Mandrake, on Shudder

The notorious ritualistic murderer Mary Laidlaw has just been released on parole, because why would you want to keep someone like that in prison, right? Yet, the “narrowminded” villagers are still uneasy having her back in her old pagan cottage. Cathy Madden is a tough but fair parole officer, who will try to handle Laidlaw’s case without prejudice. However, she will come to agree pitchforks and torches might be the best way of dealing with her in Lynne Davison’s Mandrake, which premieres tomorrow on Shudder.

Although Madden’s boss is somewhat sympathetic to Laidlaw, given her late husband’s alleged abuse, she finds the convicted murderer downright spooky, because she is. Laidlaw also seems to know things about Madden and her copper ex-husband, Jason Reid that she has no business knowing.

Still, Madden tries to be professional, even though the disappearance of two young girls in the woods around Laidlaw’s property is cause for concern, especially since it happened the day after she was released. In reasonably short order, Madden starts to suspect Laidlaw is not fully rehabilitated after all. In fact, she could be the alleged witch’s next victim.

Davison and screenwriter Matt Harvey try to combine procedural and folk horror elements in interesting ways, but the former are rather more compelling than the latter. The problem is some of Rosemary’s Baby imagery is a bit too murky to fully follow. However, the general atmosphere of pagan evil is definitely eerie. Seriously, do not go into those woods.

Madden’s work as a parole officer (or whatever they call it in the UK) is rarely seen in horror and it is usually presented in much the same way in gangster movies (usually a slimy middle-aged dude on the take), so it is interesting to see a fresh horror perspective in Mandrake. (My aunt was a parole officer and you wouldn’t have wanted to mess with her.) Madden isn’t that tough, but she is still quite formidable and Deirdre Mullins humanizes her nicely, earning sympathy and understanding for her human flaws.

Boys from County Hell, on Shudder

He is the Irish nationalist alternative to Vlad the Impaler. According to legend, Abhartach was an under-sized Napoleon-esque warrior, who became an undead blood-sucker. It was a story the Irish Bram Stoker would very likely have heard and used as a source of inspiration for Dracula, especially as far as the tourist-fleecing townsfolk of Six Mile Hill are concerned. Unfortunately, they will learn just how hard it is to kill Abhartach when they disturb his resting place in Chris Baugh’s Boys from County Hell, which premieres this Thursday on Shudder.

Eugene Moffat does not have much future in Six Mile Hill, so he really can’t blame his mate William Bogue for leaving. However, a drunken night out culminates rather badly for all concerned when Bogue gets gored by a loose bull and has his blood sucked into Abhartach’s grave. Moffat’s contractor father Francis was hired to clear the stone gravesite to make way for an expressway, but that lets loose the recently-strengthened ancient proto-vampire.

It turns out all the methods of killing vampires were the invention of Stoker and Murnau. In reality, you have to bury Abhartach under enough stone to keep him pinned down. Obviously, that is a tough trick to pull off, but Moffat, his father, and his cronies will do their meatheaded best.

Chris Baugh (whose first feature was the nifty little gritty crime thriller, Bad Day for the Cut) comes up with the first really original twist on the vampire legend in years. It is gory and gruesome, but in the right, amusing kind of way. It is also an intriguing way for Baugh to pay tribute to the macabre side of his Celtic heritage.

A Good Woman is Hard to Find

She is a vulnerable young woman with a cache of drugs hidden in her Northern Ireland council estate flat. She is not blind, like Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark. She is a young widow with two young children and no money to speak. That means her prospects for survival (short-term and long-term) are probably much worse in this class-conscious thriller. Living day-to-day was already a struggle for Sarah before she found herself in the middle of a drug score gone-wrong in Abner Pastoll’s A Good Woman is Hard to Find, which releases on VOD this Friday.

Sarah and her husband Stephen were never rich, but they got by before he was murdered. Their little boy Ben witnessed the attack, but the trauma struck him mute. Sarah’s stern mother offers cold comfort, so it is largely her against the world. The cops are not even investigating Stephen’s death because of his criminal record, so when the lowlife Tito literally bursts into her flat and life, she feels she has nowhere to turn.

Tito managed to rob a shipment of illicit white powder from Leo Miller’s drug syndicate. In addition to being a pedantic grammarian, Miller is vicious when crossed. That is why the sleazy Tito wants to use her flat as his stash house. His presence is definitely a threat to her children’s safety, but Miller and his associates are even more dangerous.

Arguably, Good Woman is street-smart and naturalistic to a fault, with the social realism occasionally threatening to overwhelm the thriller elements. Still, when Pastoll (who previously helmed Road Games) lets things get violent, the blood splatters and pools quite spectacularly.

FrightFest ’18: The Devil’s Doorway

The so-called Magdalene Laundries in Ireland have been the cause of so much suffering. For instance, they made the miserably mawkish film Philomena possible. They also provide a setting for satanic rituals in this period horror film, but let’s not get carried away with hyperbole. The black masses and possible sacrifice of the innocence are certainly bad, but they are not the affront to human decency that Philomena was. Of course, in 1960, Father Thomas Riley and his naïve assistant investigator Father John Thornton could not know that. Therefore, the infernal shenanigans they uncover will seem plenty horrifying in Aislinn Clarke’s The Devil’s Doorway (trailer here), which screens during this year’s FrightFest in the UK.

Father Thomas and Father John have been dispatched to this particularly dreary Magdalene convent to investigate claims of a Virgin Mary statue crying tears of blood. However, Father Thomas is convinced they are wasting their time, because these supposed miracles always turn out to be hoaxes. His name is Thomas—get it? He still goes through the motions, with the less skeptical younger priest duly filming every step, on grainy, era-appropriate 16mm.

As soon as they arrive, Father John starts hearing the eerie voices of children and catching glimpses of what seem to be apparitions out of the corner of his eye. Of course, Father Thomas does not want to hear about that sort of rot. He is too busy clashing with the sour-faced Mother Superior over her cruel treatment of the laundry women, but all bets are off when they discover a pregnant young woman chained up in the sub-basement displaying signs of physical abuse and demonic possession.

This movie is scary as all get out. Partly it is due to the oppressive grimness of the creaky Magdalene convent. The spookily evocative 16mm stock is also a factor. It really looks like it could be the remnant of something awfully sinister. However, the film’s unabashedly Catholic themes and demonic tropes really get at something buried deep within our collective Jungian subconscious. No matter what you believe, the Church is the primary bulwark against Hellfire falling from the sky, so when it is this corrupted by evil, we’re all screwed.

As an additional X-factor, veteran character actor Lalor Roddy might just give a career best performance as Father Thomas. It is an acutely human portrayal of man who is smart, vinegary, arrogant, and painfully self-aware of his own failings. If this performance were in “proper cinema,” people would be talking awards for Roddy, but alas, it comes in a found footage horror film, the lowest of the low. Helena Bereen also leaves an indelible mark as the despotic and despicable Mother Superior. When they go at it, it is like the verbal equivalent of bare-knuckles boxing.

Cinematographer Ryan Kernaghan, production designer John Leslie, and their minions all deserve enormous credit for the film’s eerie look and vibe. Granted, the logic of the found footage conceit breaks down here and there, but that is a common and relatively minor sin of the subgenre (probably just a few Hail Marys ought to cover it). Very highly recommended for fans of demonic horror and found footage, The Devil’s Doorway screens today (8/25) as part of this year’s FrightFest UK.

NYICFF ’18: Zoo

The Republic of Ireland was neutral during WWII, but since it is part of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland very definitely fought and sacrificed in the struggle against Axis tyranny. In fct, they paid a fearsome price during the Belfast Blitz. Compounding the tragedy, the civil defense authorities determined the Belfast Zoo’s predatory animals had to be euthanized, lest they be released into the streets by errant bombs. However, the son of a conscripted zoo veterinarian hatches a scheme to save its prized elephant in Colin McIvor’s Zoo (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 New York International Children’s Film Festival.

In many ways, the based (pretty faithfully) on a true story Zoo shames us for our hip, postmodern cynicism, starting right from the beginning, when Buster the pachyderm’s arrival procession through the streets of Belfast captures the city’s imagination (in a marvelously directed sequence). Alas, their enthusiasm will be quickly dampened by the Blitz. When his father is called up, Tom Hall loses his free access to the zoo, but he is still willing to pay. Unfortunately, there will be little left to see, when the staff starts putting the animals down.

Although Buster has a temporary reprieve, it is only a matter of time before his number comes up. Refusing to accept fate, Hall forges an alliance with Jane Berry, a quirky girl he sort of has a crush for, and Pete. the lunky but not so bad mate of the school bully. He definitely has a crush on Berry. They actually manage to pull off the elephant heist (thanks to the grouchy guard Charlie looking the other way), but they will need the help of widowed Denise Austin to shelter Buster.

Everyone considered Austin the neighborhood’s crazy cat lady, but there is more to her than that. Yet, McIvor is never heavy-handed when it comes to teaching moments. That said, there is a moment of heart-breaking tragedy that comes as a complete shock in a film with this many kids and animals. Nevertheless, you have to give him credit depicting the true nature of war—it’s absolutely no fun whatsoever.

Penelope Wilton (Cousin Matthew’s mother in Downton Abbey) is tremendous as Ms. Austin, taking small telling moments and just destroying us with them. Toby Jones is probably the biggest name attached to the film, but he also overachieves, wringing all kinds of poignant dignity out of the potentially cliched role of Charlie the zoo guard. The primary trio of youngsters, Art Parkinson, Emily Flain, and Ian O’Reilly are all impressively expressive and disciplined (frankly, Hall can be a bit of a doormat at times, but that is more of a problem with the script than Parkinson’s portrayal). Yet, it is Amy Huberman who quietly lowers the boom on viewers, as Hall’s mother Emily, an understandably overworked nurse.

There is a lot of honest, hard-earned emotion in Zoo. It probably skews younger due to the youthful main characters and their mostly innocent points-of-view, but it is as well-crafted as any Anglo-Irish period drama from the last ten years or so. This is a great year for live action films at NYICFF that adults can engage with just as much as kids, because Emelie Lindblom’s shockingly scary but wholly satisfying Room 213 is also on the slate. Very highly recommended, Zoo screens tomorrow (3/4) and Saturday (3/17) as part of NYICFF ’18.

Sundance ’17: Bad Day for the Cut

It is sort of like a Northern Irish western, but instead of looking for the man who shot his pa, Donal is out to kill the chick who had his mum’s head bashed in. It turns out it is part of an IRA feud dating back to the 1970s. Who knew they could hold a grudge so long in those parts? Yet, they most decidedly do in Chris Baugh’s Bad Day for the Cut (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

Donal is resigned to be a quiet middle-aged farmer, who lives with his mother and fixes cars on the side, until dear old Florence is murdered in an apparent burglary gone wrong. Shortly thereafter, two thugs try to dispatch Donal in a phony suicide, but the crusty cat is harder to kill than they anticipated. It also helps that Bartosz’s heart really wasn’t in it. His was forced to assist in the hit job by human traffickers holding his sister Kaja. Forging an alliance of convenience that will blossom into trust, Donal and Bartosz follow the chain of gangsters up the ladder to Frankie Pierce, who built a trafficking and prostitution empire out of her father’s old IRA terrorism network.

Baugh and co-screenwriter Brendan Mullin repeatedly emphasize the tragic nature of the unending cycle of revenge-taking. Yet, there sure seems to be a lot of people in Bad Day who need killing. So maybe the real message is you better just finish the job completely, because that last bad guy left alive is ever so likely to come back to haunt you later.

Regardless, Nigel O’Neill is all kinds of awesome as salt-of-the-earth Donal. He broods like a monster, yet still remains believably unassuming. He is the kind of dude who will convince you Nixon was right about riling up the quiet majority. It is definitely a bad idea in Donal’s case. This is not a buddy movie by any stretch, but the co-conspirator chemistry he forges with Józef Pawlowski’s Bartosz evolves in credibly engaging ways.

Bad Day is also blessed with several great villains starting with Susan Lynch, who plays Pierce with wonderfully foul-mouthed Cruella De Vil flamboyance. She is ably assisted by Stuart Graham as her natty right-hand man. Plus, David Pearse (Grabbers, Zonad) gets to do his weaselly thing as Gavigan, Pierce’s first lieutenant unlucky enough to fall into Donal’s hands.

According to Bad Day, revenge is like money and good looks—you can never have too much. Nevertheless, Baugh certainly isn’t mucking around with this hard-nosed morality play. He stages some brutally intense action scenes, often exploiting whatever common household items might be at hand. It is a lean, mean killing machine, but it definitely has a moral center. Highly recommended for fans of payback movies, Bad Day for the Cut screens again today (1/28) in Salt Lake, as part of this year’s Sundance.

A Patch of Fog: Belfast Stalker Noir

Sandy Duffy’s A Patch of Fog is like the Mockingbird or Catcher of Northern Ireland. The Belfast writer might have other scribblings to his name, but that is the only thing people want to talk to him about. Unlike Salinger and Harper Lee, Duffy has capitalized on his literary fame for all its worth. Unfortunately, that makes him attractive to a lonely blackmailer-stalker in Michael Lennox’s A Patch of Fog (trailer here) which releases today on VOD.

Duffy has some plum gigs appearing on a Crossfire-style cultural TV show and teaching creative writing at the university. Therefore, he has a lot to lose shoplifting items he could easily afford. Yet, he is compelled to do so anyway. Usually, it ends with a warm buzz, but this time he gets nicked by Robert, a socially inept, disturbingly efficient security guard. After letting the famous author twist in the wind for a while, Robert agrees to let him off the hook, in exchange for joining him for a drink.

Of course, Robert quickly starts holding the security camera video over Duffy’s head in exchange for more BFF time. Duffy alternately pretends to play along and then lashes out, inevitably making the situation worse. He is especially keen to keep the arrangement secret from the attractive host of his chat show, with whom he is involved in an increasingly serious relationship. Naturally she also stirs feelings of jealousy in the delusional stalker.

Patch features an absolutely first-rate cast better known for television work, bringing credible heft and dimension to this noirish tabloid tale of celebrity and obsession. Conleth Hill (Game of Thrones, Arthur & George) is terrific as Duffy, giving him a Mailer-esque swagger and a dark edge. Sometimes creepy and sometimes uncomfortably pathetic, Stephen Graham (Boardwalk Empire, Taboo) is always unsettling as the stalker. Although her character is loosely sketched out, Lara Pulver (MI-5, Da Vinci’s Demons, Irene Adler in Sherlock) makes Lucy the TV moderator an intelligent and attractive presence. Plus, Ian McElhinney (also of Game of Thrones) adds some gray-bearded flair as Duffy’s publisher.

Patch is not a bad film, but some of its contrivances push the limits of credibility. Oddly, it seems like Robert is just waiting for Duffy to come shoplift in his down-market big-box store, but that does not make any sense. It also seems like a guy with Duffy’s resources and questionable scruples ought to be able to make a problem like Robert go away easier. Still, it wins plenty of style points, especially cinematographer Matthias Pilz, who gives it the sheen of a vintage Michael Mann film. Recommended (without any great urgency) for fans of British/Northern Irish film and television who enjoy seeing accomplished character actors getting a feature spot, A Patch of Fog is now available on VOD platforms, including iTunes.

Tribeca ’12: Whole Lotta Sole

If you haven’t heard, there are a fair number of Catholics in Belfast who are serious about their faith.  As a result, a couple of luckless lowlifes think it would be a good idea to hold-up the fish market on a Friday night.  Naturally, the caper quickly descends into chaos in recent Academy Award winner Terry George’s thoroughly entertaining Whole Lotta Sole, which screens during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

It was Joe Maguire’s profound misfortune to marry the manic daughter of a Boston mobster bearing a strong resemblance to Whitey Bulger.  Fearing for his life, he is hiding out in Belfast, minding his uncle’s antique shop.  Though still quite jumpy, he starts cautiously courting Sophie, a beautiful Ethiopian refugee managing the record store across the street.  Sad sack Jimbo Reagan thinks Maguire might be a figure from his past, but he is more concerned with the 5,000 pounds he owes the local paramilitary turned gangster Mad Dog Flynn.

Out of desperation, Reagan holds up the fish market, Whole Lotta Sole, but this turns out to be a bad idea.  If you remember the Fulton Fish Market’s pre-Giuliani reputation, you will get the idea.  With both the cops and Flynn out to get him, Reagan takes Maguire and Sophie hostage.  From there, plenty of complications and miscommunications ensue.

Like Goldilocks, George (who just walked away with the Oscar for his gently forgiving short film, The Shore) maintains a tone than it light but not inconsequential.  He injects plenty of humor into the story, but resists saccharine sentiment and self-conscious quirkiness.  His sensitive treatment of Maguire and Sophie’s budding relationship is particularly refreshing, keeping them fully clothed throughout, while generating real sparks between them.

As Maguire, Brendan Fraser looks a wee bit young for the part, but he exhibits a kind of world weary everyman presence (really not seen in his prior films) that works quite well, nonetheless.  Indeed, he establishes some genuine chemistry with the luminous Yaya DaCosta, whose smart, down-to-earth turn as Sophie ought to bring her to a new level of international recognition.  Capping the picture off, Colm Meaney is perfectly cast as cranky but honest and decent Det. Weller.  Sure, he has played many roles like this before, because he has such a flair for them.

Whole Lotta Sole is just a pleasure to watch.  For a pure broad-based crowd-pleaser, it is probably the pick of this year’s Tribeca.  Highly recommended, it screens again tomorrow (4/25) and Saturday (4/28).