Kim Newman - Kim Newmans Video Dungeon: The Collected Reviews

CONTENTS

TITANBOOKS

KIM NEWMANS VIDEO DUNGEON
print ISBN: 9781783299393
ebook ISBN: 9781785657474

Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: September 2017
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kim Newman is a movie critic, author and broadcaster. He is a contributing editor to Sight & Sound and Empire magazines. His Video Dungeon column has been a popular feature of Empire since 2000. His books about film include Nightmare Movies, Millennium Movies and BFI Classics studies of Cat People and Quatermass and the Pit. His fiction includes the Anno Dracula series, Lifes Lottery, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the DUrbervilles, An English Ghost Story, The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School and Angels of Music. He has written for comics, television, radio and the theatre, and directed a tiny film, Missing Girl. His official website is www.johnnyalucard.com. He is on Twitter as @AnnoDracula.

FOR BAZ

CONFINEMENTS AND DANGEROUS GAMES

Tied Up in the Basement or Hunted Through the Woods

AFTERDEATH (2015)

IF YOU SEE GOD, TELL HIM TO
GO FUCK HIMSELF.

In the long line of descent from Outward Bound (1930), most limbo-set movies try to mystify for much of the running time before admitting their characters are gasp! dead. AfterDeath gets that bombshell out of the way in the title, then gets on with post-mortem puzzles as recently deceased folk try to suss the rules of their afterlife and face what comes next.

Robyn (Miranda Raison) wakes on a drab beach after dying in the collapse of an overcrowded nightclub. Drawn to a house which resembles her childhood holiday home, she finds jack-the-lad Seb (Sam Keeley) having an impromptu threesome with just-dead clubbers Patricia (Elarica Gallacher) and Livvy (Lorna Nickson Brown). Onie (Daniella Kertesz) has the disorienting habit of phmmphhing in and out of the place hovering between life and death. When Robyn tries to take charge, Seb diagnoses that she must be in management, but the others fall in with her efforts to explore their limited limbo, periodically tormented by painful beams from a lighthouse. This pocket universe contracts and attempts to leave only result in being zapped to the other side of the bubble (like PacMan).

Andrew Ellards script wittily explains the casts good looks in that these phantoms are idealised versions of the people they were when alive promiscuous and gorgeous Patricia turns out to have been a chubby Christian while developing a fresh, surprisingly radical vision of merciless judgement. Since the beginning of mankind, nobody has been adjudged sin-free enough to get into Heaven, but if one sinner makes it through the whole system will reset. Seb is hauled over the coals when Robyn remembers he was once accused of rape; the women laugh when he is violated by a smoke demon.

There are secrets and mysteries (not all solved) for each character, including a sub-plot about what exactly happened at the club to land these people in a house where each room is plucked from an inmates memory with significant additions like a painting of the suffering damned replacing a Predator poster from Sebs student flat. Co-directors Gez Medinger and Robin Schmidt balance ensemble drama everyone here is good, with Gallacher and Keeley standouts with ominous, creepily surreal use of a desolate beach as a shore of the afterlife.

ALREADY DEAD (2007)

This bottle show follows the Reservoir Dogs/Cube/Saw template for high-impact low-budget cinema: set mostly inside a single location (a derelict industrial building), with story twists, shifting loyalties and shocks (including the popular tied-to-a-chair-and-tortured bit).

Banker Thomas Archer (Ron Eldard), a hollow man since the murder of his son by a home invader, is referred to psychiatrist Dr Heller (Christopher Plummer) by The Detective (Patrick Kilpatrick) who has been taken off the dead-end case. Heller introduces Archer to a shadowy, high-priced organisation (cf: Seconds, The Game) which claims to be able to get justice. After handing over a bundle of cash, Archer is ushered into a room where a man (Til Schweiger) is bound and gagged. A Hostel-like array of cutting tools are available. Archer is told The Man is his sons killer and he can do what he wants to him. No sooner has he started on torture than he remembers an identifying detail (a tattoo) never mentioned to the police which strongly suggests that the Man isnt the guilty party. When the gag comes off, The Man is persuasive, but also hints hes not exactly innocent. Is the organisation offering Archer a chance to purge his need for vengeance while offing another criminal or is this all a scam to get the money? Archer and The Man wind up fighting the conspiracys hooded minions, squirreling through the usual ventilation ducts and skirmishing in stockrooms.

Script by director Joe Chappelle (Halloween The Curse of Michael Myers), from a story by Robert Lynn and David Alford and performances carry the movie. The resolution is neat, but several of the other available endings would have been stronger.

AQUARIUM (2004)

Six people wake in a small, white-walled room with no visible doors or windows. A piped-in voice (Pierre-Luc Scotto) explains rule infractions are punishable by execution and removal. Middle-aged lawyer Georges (Michel Robin) tries to mediate between younger guys naturally angry Vincent (Julien Masdoua) and arrogant journalist Alex (Abel Divol) but cracks up and smashes a camera. Knockout gas floods the room and Georges wakes to find his forefinger amputated. Then, the game begins in earnest, with it is implied only one live winner possible. The sextet play Simon Says (Jacques Dit in French), raising an arm and a leg, holding the pose for too long, failing. Director/co-writerFrdric Grousset tries for economical, claustrophobic mystery-horror a la Cube. The first act works, but the film loses patience, too-quickly removing half the cast and giving the women (Karen Bruere, Capucine Mandeau, Sophie Talon) too little to do.

At the 55-minute mark, a game of Russian roulette resolves the storyline. Then, a survivor blunders onto a Paris rooftop for twelve minutes of tacked-on befuddlement. The explanation is oddly beside the point, but this isnt a social experiment or a gameshow but an act of anti-corporate art-terrorism (the apparently unconnected strangers work for branches of one company). Given the enclosed setting and limited cast, we get to know the victims too little they dont work out their connection, which the survivor has to be told (You mean this is because of my