Tuesday, October 27, 2015

31 Days of Halloween 2015: No One Lives

2012, Ryûhei Kitamura (Versus, The Midnight Meat Train) -- download

I haven't asked myself, "What has the director of 2000's Versus been up to?" but I should have. I loved that movie.

Too bad it was this.

Not that it is terrible, it just isn't very expansive. It fills the gap of serial killer versus reprobate criminals that we didn't know we needed. But it doesn't go for entirely stylish or any sense of new. But there is the keyword versus so there is that.

No need to do a detailed recap or plot; I am just going to spoil the hell out of it.

Luke Evans (he did this right after The Raven) is a serial killer who collects beautiful young women, converts them and has them help collect the next in line. They are eating at a diner when they run afoul of some thuggish criminals who don't all get along. Do criminal gangs ever do? Lee Tergesen (who will always be Chett from Weird Science [TV not movie] to me) desperately tries to steer them away from the handsome stranger but nope, they have to mess with him. Flynn, the sociopathic takes Evans and his girlfriend and, inadvertently, the girl he has in the trunk of his car. Of course Evans escapes.

Thus begins a typical slasher style flick where the Bad Guy (Evans) picks off the "kids" one by one. But the kids are also bad guys, so we are left with a weird sensation of not being sure who to root for. No, not the debate where a couple of the kids are assholes, but these are out and out Bad Guys, burglars and murderers.

The movie is kind of gleeful in its dispatch of the kids (might as well continue to call them that), especially one particular gruesome scene where Evans emerges from the oversized body of one of them, naked and covered in blood. Like all psychopaths, he is calm and creative, dispatching each in his own particular way.

The hitch for the audience is that the girl in the trunk is also trying to escape both parties, and is rather resourceful herself.

As I said, its not an entirely bad movie, just not very expansive. And not completely innovative enough to fit into my purview of Small Film. It chooses to be gleeful, but I would have wanted it to be a little more tense, a little more filled with fear and rage. Alas, everyone is doing the utmost to be cool and charismatic.

In the end the girl in the trunk escapes.... and so does Evans. Sequel !!

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