source of his own trauma that caused his amnesia, and a discovery that offers both horror and redemption.

I found HOMUNCULUS a terrific movie. Due to its manga origins, it has an episodic feel, and it may strike some viewers as being a little meandering and slow. Watching it, I felt like I was viewing a way darker ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. There’s a sex scene that appears to be assault even though the act is ultimately curative and the result of illusion, which some may find objectionable. Overall, HOMUNCULUS is weird, strong without being demanding, and packing enough titillating ideas to keep me engaged.

BOYS FROM COUNTY HELL (2020)

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BOYS FROM COUNTY HELL (2020, streaming on Shudder) is an Irish vampire film that veers between serious and silly, reaching for SHAUN OF THE DEAD but with an effect that’s fun if a bit flat, at least for me. Still, there was real effort here, and it has heart.

The story takes place in a remote village in Ireland, where the local youth yearn to escape. There’s a tourist draw in the area, an ancient cairn of stones on a farm that reputedly inspired Bram Stoker (who was born in Ireland) to write DRACULA (I could find no actual evidence of there being an Irish inspiration; by all accounts, Stoker was inspired by visits to Scotland and a coastal English town). Anyway, Eugene, one of the locals, gets a construction job with his father Francie to start digging a new road bypass through the farm, which will result in the cairn being demolished. This awakens an ancient vampire and a fight for survival.

The story is played as a horror comedy, begging for comparisons to films like SHAUN OF THE DEAD, where the characters are charming and humorous enough that silliness and plot holes become easily forgiven. BOYS FROM COUNTY HELL seems to play it both ways: Instead of punctuating the comedy with sorrowful moments, it veers fairly evenly between these extremes, with the result that neither quite came off for me. Still, once the SHTF, the film gains lift and becomes a fairly good time, and the characters are likeable enough they contribute to the general sense of fun.

Overall, as you’ve probably gathered, I didn’t love this one, but it does have a lot of heart, and I found it fun and charming enough to just sit back and enjoy the ride.