Reviews of The Wretched, Ophelia and VFW
midlandsmovies • May 21, 2020
Reviews of The Wretched, Ophelia and VFW
The Wretched (2020) Dir. Brett Pierce & Drew T. Pierce
Well it’s easy to call this film absolutely wretched but let’s see how we get there in a new horror from the Pierce brothers. John-Paul Howard plays Ben, a conflicted teenager involved in poorly constructed shenanigans involving a cursed witch who somewhat places people under a spell where they forget members of their own family.
Sadly for starters, American teenage boys are sometimes the biggest douches to watch on screen. You get the loveable nerd-ish type (played by our lead here and made popular by Shia LaBeouf) and the BBQ cooking jocks. Both are present. Both are cliched. And both are mostly ghastly. With shades of both Spielberg and Hitchcock (especially in Devin Burrows’ great score) the film reminds me of the original Fright Night in tone, whilst the ideas have been seen before, and better, in suburban horrors like Disturbia and The Woman. It does however provide some gross out blood and guts, but the dramatic sections feel much like soap opera Home and Away “down at the pier”.
Some arresting imagery and note-worthy visuals help and the good practical effects are definitely one of its saving graces. However, a few interesting ideas about memory never really fully coalesce and although these new directors show quite a bit of promise as filmmakers, I don’t believe this to be their breakout effort. ★★
Ophelia (2020) Dir. Claire McCarthy
I’ve been meaning to write my review of Ophelia for some time now, but the truth is that this reimagining of Hamlet from Ophelia’s point of view is sadly a bit unremarkable resulting somewhat in very little to explore. A take on Hamlet by Shakespeare, it opens with a cinematic adaptation of John Everett Millais’ Ophelia painting - an image also replicated in Laurence Olivier’s more faithful take on the Bard’s tale from his 1948 Hamlet film.
Protagonist Daisy Ridley is clearly the best thing about the film delivering a performance with much wider range than her Star Wars Rey character. The beats from the play are all present – murder, succession & deceit - but these are truncated in favour of scenes from Ophelia’s perspective. Prince Hamlet is played well by George MacKay who is having a stunning year with a solid performance here as well as his excellent appearances in 1917 and True History of the Kelly Gang already on his 2020 CV. Moving from historical tragedy to a more straight drama at times, it's an interesting take on the material with the saturated greens of nature, innocence and life slightly ironic given the tragic tale of death. The great cinematography is let down by a turgid script though and it has to be said Clive Owen’s wig is nauseatingly distracting. The sumptuous costumes and the delightful performance from Ridley are not quite enough to drag this beyond the realms of a “valiant effort” with a reimagined twist ending stuck on for good measure. Solid but uninspiring. ★★★
VFW (2020) Dir. Joe Begos
I’d love someone to correct me here, but this retro action flick opens in the antagonist’s lair with the title that it’s “12.30pm”. That’s afternoon, right? He heads outside and it’s the middle of the night. Also, there’s a coda explaining that the town has gone downhill and become a war zone because of drugs. This is immediately repeated in the first conversation between our introductory two characters. It’s that kind of attention to detail that doesn’t bode well for Joe Bego’s new film VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars).
It stars a host of grizzled faces including Stephen Lang (Avatar), William Sadler (Die Hard 2), Fred Williamson (From Dusk Til Dawn), Martin Kove (The Karate Kid), David Patrick Kelly (The Warriors) and the ultimate bar-fly George Wendt (from TV’s Cheers). This bunch of geriatrics end up in a John Carpenter-style situation stuck in their local drinkery whilst a gang of drug-crazed heavies tries to get in. And that’s about it. The character actors are in fact great and the conversations between them are actually not half bad but the boring action and sample dialogue “An army of braindead animals is still an army” is inane. Here, it’s more like a film of braindead actors is still a film, I guess (just). A fair bit of gore and violence combined with neon lighting harks to the 80s but it doesn’t do what the best 80s-influenced films do (e.g. It Follows & The Guest) which give their own modern spin on their retro roots. The boring VFW therefore sadly ends by being a bit embarrassing for everyone involved. ★½
Michael Sales
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