Three Films Make A Post: Long live adventure… and adventurers!

The Tank (2023): I’m not really sure why this movie from New Zealand directed by Scott Walker is trying to pretend it’s American, even though there’s no reason at all for this to be taking place anywhere specific. But then, I’m equally unsure why this has to be a period piece, either. Or, come to think of it, why the film has to drag its feet for nearly an hour until anything of interest happens in it – the character work certainly isn’t so deep it needs the time.

What the film has going from it – apart from a perfectly capable cast – is a really great monster design; the monster just comes in much too late.

Sideworld: Haunted Forests of England (2022): If I were a cynical man, I’d look down on George Popov’s documentary for being quite as cost-consciously produced as it obviously was: the film’s tales of dark folklore, myths and rural legend are told from the off, accompanied by creepy low angle shots of British forests and art from the public domain, and everything is accompanied by dark ambient – and that’s really all there is to it, formally.

However, the script by Jonathan Russell puts the well-worn and not not so well-worn tales the film tells into efficient little packages, and Popov applies his background in indie folk horror filmmaking of the more directly fictional variety nicely to the material, shaping the minimalist set-up into something effective and interesting.

The Man Who Would Be King (1975): John Huston’s adaptation of the Kipling tale is a well-loved classic, and that’s no wonder at all: not only is this one hell of a traditional colonialist adventure movie full of invention, charm, and one great damn thing after another; it is also a film that has a lot to say about what’s wrong about colonialist adventures and the mind-set they are born from, as well as the kind of men they tend to champion. Still, it never feels schizophrenic in its approach, but manages to be a film about the joys and the horrors of the same ideas at the same time.

That it also contains wonderfully larger-than-life performances by Sean Connery, Michael Caine and Christopher Plummer only adds to the film’s specific magic.

Three Films Make A Post: Some directors live for their work. He kills for it.

Return to Cabin by the Lake (2001): Because apparently nobody in the early 00’s could get enough of Judd Nelson mugging idiotically through a nonsense plot that tries to excuse its stupidity by calling itself a comedy, the world suffered this sequel to Po-Chih Leong’s TV movie Cabin by the Lake. The film’s still plotted for an audience of fools, the jokes are the sort of smug “ain’t Hollywood horrible” jokes that must have had a beard in the 1930s already, and Nelson’s performance as serial killer/screenwriter/director is so broad, no bridge could cross it. Though you gotta give some respect to screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick when an early, completely insufferable, victim of Nelson’s Stanley goes by his own name; I accept the apology.

The Droving (2020): This piece of British indie folk horror about a soldier/torturer (Daniel Oldroyd) searching for the killer of his sister (Amy Tyger) as directed by George Popov is fortunately not trying to be funny. It’s a bit of a frustrating film, though, the sort of affair that’s clearly made with talent and love but doesn’t come together quite well enough. The film certainly has an eye for moody (and pretty) landscape shots very useful for folk horror, and its script has a clear idea of the intersection between its folkloric idea and the inner life of its main character. The acting’s good too.

The problem is the pacing: scenes, as is so often the case in indie productions, tend to go on longer than they should be – sometimes clearly aiming for suspense but not quite being able to sustain it long enough, other times going slightly overboard with an attempt to deepen the character and his flashback relation to his sister. Of course, these are the kinds of flaws that come from a willingness to take risks and show the right kind of ambition, so it’s difficult to be too unhappy with the film.

She Never Died (2019): Speaking of indie movies with ambition, Audrey Cummings’s peculiar mix of grungy proto-superhero elements and horror, with a smidgen of 80s buddy comedy certainly is that, also. Canadian and city-based, this also shows an understanding of creating mood via landscape, or rather cityscape. Otherwise, there’s little connecting it with any of the other films in this post. It’s one of those films that have a peculiar and personal vibe, as if you were watching someone’s very individual favourite bits of different genres put together to form one movie. As is typical for this sort of affair, this isn’t always as effective as it could be on a dramatic level, but still features nice effects, fun performances by lead Olunike Adeliyi as our superpowered cannibal heroine with a secret and various Canadian character actors like Peter MacNeill and Noah Denby, and a visible love for the city as the true place to set one’s grubby vigilantism in.


The only truly off-putting element here is the sudden excursion into the biblical in the final ten minutes or so, promising a sequel I suspect will never come instead of finishing the film properly.