Genre: Disaster/Comedy
Director: Kim Ji-hoon
Cast: Cha Seoung-won, Lee Kwang-soo, Kim Sung-kyun, Kim Hye-jun
Runtime: 1 hr 54 mins
Rating: PG (Some Intense Sequences)
Released By: Encore Films and Golden Village Pictures
Official Website:
Opening Day: 28 August 2021
Synopsis: An ordinary office worker Dong-won (KIM Sung-kyun) and his family move into a house he bought after years of saving. Overwhelmed with happiness, he invites his colleagues to a housewarming party, but heavy overnight rain leads to a gigantic sinkhole, and in a mere minute, it swallows up the entire apartment and the people inside. Hundreds of meters down the hole, Dong-won, his neighbor Man-su (CHA Seoung-won), and the unfortunate housewarming party guests (Lee Kwang-soo) must find their way out. Rain starts to pour down, filling the sinkhole with water, giving them very little time to get back to the surface.
Movie Review:
Disaster movies often take themselves too seriously. While they are natural candidates to entertain the senses (Send in the meteors and set fire across the fields! Crack the highways open and swallow all the vehicles! Collapse all the high rise buildings and bury innocent people!), they can also be overbearing and score low on the fun scale.
Thankfully, this Korean blockbuster doesn’t fall into that trap. Meant to be released in its home country during the harvest festival last year, it was postponed due to the resurgence of COVID-19. When it opened in theatres in early August, local audiences lapped it up. The movie gained one million admissions within six days of release and is the fast film to do so in 2021. It is currently the second highest grossing Korean movie this year, with an impressive box office earning of US$16.09 million.
The movie’s protagonist is an earnest man who moves into an apartment with his family after working hard for 11 years. The morning after a housewarming party and a heavy overnight downpour, he finds himself in a house that has sunk into the ground. Together with his guests and a sulky neighbour, they must find a way to survive the catastrophe. Amidst the rubble, rain continues to pour, making it even more challenge to escape.
It is not difficult to see why the movie is so popular. While it is not headlined by Korean hunks, the main stars are crowd pullers in their own ways. Cha Seung-won has long time fans from his wide variety of works, while Kim Sung-kyun is an established artiste with several acting awards. Then you have Lee Kwang-soo from the hit variety show Running Man, who is a natural at drawing laughs. The setup is also relatable, After 11 years of work, considering how the protagonist is an everyday man who puts together enough savings to purchase an apartment. This is somewhat of an important milestone and class distinction in the country.
But most importantly, there is quite a substantial amount of laughs, thanks to the dynamics between the characters. Kim’s honest role is constantly being jibed at by Cha’s crafty character. Cha is a standout here as a seemingly sloppy individual whom you don’t want as your neighbour. His appearance is shoddy and unshaven, so it is difficult to imagine that the actor started his career as a fashion model. Elsewhere, Lee plays a guest who unluckily gets trapped in the sunken building with a fellow colleague (Kim Hye-jun).
The 114 movie strikes a very fine balance between comedy, drama and action. There are even some heartfelt moments that will make sentimental viewers shed a few tears (spoiler: there will be casualties). The action sequences will leave you at the edge of your seat and praying for the main characters’ safety. The final sequences are brilliantly set up, and while it succeeds at creating claustrophobia, you will wonder how you would react if put in a similar situation.
Movie Rating:
(A solid piece of entertainment that will make you laugh, feel sentimental, and gasp for air at the edge of your seat)
Review by John Li
Genre: Action/Horror/Sci-FI
Director: Sion Sono
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Sofia Boutella, Nick Cassavetes, Bill Moseley, Tak Sakaguchi, Young Dais, Charles Glover, Cici Zhou, Louis Kurihara, Tetsu Watanabe, Takato Yonemoto, Shin Shimizu, Matthew Chozick, Constant Voisin, Yuzuka Nakaya, Koto Lorena, Canon Nawata, Hiroshi Kaname
Runtime: 1 hr 43 mins
Rating: NC16 (Violence and Coarse Language))
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website:
Opening Day: 7 October 2021
Synopsis: In the treacherous frontier city of Samurai Town, a ruthless bank robber (Nicolas Cage) is sprung from jail by wealthy warlord The Governor (Bill Moseley), whose adopted granddaughter Bernice (Sofia Boutella) has gone missing. The Governor offers the prisoner his freedom in exchange for retrieving the runaway. Strapped into a leather suit that will self-destruct within five days, the bandit sets off on a journey to find the young woman— and his own path to redemption.
Movie Review:
While no longer a big bankable name in major studios produced pictures, Nicolas Cage remains a tour de force in the indie filmmaking circle and direct-to-video market. Although the member of the Coppola family has been receiving praise for his performances in Mandy, Color Out of Space and recently for Pig, Cage’s career remains very much an enigma at this point. It seems that not even Ghost Rider himself can stop Cage from earning his paycheck so here’s another offbeat, wild outing from the Academy Award and Golden Globe winner.
Set in apocalyptic Japan where anything goes, Hero (Cage) a criminal imprisoned for a botched bank robbery is released by the Governor (Bill Moseley) to track down his missing adopted granddaughter, Bernice (Sofia Boutella) who is supposedly stranded in the Ghostland. To ensure that Hero finishes his mission, Hero is fitted with a combustive outfit that will blow his head and balls apart. Five days are all he has to complete his mission.
As numerous flashbacks tell us, we learnt that Hero’s past is somehow connected to Bernice. There’s a bank robbery that went awry. There’s a nuclear waste explosion. There’s redemption to be made by Hero and he is going to overthrow the Governor paving the road to freedom for the people of wasteland. Sounds exciting? But that’s all on paper.
Prisoners of the Ghostland is directed by Japanese filmmaker Sion Sono known for his quirky and subversive films. So when you have an actor liked Cage and a filmmaker liked Sono, “normal” shouldn’t exist in this particular cinematic collaboration. Unfortunately, while it’s definitely not “normal”, it’s not entirely ground breaking either. Truth to be told, it’s way too boring to worth your time. You wish simply someone just went ahead and detonate the two bombs located on Hero’s testicles and we can walk out of the hall.
It’s not to say Prisoners of the Ghostland is not entirely without merits. If you are a person who is into sizzling visuals, outrageous bizarre characters, this movie has plenty to offer you. Samurai Town who is run by the Governor is a cross between a sleepy old American Wild West and pre-modern Japan. The Ghostland on the other hand is a complete wasteland, reminiscent of Mad Max and inhibited by weird looking outcasts and beings. Even the background actors are dressed as if they are invited to the Met Gala. The production, costume design and set décor are at its visual best. Everything is set to go except for the plotting and narrative.
For a movie that is filled with samurais, cowboys and anti-hero, visual is just not enough to keep the viewers’ interest. There are long stretches of where time passes and nothing of much substance happened on screen. Cage as usual tried his best to elevate the material with his increasingly exaggerated acting and for whatever reason, it doesn’t work. His onscreen madness might work at times but he is not that lucky this time round. Or maybe it’s because Sono is trying too hard to carve out some meaningful social messages out of the sloppy scripting although we prefer to blame it on language barrier. Likewise the various action sequences are too compromising, tacky and surprisingly PG13 to make much of an impact.
It’s surprisingly tame overall for a movie liked Prisoners of the Ghostland. And you thought it’s going to feature lots of fetish sex and squeamish violence given the premise. Admittedly, it also suffers from a paper-thin story despite the cool visuals. For fans of Cage, his next movie is just round the corner. For the rest of us, don’t bother to even call.
Movie Rating:
(The most exciting aspect of this flick is watching Cage’s testicle getting blown out. No joke)
Review by Linus Tee
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BRAD ALLAN (1973 - 2021)Posted on 09 Aug 2021 |
SYNOPSIS: A one-of-kind kinkajou (voiced by Lin-Manuel Miranda), embarks on an unforgettable, musical adventure to deliver a love song to Marta (voiced by Gloria Estefan) on behalf of his owner Andrés (Buena Vista Social Club’s Juan De Marcos).
MOVIE REVIEW:
In a short span of eight months, Sony Pictures Animation and Netflix has brought us three dazzlingly animations to the small screen. After The Mitchells Vs The Machines and Wish Dragon, here comes Vivo!
Vivo features a number of big names in the industry. Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton, In The Heights) wrote the songs and voices Vivo, the cute Kinkajou, Kirk DeMicco (The Croods) directed the pic with former Disney animator Rich Moore (Wreck-It-Ralph) as producer and esteemed cinematographer Roger Deakins serving as visual consultant after moonlighting on Wall-E and How to Train our Dragon.
That’s not all. Louis Koo’s production company, One Cool Film is also one of the backers of this animation.
Anyway, the movie opens with a Kinkajou (Lin) basking in the central plaza in Havana, Cuba with his owner, the aged musician Andres Hernandez. Nothing liked a rousing musical number to open a musical theme animation. But good times never last. Andres passed away the day before he is due to reunite with his beloved Marta (Gloria Estefan) in Miami. Apparently, Andres never plucks up the courage to confess his love for Marta whom had left to pursue her singing career in the States decades ago. His last wish was to tell her how much he loves her through a song he has written for her. Alas, he never gets the chance to make it to Miami.
To fulfil his owner’s last wish, Vivo’s decides to deliver the song to Martha with the help of Andres’ grandniece, the tone deaf gutsy Gabi (Ynairaly Simo). With her protective mother, Rosa (Zoe Saldana) and a trio of overzealous girl scouts in the way, will Vivo and Gabi be able to complete their mission? Obviously, you know they will, this is a feel-good, family-oriented animation after all.
With a heavy Latin influence, Lin expectedly incorporates lots of music and song numbers into the story. The musical numbers are often vibrant, occasionally emotional and serves as a connecting bridge for the characters. Despite their vast differences in terms of music talents, the relationship between Vivo and Gabi is similar in a way that both has lost their kin. Vivo has lost his beloved owner. Gabi on the other hand lost her father when she was young. It’s not a mere journey for both to deliver a song but one to heal from their grief and loss.
If Luna scored with its authentic portrayal of Cinque Terre, then Vivo amazed us with the grand old architectural wonders of Cuba. Sony Animation certainly has come a long way and their bold animation techniques seem to hit quite a home run with the release of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Mitchells in recent times. And now you can definitely add Vivo into its resume.
Taking a leaf out of Disney and Pixar animations, there’s a detour to the Everglades where our heroes encountered a pair of fumbling love birds and a menacing anaconda voiced by Michael Rooker. There’s adventure, musical numbers and funny gags, hardly a moment of boredom despite the fairly predictable execution and if you don’t mind, a lack of distinct memorable songs.
Still, Vivo is highly entertaining with two cute central characters and terrific visual splendour. The animation main theme song, “My Own Drum” written by Lin and Missy Elliot is either highly energetic or irritable depending on your mood.
MOVIE RATING:
Review by Linus Tee
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Director: Banjong Pisanthanakun
Cast: Narilya Gulmongkolpech, Sawanee Utoomma, Sirani Yankittikan
Runtime: 2 hrs 11 mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scenes & Violence)
Released By: Golden Village Pictures
Official Website:
Opening Day: 12 August 2021
Synopsis: A documentary team follows Nim, a shaman based in Northern Thai, the Isan area, and encounters her niece Mink showing strange symptoms that seem to be of inheritance of shamanism. The team decides to follow Mink, hoping to capture the shaman lineage passing on to the next generation, but her bizarre behavior becomes more extreme.
Movie Review:
The promise of a collaboration between Shutter-famous Banjong Pisanthanakun, directing a new horror title produced by The Wailing Na Hong-jin, is enough to make any pundit in the genre sit up and take notice.
The two veterans are strong in their compelling narratives - both enjoy layering their characters with the burden of a strained human psyche, and winding up tension for the payoff in the last act. This shows up too with the mockumentary The Medium.
The film follows a production crew who is documenting the topic of Isan animism through a local shaman. Taking place in the northerly region of Thailand, the featured priestess is Nim (Sawanee Utoomma), who acts as the resident medium known for calling upon guidance and remedies from Ba Yan - a local ancient goddess.
The Medium indulges us with lush scenes of her practice. The humble woman has a day-job as a seamstress, but when not bent over the machine, Nim is sitting in front of her expansive altar, filled with trinkets and items to empower her work. Some of the best moments are of her performing annual rites at a small grotto, where a huge stone effigy of Ba Yan presides over her devotees.
The plot thickens when Nim’s niece, Mink (Narilya Gulmongkolpech), starts to act oddly after her father’s passing. It starts with jitters but escalates into bouts of uncharacteristic anger, which concerns the shaman. You see, Nim inherited her capabilities through her mother, and only became the chosen one after her elder sister, who was first picked, rejected the goddess and turned to Christianity. The catch is that, when one doesn’t perform the initiation, these symptoms may become uncontrollable in nature and destroy the person in the process.
The scenes that follow are not for those easily triggered. From raw scenes of gore to story arcs touching on animal cruelty, incest and self-harm, The Medium is tough to stomach, especially at the speed in which it whips through these without pause. And coming from a SouthEast Asian country, the imagery here is particularly disturbing, given the strings, rituals and trances.
But what The Medium does best, is in unwrapping the story of spiritual inheritance. It manifests this through the different characters with opposing views (Nim’s sister, Noi for example, deludes herself to the symptoms until it becomes to late), and also entangles a complex circumstance of family guilt into the mix. And as the story unravels, Na’s script pushes us further with dark back stories that threaten to turn the situation on its head.
The development here is superb, given how it realistically unpacks the full story. The combination of beautifully-rendered visuals (as dreary as they are) and admirable performances from the cast also sets The Medium in a calibre on its own. The only drawback is the last act, where both logic and acting goes a little overboard as the family performs an elaborate ritual. But the ending is quite a gut punch as in true fashion of both director and producer, throws up a compelling question that haunts you as the credits roll.
Movie Rating:
(A dark and disturbing trip into the world of spiritual work, but an even more upsetting exploration of beliefs and the human psyche)
Review by Morgan Awyong
SYNOPSIS: Following a tragic car accident in Greece, Beckett, an American tourist, finds himself at the center of a dangerous political conspiracy – and on the run for his life.
MOVIE REVIEW:
Despite being headlined by the lead actor of Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet’, it is not likely that ‘Beckett’ will get much attention on the Netflix platform or receive the word-of-mouth necessary to overcome its obscurity.
Best described as a throwback to 1970s conspiracy movies, this Euro-thriller about an everyman who unwittingly finds himself embroiled in political trouble is neither exciting enough to satisfy the mainstream crowd or compellingly enough to satiate the arthouse crowd. Indeed, as conceived and directed by Italian filmmaker Ferdinando Cito Filomarino, it is a curious mix of genres that never quite gels together.
It starts off being a romance, introducing us to the American couple Beckett (John David Washington) and April (Alicia Vikander) vacationing in Greece. After hearing of impending protests outside their Athens hotel, the couple have decided to tour the remote parts of Greece. One night however, while driving along a country road to the next hotel on their itinerary, Beckett falls asleep at the wheel, causing the car they are in to fly off a cliff and crash into a house. The impact of the accident kills April immediately, but Beckett regains consciousness fleetingly to see a red-haired boy in the house.
Right from the start, there is something off about the movie. In particular, even as the opening stretch is designed to get us acquainted with Beckett and April in order for us to understand the former’s grief, there is close to zero chemistry between them. Nor for that matter do their conversations hint at any measure of attraction, which unfortunately renders Beckett’s subsequent emotional state hollow to us.
Those expecting the pace to pick up after a slow start will undoubtedly be disappointed. A shootout at the house that Beckett returns to ostensibly to take his own life fizzles out sooner than you’d expect; a subsequent close-shave at the residence of a kind stranger also quickly loses momentum; things pick up slightly during a close-quarter fight on board a train bound for Athens, but again sputters after Beckett encounters two political activists who offers some clues why he is being hunted; and last but not least the extended cat-and-mouse game amidst the commotion on the streets at a political rally is too diffuse to end off on a high.
To his credit though, director Filomarino never oversells his titular character’s capacities. From start to finish, Beckett remains through and true an average guy, and there is a certain scrappiness to the way he fights and tries to stay alive that keeps you invested in his fate. You’ll feel too his wrath when he takes it out against his opponents in increasingly brutal ways, clearly frustrated by how he has been thrust into a situation not of his choosing amidst his personal anguish at having caused the death of his girlfriend. There are visceral moments all right, but the pace is too uneven to qualify as a tense man-on-the-run adventure a la ‘The Fugitive’.
And that’s a pity, because the political dimension could have been a lot more intriguing. Without spoiling too much, let’s just say it has to do with the real-life political crisis that Greece was plunged into following the European Union’s decision to impose harsh austerity measures on the country. Filomarino and his screenwriter Kevin A. Rice do a decent job keeping the plotting close to their chest, recalling the political thrillers of the 70s and 80s but contextualized to the far right v far left battles unfolding across Europe today.
If he was underwhelming in ‘Tenet’, Washington (son of Denzel) is even more nondescript here, playing Beckett so blandly you’d wonder what, if anything, he was trying to convey about his character. Part of the fault is of course how the script never really gets round to figuring out who it wants Beckett to be, but Washington seems curiously unwilling to inject any meaningful qualities into his role, short of acting lost and confused. That we are more enamored with Vicky Krieps’ supporting act as an aggrieved activist just shows how much regard we have for Washington’s portrayal.
For this reason, as well as the movie’s own flaws, perhaps it was better then that ‘Beckett’ would go unnoticed by most. This is no compelling follow-up after his splashy leading act in ‘Tenet’, and we think Washington is probably better off letting this Euro-thriller fade into obscurity. Despite its leisurely pleasures therefore, ‘Beckett’ is too lightweight to satisfy, so unless you don’t mind a trip through Greece, you’re better off watching the classics like ‘The Parallax View’ and ‘Three Days of the Condor’ that it was clearly fashioned after..
MOVIE RATING:
Review by Gabriel Chong
SYNOPSIS: Devoted family man Ray Cooper (Jason Momoa), vows justice against the pharmaceutical company responsible for pulling a potentially life saving drug from the market just before his wife (Adria Arjona) dies from cancer. But when his search for the truth leads to a deadly encounter that puts Ray and his daughter Rachel (Isabela Merced) in harm's way, Ray's mission turns into a quest for vengeance in order to protect the only family he has left.
MOVIE REVIEW:
In an ever-increasing list, Jason Momoa is the latest Hollywood actor to star in a Netflix original film. A movie that ambitiously want to seal Momoa as the next action hero yet at the same time attempt to throw in a pharmaceutical political conspiracy into the mix.
Ray Cooper (Momoa) is an honest working man with a lovely wife, Amanda (Adria Arjona) and young daughter, Rachel (Isabela Merced) until tragedy strikes the Cooper family. Amanda is re-diagnosed with cancer. The only cure lies in an affordable potentially life-saving drug which production is halted by a big pharmaceutical company, Biopharma led by CEO Simon Keely (Justin Bartha).
Amanda soon passes and Ray receives a call from a reporter one day that he might have leads regarding the dark truth behind Biopharma and some mysterious rich powerful folks. But before anything happens, the reporter is killed by a contract killer and eventually Ray finds himself on the run with Rachel.
Screenwriters Philip Eisner and Greg Hurwitz basically recycle the gist of the story from many other man-on-the-run movies though they wanted you to think deeper. What role can a cocky CEO and overly zealous Congresswoman play in a movie liked Sweet Girl? Some bribe and personal agenda perhaps. There’s only so much available in Hollywood’s rulebook.
To be fair, Momoa plays the role of an ordinary blue-collar hero with much sentiment and credibility. He is in short, a brawny teddy bear with a soft heart. Sharing much screentime opposite him is Isabela Merced, the gutsy young lady who last played Dora the Explorer. For the most part, they make an endearing pair of father-and-daughter.
Then someone suddenly pulls a “M Night Shyamalan” twist in the third act. Even though director Brian Andrew Mendoza claimed its character driven, it’s nevertheless a twist that is neither compelling or smart to begin with. Perhaps Netflix and the filmmakers want you to rewatch it again to see if it fits the puzzle but then, it’s not on the level of The Sixth Sense to warrant such act.
Instead of your typical man-on-the-run action thriller, Sweet Girl wanted to do more than that. Expectedly, there’s a decent amount of action pieces in which we see Momoa going head on with a couple of hitmen. It doesn’t help that shaky cam, frenetic editing and bad lighting ultimately spoil all the fun. Instead of establishing Momoa as the next onscreen action hero, Sweet Girl is only a poor man version of it.
MOVIE RATING:
Review by Linus Tee
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SONNY CHIBA (千叶真一) (1939 - 2021)Posted on 20 Aug 2021 |
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Director: David Bruckner
Cast: Rebecca Hall, Samantha Buck, Stacy Martin, Vondie Curtis Hall, Sarah Goldberg, Evan Jonigkeit
Runtime: 1 hr 47 mins
Rating: NC16 (Some Coarse Language & Horror)
Released By: Walt Disney Studio
Official Website:
Opening Day: 19 August 2021
Synopsis: Reeling from the unexpected death of her husband, Beth (Rebecca Hall) is left alone in the lakeside home he built for her. She tries as best she can to keep it together – but then nightmares come. Disturbing visions of a presence in the house calling to her, beckoning her with a ghostly allure. Against the advice of her friends, she begins digging into her husband’s belongings, yearning for answers. What she finds are secrets both strange and disturbing – a mystery she’s determined to unravel.
Movie Review:
Contrary to what you may expect, the star of ‘The Night House’ isn’t the titular lakeside house, however gorgeous it may be; instead, that honour belongs to British actress Rebecca Hall, who as the lead of this psychological horror, fully owns each and every one of the scenes she is in. Indeed, you may recognise Hall from other previous genre titles such as ‘The Gift’ and ‘The Awakening’, but Hall demonstrates such unwavering commitment to her role as a grief-stricken widow here that her performance truly elevates the material into something else.
Certainly, there is plenty of promise in the premise of ‘The Night House’, which sets up a spooky series of events surrounding Hall’s high-school teacher Beth dealing with the shocking suicide of her husband Owen (Evan Jonigheit). Not only does she hear footsteps in the house late at night, she starts to see flashes of Owen in her dreams and hear his voice around her. Are those just her delusions as a result of her mental state, or do they reveal something more sinister about the house and what Owen may have been up to prior to his death?
The latter is especially teased with Beth’s discovery of the occult within Owen’s belongings, including a bound edition of their home’s mazelike blueprints filled with jottings such as “trick it, don’t listen to it” and underlined sections of a book dealing with Celtic mythology with references to “reverse spaces intended to confuse or weaken dark forces”. There’s also Owen’s cryptic suicide note to Beth, in which he tells her that “nothing is after you”.
But perhaps most creepily is how Owen seems to have been stalking other women which look like Beth. Whilst the easy conclusion would be that Owen was leading a double life behind Beth, the truth ends up being a lot more complicated and eerie – and without giving too much away, let’s just say that it has to do with the petrifying sights and sounds that haunt her nights as well as the inchoate shadows that she senses are hovering around her.
Like we said at the start, Hall holds the entire movie together from start to finish. Not only does she have you invested in her plight as a grieving widow discovering some untoward secrets her husband has been keeping from her, Hall wins you over as she daringly confronts what has been taunting her in the night, determined to either find a way to reconnect with her late husband or discover the entity that he has apparently been keeping at bay. Hall gets some able assist from time to time by Vondie Curtis Hall (playing a concerned neighbour) and Sarah Goldberg (playing a close friend), but there is no mistaking that the show belongs to Hall.
And that is a relief, especially since the plotting does get muddled towards the end. As good as director David Bruckner is in building atmosphere and choreographing a number of loud choice jump-scares to unnerve his target demographic, the deliberately ambiguous ending does the entire film no favours. Is it all in Beth’s head? Or is there something more truly after her? The puzzle ultimately proves to be less than the sum of its intricately oddball parts, and if you don’t end up begrudging the movie for falling apart eventually, it is only because Hall is so compellingly watchable.
Truth be told, there will be some who would appreciate the artful finish that the film tries to strive towards, while there will be others who are deeply underwhelmed by its resolution. Yet like we’ve said, ‘The Night House’ largely succeeds at keeping you intrigued for a good deal of its duration, with Hall being instrumental in that; even if it ends up being somewhat of a letdown, we’d dare say it remains suitably unnerving as a genre piece, and certainly a harrowing and rewarding journey thanks to Hall’s powerful and affecting performance.
Movie Rating:
(Treading a fine line between psychological and supernatural horror, 'The Night House' manages to be creepy and unnerving throughout, driven by a powerful and affecting lead performance from Rebecca Hall)
Review by Gabriel Chong
Genre: Action/Thriller
Director: Everardo Gout
Cast: Ana de la Reguera, Tenoch Huerta, Josh Lucas, Cassidy Freeman, Leven Rambin, Alejandro Edda, Will Patton
Runtime: 1 hr 43 mins
Rating: NC16 (Violence and Coarse Language)
Released By: UIP
Official Website:
Opening Day: 26 August 2021
Synopsis: This summer, all the rules are broken as a sect of lawless marauders decides that the annual Purge does not stop at daybreak and instead should never end in The Forever Purge. Vaulting from the record - shattering success of 2018’s The First Purge, Blumhouse’s infamous terror franchise hurtles into innovative new territory as members of an underground movement, no longer satisfied with one annual night of anarchy and murder, decide to overtake America through an unending campaign of mayhem and massacre. No one is safe. Adela ( Ana de la Reguera) and her husband Juan (Tenoch Huerta) live in Texas, where Juan is working as a ranch hand for the wealthy Tucker family. Juan impresses the Tucker patriarch, Caleb (Will Patton), but that fuels the jealous anger of Caleb’s son, Dylan (Josh Lucas). On the morning after The Purge, a masked gang of killers attacks the Tucker family — including Dylan’s wife (Cassidy Freeman) and his sister (Leven Rambin), forcing both families to band together and fight back as the country spirals into chaos and the United States begins to disintegrate around them.
Movie Review:
Five movies and a TV show later, ‘The Purge’ series has certainly come a long way since its debut back in 2013 as a small-scale dystopian home-invasion thriller. Blunt as they may be, the films have since become synonymous with the uglier parts of American life: gun nuts, mad preachers, racist goons, leisure snipers, sadistic gangs, lone-wolf vigilantes and wealthy psychopaths, overseen by opportunistic politicians manipulating social dysfunction to their own selfish ends. The last film, 2016’s ‘The Purge: Election Year’, probably got a little too close for comfort coming just a couple of months before Trump was elected as President.
So this latest chapter, written by original creator James DeMonarco and directed by Mexican filmmaker Everardo Valerio Gout, picks up smartly after the political and societal legacy of Trump. The plotting sets up two disparate groups: the first with Mexican husband and wife couple Juan (Tenoch Huerta) and Adela (Ana de la Reguera), who have burrowed under the wall fleeing cartel violence to seek a new life in America; and the second with a wealthy rancher family featuring patriarch Caleb (Will Patton), his son Dylan (Josh Lucas), Dylan’s pregnant wife Cassie (Cassidy Freeman) and his sister Harper (Leven Rambin).
Whereas Caleb welcomes the opportunity to give undocumented migrants such as Juan a new lease of life, Dylan feels emasculated by Juan’s remarkable horse-handling skills. Notwithstanding his bigotry, Dylan isn’t yet the sort to participate in the events of the annual blood holiday, hunkering instead with his family within the confines of the sprawling ranch; on the other hand, Juan and Adela seek urgent shelter from the Purge by paying to hole up with fellow Mexicans in a graffiti-scarred compound, protected by armed, hired hands.
Unlike previous Purges, an underground network of violent nationalists, united under the slogan ‘Ever After’, have decided to seize on the occasion to forever purify the country of anyone other than natural-born Americans. Ignoring the 12-hour rule, they have continued to wage violence on the streets of America even after the close of the annual Purge. Both our groups of protagonists find themselves separately caught up in the ensuing mayhem, before forming an unlikely coalition to make a break for the Mexican border, where the government has declared a six-hour amnesty for Americans fleeing the melee. Yes, the irony is palpable.
All this unfolds at a gripping pace in the first half of the movie, which is also where the social commentary is strongest; in particular, the most astute observation it makes is how rage is the only thing which unites the Purgers, not ideology as one might imagine, made up of a hodgepodge of individuals looking to wage class war or perpetuate racist ethnic cleansing or even simply just looking for an excuse to go berserk. It is especially telling that the so-called New Founding Fathers of America (i.e. the party which instituted the Purge in the first place) aren’t even the bad guys this time; in fact, they have lost control of the situation, and have had no choice but to send in the military to try to stop the post-Purge Purge from happening.
As with the other ‘Purge’ movies, this one too cannot quite sustain the momentum in the second half, which devolves into a lot of shooting back and forth. There are run-ins with bikers, a sortie into a deserted cinema, and some back-alley shootouts that result in our protagonists making enemies with a group of ‘Ever After Purgers’ which culminate in the climactic showdown along the US-Mexican border. You should be aware that there is plenty of bloodletting here, with director Valerio Gout not afraid to go for the occasional gruesome close-up.
Like its predecessors therefore, ‘The Forever Purge’ walks a fine line between political commentary and horror action-thriller, and to its credit, treads that balance with more deftness than before, even if it is prone to the same exploitative tendencies. At least here the overarching purpose is clear as it seeks to illuminate the obvious answer to who the real Americans are, as well as what sort of society America wants to aspire to or descend into; even if it does do so bluntly, it is probably pitched at just the right tone and volume for those in real life who would do well to take a good, hard reflection.
Movie Rating:
(One of the sharper 'Purge' films to date, this latest chapter walks a fine line between political commentary and horror action-thriller, and is often compelling if not downright gripping)
Review by Gabriel Chong
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