Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. This has been a hectic week on my end, with a family wedding consuming my general film-screening time, but I’m fortunately sitting on a massive buffer of reviews to ensure you all receive your regularly scheduled ramblings. And frankly, I really can’t blame the wedding for my negligence – the genuine fact of it is that I’ve been splitting my evenings between thrilling Armored Core battles and binge watches of Dragon Ball Super, which has risen from a rough start to prove itself altogether superior to Z. Super has fully revived the mix of comedy, character drama, and action that made the original Dragon Ball so engaging, and I’ll be sure to have a full report for you all as soon as we munch through its pan-universal martial arts tournament. But in the meantime, lemme just rummage around in my sack of movie reviews for a moment, so we can break down a fresh collection of films!
First up this week (or well, some week) was Valley of the Dead, a zombie feature set during the Spanish Civil War. Zombie and nazis (or fascists more generally) are just natural bedfellows, and when some fascists get up to their usual zombie-creating business in a Spanish town, a scattering of Republican and Francoist soldiers will have to join forces to survive the apocalypse.
Valley of the Dead probably contains more variations on the phrase “shut up you fucking fascist” than any film I’ve seen, a line that is categorically incapable of growing old. Along with that, it’s also just an excellent action-adventure film by any metric, taking care to provide its whole cast with engaging personalities and satisfyingly epic deaths. The one adult Francoist in the party is a native Spaniard whose whole deal is reducing harm (to the extent that his constant releasing of prisoners has destroyed his military career), so the film’s moral calculus is never so complicated as to undercut the “fuck yeah” satisfaction of beating on zombies and/or fascists. Altogether, it’s simply an excellent genre exercise in a novel setting, demonstrating the enduring appealing of good clean zombie killing fun.
We then checked out the live-action Fullmetal Alchemist movies, perhaps against my better judgment. One Piece aside, I don’t generally expect much from these live action anime adaptations; just some light afternoon action entertainment, spiced with the slight thrill of “hey, I remember that scene.” Sadly, the Fullmetal Alchemist movies failed to vault even that low bar, disappointing as either genuine drama or mindless spectacle.
The obvious, immediate problem with these films is their terrible CG, coupled with a total inability to choreograph a compelling action sequence. Alphonse, the homunculi, and every other non-human character looks absolutely awful, squandering the quite reasonable casting and costuming of the films’ human characters. A Japanese live action anime adaptation basically lives or dies by how much it can avoid leaning on CG, and with Fullmetal Alchemist’s generous portioning of magical monsters and powers, basically every other shot provokes some variety of wincing. And it’s not like this reliance on CG actually facilitates any ambitious action or cinematography; the film’s fights generally resolve in two people trading a punch, and then the battle is over.
Beyond their obvious visual failings, these films also utterly fail to condense Fullmetal Alchemist’ narrative into any sort of coherent trilogy. The first two films dither around showcasing famous scenes and connecting them with film-original narrative tissue, leaving the last film responsible for adapting perhaps sixty percent of the overall narrative. This is, of course, impossible, and so the film frequently resorts to waving characters off-screen and then simply flinging them back into the narrative some scenes hence, with no cause or effect guiding the characters’ movements and behavior. It’s just a mess on the whole, with only the strong casting to recommend it. Only the staunchest of Fullmetal diehards need check these out.
Our next feature was Piranha 3D, a 2010 remake of Joe Dante’s ‘78 horror comedy. Though “horror comedy remake” and “3D sequel” tend to serve as inarguable marks of anti-quality, Piranha 3D turned out to be a surprisingly good time, owing to both its oddly generous casting and its unflinching brutality of kill scenes.
Seriously, this movie’s violence is goddamn violent. Director Alexandre Aja rose to fame with High Tension, one of the key properties in the French Extreme horror movement, and an absolutely stomach-churning example of horror taken to its dismemberment-centric limits. In Aja’s hands, whatever comedy element this script might once have possessed is reduced to the impish intrusions of Jerry O’Connell, in a film that’s otherwise dead set on demonstrating what ten thousand tiny teeth can do to a human body. I generally don’t preoccupy myself with the threat of deadly piranhas on a day-to-day basis, but this film’s horrible visions had me side-eying bodies of water for a few days afterwards, attempting to gauge just how many seconds it would take for their denizens to strip me to ribbons.
Along with its brutal and well-executed creature attacks, Piranha 3D benefits greatly from the star power assigned to what are often perfunctory castings in creature features. O’Connell is joined by Elisabeth Shue, Adam Scott, Ving Rhames, Richard Dreyfuss, and even the ever-reliable Christopher Lloyd, who really Lloyds it up as the team’s resident piranha expert. Between Aja’s savage sensibilities and the strong supporting performances, Piranha 3D ends up punching far above its weight class, proving itself a genuinely superior creature feature.
Last up for the week was Adam Wingard’s 2014 film The Guest. Wingard’s previous film You’re Next stands tall among my favorite horror films, which should say a lot given how many goddamn horror movies I watch. You’re Next transitions gracefully from terrifying home invasion drama to cathartic final girl counterattack, demonstrating Wingard’s keen understanding of both genre splicing and visceral visual entertainment. Those strengths would eventually get him scooped up for the ongoing and increasingly tiresome Monsterverse franchise, but before Wingard was resigned to franchise hell, he left us with The Guest’s delightfully twisted spectacle.
Like You’re Next, The Guest juggles various strains of B-movie excess with remarkable grace. The film starts as an uncomfortable thriller, as a family is visited by a man who claims he was in their dead son’s combat unit. Dan Stevens plays the part of “David” masterfully, manipulating the sympathies of his new family with tremendous cunning, while still offering the occasional nefarious smile or Kubrick stare to keep the pot boiling. Wingard has a talent for tonal flourishes that add a dash of tongue-in-cheek levity to his productions, and Stevens manages to echo that effect in his performance, making this ostensibly somber premise a lot more fun than you’d expect.
Soon enough, the family’s daughter discovers that David is not quite what he seems, and The Guest undergoes a gleeful series of transformations. We first swerve into full-on action, then traditional horror, with the final act appropriately taking place inside the local high school’s Halloween house. These shifts are abrupt, but not unwelcome – the film’s ever-so-slightly irreverent tone makes it easy to roll with the punches, and enjoy the combination of Wingard’s expertise and Stevens’ intimidating presence. I get the feeling that in another era, Wingard would have wound up directing a Carpenter-tier string of deliciously pulpy horror productions. For now, I can only hope he gets to make another original soon.
