Film Reviews by NP

Lovely big smiley Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney), the unlikely son of diminutive Lord John Talbot (Claude Raines), returns to his vast family home in Llanwelly, Wales, to commiserate the death of his brother John. Whilst idly toying with the magnificent and outsize telescope, he spies Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers), who runs an antique shop. In an act of astonishingly stalker-like blatancy, Larry is quite brazen about his spying activities and uses it to chat up intelligent, no-nonsense Gwen, who is engaged to dapper Frank (Patrick Knowles). Larry’s not put off by this and continues to pursue Gwen, becoming – in my view - a first class pest in the process.

This is Universal films’ Wales, of course – why a Welsh location was decided on, I don’t know; there’s not a single remotely authentic accent to be heard. But who cares? My sneering attitude does ‘The Wolf Man’ a disservice. This would be Universal’s last A-list chiller. I always think the 1930s were the time of the horror film; in the 1940s (due to changing styles and budgetary considerations), they became monster movies; child-friendly creature-features that are utterly brilliant, but not quite the carefully constructed, intricate exercises in horror from the previous decade. ‘The Wolf Man’ contains a little from both worlds, but for all the light of the full moon, I cannot find the titular creature frightening, unlike his stablemates Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula.

Despite Lon’s best efforts and some gruelling transformation scenes, the wolf man remains a lumbering, furry Airdale on two hind quarters. The scary qualities this film possesses are in the legends around the shaggy old snarler. Classic Universal’s best autumnal woodlands and sinister town square, pumped full of dry-ice fog and smoke, magnificent Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva, the Gypsy Fortune Teller: smaller than anyone, yet the most authoritative. Also, Bela Lugosi in a criminally small role as gypsy Bela, with his own tragic story to tell (Lugosi makes a big impression in what is little more than a cameo). Frank Bellamy plays his usual solid slab of unmemorable beefcake decency, in the character of Colonel Paul.

There’s an incongruity – Bela becomes a werewolf, but when we see his alter-ego, it’s an actual real wolf. When Larry, who is inevitably bitten and receives the curse, he sprouts fur and fangs (and the cutest Hobbit-feet and button snout) but retains his human form.

As the net closes in on Talbot, his cheery demeanour slowly becomes enshrouded in uncertainty and furtive misery, which he retains through several sequels. Lon’s acting attracts much comment, some favourable and some unfair comparing with the very different styles of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi and others; but he never fails to invest his all into Talbot, his ‘baby’, a finely nuanced, progressive character about which he remained justifiably proud.

This low-budget project features Brianne Davis as feisty Jill, who gives her obnoxious lawyer short shrift when he attempts to patronise her when revealing the contents of his recently deceased aunt’s will. Jill is blind and is still coming to terms with people’s reactions to her. A possible stroke of good fortune comes about when it is revealed her estranged aunt has left her home – a spooky old mansion.

I mention the low-budget production values because this can put some viewers off. I bore people rigid by saying that independent films are only constrained by their lack of finance, and better that than to have the project diluted by the creativity-sapping, restraint-soaked wishes of more mainstream organisations. And yet it is true. If you want spectacular stunts and humanity-stripping CGI, this won’t be for you.

If you wish to look beyond superfluous production gimmickry, there is much to enjoy here. Writer/director David Sapp makes the most of his locations and particularly the Manor itself. The three main players Davis, Ken Luckey and Christine Woods (as Jill’s two good friends Rob and Erika) are terrific naturalistic and unaffected performers. Above all, their friendship is real and we can relate to them as people. When Jill starts seeing apparitions, she optimistically believes her eyesight may be returning.

The pace doesn’t pick up, but neither does it falter and there are a few decent scares. The most effective for me concerns Jill’s audio diaries – when playing back her latest entry, there are other noises in the background. Of course, people being people, an element of distrust grows amongst Rob and Erika, and for a time it is entirely possible (though unlikely) that one of them is deliberately trying to unnerve poor Jill.

The end is satisfying. And no, Jill does not magically recover her sight. She does, however, become more accustomed to her situation. Ultimately, ‘Marsten Manor’ is a decent chiller and well worth your time.

A young lady called Lovely (Lisa Marie Summerscales) is being chatted up at the seaside. She’s coy, all smiles. The next thing, we hear her disembodied voice on the phone crying, pleading for help. When her estranged husband Tom (Dean Cates) turns up to see her at a seedy hotel, he greets her desperate cries with all the sympathy of a sledgehammer. We soon see why. There’s a corpse in the room with her, covered in blood. Apparently, ‘this kind of thing’ has happened before.

Summerscales (who bears a resemblance to Billie Piper) is excellent in this, which is a role that really requires her to react to increasingly panicky situations. She’s never unbelievable or unsympathetic – even when the ‘corpse’ turns out to have secrets of his own.

Despite the leads’ unwillingness to call the police (although looking back, it’s just as well), I found myself fully invested in this. The performances are all strong, the atmosphere and music genuinely getting more and more unsettling. The direction is first rate – the hotel room, already seedy and unfriendly, takes on a more sinister tone when bathed only in the blinking static light from the television. The isolated nature of the location is powerfully utilised – poor Lovely’s predicament becomes increasingly hopeless.

There isn’t much gore, and very few special effects to speak of. None of this matters when a story is told this strongly – in fact, sparingly used as they are, the effects depicting Lovely’s deteriorating situation are all the more teeth-clenching. The setting, the 1950s, is effective and rids us of the convenience of mobile phones and the like.

Director, writer and ‘excited Cultist’ cast member Mickey Keating has provided a terrific debut with this slow burning, often deliberately muddy production (we don’t know much about the cultists and exactly what their ‘mission’ is, but that really doesn’t matter), which continues to restore my faith in modern horror somewhat. At times it seems as if events are passing too slowly, but there’s always a twist or a shock that makes sense of the decision. A dark, creepy, often claustrophobic story which remains compelling and unpredictable right until the end. Unnerving!

Cash-strapped Gwen (Alexandra Boylan) has no choice but to return to her isolated family home, but finds Kristi (Raquel Cantu) is living there and has no intention of leaving. We know Kristi is bad news when we see, in the introduction, her robbing a grocery store with her beau Van (Christopher Dempsey) and treating the event as a joke.

‘Home Sweet Home’ is an intriguing curiosity. For once, the attractive blond girl isn’t the victim but the frightening casual, sexually provocative home invader who seems always one step ahead. Aside from turning in a terrific performance, Boylan co-writes this, and Director John K.D. Graham gives it an at times unusual visual flair that belies the low budget.

As with many things in life, there are occasional gaps in logic. Just while the two aggressors do what they do is unclear, other than they’re crazy and they want to keep living in Gwen’s deceased parents’ house – and neither is the fact that, believing the two are outside in the grounds somewhere, Gwen decides to sleep in the un-curtained living room with the lights on (not that Gwen’s to know, but Kristi and Van appear to already be inside anyway).

Kristi is a wonderfully evil creation. She gets a sexual thrill out of her villainy but gives not a jot when Van is of no further use to her. The ending, slightly confused though it is, suggests that her allure is still not without its uses …

Despite a disastrous interview, young Lisa is delighted to gain employment as cleaner at the High Hopes Hospital. After meeting head Doctor Mixter (Jared Morgan), the chief (only?) cleaner Delaney (a curious Welsh/Russian hybrid played by Lee Bane), she is introduced to some of the patients, including one played by a terrifying Eileen Daly (who also sings the end theme). The first thing that strikes me about this Andrew Jones produced film is how empty the asylum is. Granted, Lisa is working the night-shift, but there is no background noise, nothing. Also, the location of ‘Amityville’ is something of a mystery. Lisa and the security guard are American, Delaney could be from any number of places, the young female reporter is Welsh and Mixter is decidedly English.

I’m a big fan of Andrew’s work, but assigning his low-budget, tightly shot styles to the Amityville series (this is the tenth film in the run) is a curious decision. Having said that, the sequels had become so far removed from the style of the original film by this time, perhaps Jones’ slow-burning style isn’t that jarring. The idea of High Hopes Hospital being built on the land where once stood the Amityville House is curious – Amityville was a residential area, and this institute would appear to be in the centre of it, not that we are afforded any establishing exterior shots, or barely any outside shots at all – which is why I am never convinced we are actually anywhere near America at any point (we aren’t – this was filmed in Wales).

UK born Sophia Del Pizzo plays American Lisa, her accent sounding perfectly convincing to my equally UK ear – although American viewers may disagree. As is often the case with Jones’ films, we care about his main character, so that when she begins to doubt her own sanity, we are wishing her well.

Sadly, this isn’t Jones’ finest hour. Possibly because the link to Amityville is so tenuous, possibly because the coldly-lit slow-burning style isn’t what we expect from an Amityville film, possibly because unfortunately it is a very plodding affair … all of these things together are never convincing and rarely frightening. Which is a shame, because the cast try hard, especially Pizzo and Daly, to inject some life into the proceedings.

“Get your hands up, you sick f***!”

“I see we’ve dispensed with the usual pleasantries.”

This is the nearest thing to a checklist of Jess Franco trademarks as I have ever seen. So – a wall-to-wall sitar-spangled jazzy soundtrack (heard before in ‘Vampyros Lesbos’), familiar faces (Soledad Miranda, Howard Vernon, Fred Williams, Ewa Strömberg, Paul Muller and Franco himself), plenty of eye-watering locations, lots of zoom-ins (which, after seeing a number of Franco films, I am learning to love rather than tolerate) and a hurried, garbled finale. The only two elements this lacks to allow for a Full House are stablemates sex and horror, which are there, but only very briefly.

Franco, as he often did, casts himself in a particularly thankless role. At one stage, his character Tino offers to buy Jane (Miranda) a drink. After she looks him up and down, she declares, “I hate Brilliantine,” and flounces off.

The story is tighter than on some other occasions and strays into thriller/espionage territory, with Miranda stealing every scene as Jane Morgan. There are some scenes set in London, which have charms of their own. Introduced by a sweeping panorama courtesy of an aged film-reel taken from elsewhere, the subsequent locations are as blatantly Spanish as you could wish.

With the notion that a mineral can turn humans into zombies, you may imagine such creatures play more of a role here. Never a fan of the walking dead, Franco uses the idea as a background piece, and only featuring any living cadaver twice throughout (in disappointingly subtle make-up). The rest of the time, we are concerned with Morgan and handsome Fred Forrester (Williams) and their various misdeeds and adventures.

A couple of unpleasant pack leaders are preparing a group of unpleasant Pathfinder cub scouts for a camping trip. Sam (Maurice Luijten) isn’t unpleasant, but he is late for their briefing, which earns him fifty press-ups whilst wearing his back-back. When they reach their intended camping site, the group run into two even more unpleasant youths with a grudge, racing around on a go-cart. This encourages the Pathfinders, who are also cowards, to camp somewhere else … deep in the woods.

The two arrogant leaders Chris (Titus De Voogdt) and Peter – or Baloo (Stef Aerts) – are joined by the only female of the group, chef Jasmijn (Evelien Bosmans). Jasmine and Chris go some way to curbing the Pathfinders’ bullying ways towards Sam, but the young outcast is more concerned with strange moving shapes in the trees and the legend of a local werewolf called Kai (Gill Eeckelaert).

The idea of Kai is a strong and appealing one. A feral child-creature living out in the woods. The more that is slowly revealed about him – and his father – slowly erodes the sinister mystique, which is a shame. And once we learn more about him, the horror aspects become less spectral, and more like solid slasher fare. And yet the twists and turns never stop until … well, even I won’t spoil that!

This Belgian horror is a terrific production; it contains effective characters, fine set-pieces and some nicely contrived death scenes. For all the killings brought about by a selection of cruel and carefully set traps throughout the forest, the real monster here for me is Baloo. Titus De Voogdt instils him with relentless, cowardly spite and bullying ways, we truly cannot wait for his come-uppance, which can never be horrible enough!

Jen Otto (Suzie Frances Garton) isn’t well, she isn’t happy and she isn’t finding much support from husband Paul (Lee Bane). Their son Gene (Flynn Allen) has been given a doll, a bug-eyed grinner called Robert, by recently sacked family cleaner Agatha (Judith Haley). Robert will be Gene’s best friend forever, promises Agatha. This is writer/director/producer Andrew Jones’ first foray into Robert’s world – the doll is an enigma he would return to more than once.

From then on, strange and unaccountable things begin to happen in the family house. Naturally, poor Gene gets the blame for this, but he’s adamant the doll is responsible. If only mum and dad would pay a bit of attention to the evidence. When Jen’s painting is daubed with red paint, the doll’s shoes are covered with red. Wouldn’t there have been a few footprints? The situation is fairly unreal, but that doesn’t mean that a certain logic should be ignored.

Where the film scores though is in the characters – Jones always writes really well for his characters, and you feel especially for Jen’s plight: she is mentally fragile anyway, and the more outlandish things happen, the more likely it is to everyone else that it’s all in her mind. The doll, however, sits and leers through it all, as relationships reveal their strained nature and resentment bubbles to the surface as a result of Robert’s interference. It is pretty creepy stuff, but rather less so on the occasions when the prop is required to move.

I don’t often comment on other reviews but a lot of online viewers have been negative about this and I truly don’t know why. A horror story about a malevolent doll (based on a true story, apparently – according to IMDB, Robert Eugene Otto (Gene) was first given Robert the Doll in 1906, when he was just six years old, by an angry Bahamian servant with an interest in black magic and voodoo) can either make you laugh or scare you: either way, you’re going to be entertained. Perhaps the lack of humour, no knowing wink to the audience, aggravates the audience. Perhaps the leisurely pace of proceedings (a trait of Jones) is to blame. Surely people aren’t shallow enough to criticise a low-budget project for having a low budget? This isn’t a Hollywood blockbuster and has no intention of being. A pity that people can’t enjoy these films for what they, rather than when they’re not.

I enjoyed ‘Robert’, as I have enjoyed all of Andrew Jones’ output. The ending, open to interpretation, is particularly effective.

You may be familiar with ‘Chucky’, and ‘Annabelle’ too – murderous dolls who seem to take on a life of their own. This is actually a sequel to the earlier ‘Robert (2015)’, although it works perfectly well viewed in isolation.

Pretty young Emily Barker (Tiffany Ceri) begins a nightshift as a cleaner at East Falls Museum, which takes on an eerie atmosphere in the darkness, what with its mannequins, human-like dummies, and an allegedly ‘haunted’ doll called Robert. He’s a creepy looking toy, with his mismatched eyes and permanent sneer/grin. As grumpy Security Guard Stan (Christopher Hale) soon finds, Robert is also a dab hand at murder. Luckily for Emily, handsome nice guy Kevin (Jason Homeward) is also on hand.

This is another project from the horror stable of Andrew Jones, and contains a subtle reference to his earlier ‘Poltergeist Activity’, which also featured a malevolent doll. As productivity increases, Jones’ films show signs of getting better all the time – for example, the standard of acting and sound quality is much better than some of the earlier offerings. One constant that remains, happily, is Jones’ skill at writing his characters – there are no stereotypes here (not even Stan), no petulant bored teens or posturing cardboard, one-dimensional characters. Here are likeable, relatable, real people placed in a very unreal situation. Therefore, we like them and feel emotion when events conspire against them.

The low-budget notion of a malevolent toy coming to life is as frightening or as ridiculous as you would wish it, but Robert’s appearances are brief enough to avoid unintentional hilarity. The spirit of Robert Crow, murdered by his father, inhabits the little bloke, and the owner of the museum (Nigel Barber) knows this – and with the intimidating lack of non-co-operation from the police, Emily and Kevin take events into their own hands.

This all depends on whether you find dolls frightening. If so, this works well – everything is employed to make their broken little porcelain faces, their sightless glassy eyes and their leering grins as unnerving as possible. Lee Bane, without whom no Andrew Jones film would be complete, plays the Toymaker. Sadly, his ‘old man’ make-up is less convincing than anything Robert or his friends bring to the table.

It is not often the case that a teenager is presented positively in films. They are usually deeply unpleasant in a variety of ways, so it is refreshing to see Natalie Martins playing the very convincing and appealing Katherine Prescott, teenage daughter of David (Lee Bane), who is not only grieving for the death of her mother, but also looking after dad who, by his own admission, isn’t handling being a single parent as well as she deserves.

This is another offering from the stable of writer/director/producer Andrew Jones who has produced, and continues to produce, a steady stream of micro-budget horror films. Some are put off by the lack of spectacular set-pieces and effects. What do they expect from a project with such limited financial backing? Not that the low-budget defines the ultimate production – rather the stories these films tell are smaller and more intimate (and to me, far more human and effecting) that some superficial mainstream blockbuster.

In a big spoiler, the two of them move into a secluded Welsh farmhouse and are menaced by china doll Otto, who refuses to stay in the attic/under the bed/in the dustbin. I mention this immediately because, bless him, Otto is rarely convincing. He’s a spooky doll operated off camera. Rather more effective are the life-size versions of Otto – cherubic, blank faced creatures in robes that, if you look carefully, have sparkling eyes beneath the mask hollows.

The sound quality here, which has held back scenes in previous Jones films, is much improved, and we are treated to a number of heartfelt speeches – the most impressive from David, lamenting his shortcomings as a parent to a sleeping – or is she? – Katherine. Regular Jared Morgan is terrific also, as an eccentric, disillusioned paranormal investigator called Hans Voltz.

My only issue with this is the lack of a conclusive, or even satisfying, ending. A séance brings forth the strongest manifestations of evil yet. Father and daughter flee - and that’s that. It would have been interesting to at least see something of what happened to the other cast members, and repercussions thereof. Ah well, at least in the post-credits sequence, it seems the trouble is not quite over yet.

This contains a very good central performance from Shane Johnson, playing Michael King, who gets … you guessed it … possessed! After his idyllic life is shattered with the death of his wife, he and his two young daughters try continue with their lives. Michael decides to make a documentary, using himself as guinea-pig, to prove there is life after death, while his daughters’ grieving is ignored. After various experiments involving characters of varyingly dubious quality, it would seem that a demon has gained possession of the rapidly degenerating Michael. Understandably, the daughters leave. Less understandably, despite Michael’s frighteningly upsetting behaviour, it is a very long time before anyone comes to see what all the noise is about. By this time, the house is a bloody wreck.

This is good, quite unsettling story-telling. Events happen at a brisk pace, and we lurch with Michael, from one horrific incident to the next. Johnson is excellent throughout, and it is just as well - you do get the impression the entire film hangs on his acting at times.

During one of the hallucinatory sequences that may be a dream, a very curious thing occurs. Scenes from Richard Driscoll’s notorious 2008 film ‘The Legend of Harrow Woods/Evil Calls: The Raven’ are inserted for no reason whatsoever. Featuring characters and events that have absolutely nothing to do with anything – which could arguably said about their context in their original surroundings – the effect is so jarring (probably because I am so familiar with the Driscoll film) that I suspected a possession on behalf of my DVD player! It is a very strange occurrence, and I would love to know why such scenes are included here – mind you, if it provides funds for a further Driscoll project, then all the better.

Director David Jung does a good job with the jump scenes, and the more subtle effects are highly successful (an ant crawling out of an eye at an unexpected moment, etc), but one gets the impression that the price paid for such slick pacing is that once King is possessed, there’s nowhere for the story to go other than repeatedly perverse stunts for the unfortunate titular character.

Featuring some of the cast and crew of Andrew Jones’ earlier ‘Theatre of Death/Midnight Horror Show’ from the same year, this low-budget horror doesn’t quite embrace the unnerving intimacy of his earlier film. This is a tale of Londoner Kristen Matthews (Rachel Howells) moving into an inherited house in Wales, where she meets with a small coven of white witches.

Impressive Jones regulars Lee Bane and Jared Morgan star as Detective Jim Eckhart and Father Bill Jennings respectively. All the cast deliver reasonably believable performances, and yet sound issues common with low-budget ventures often render Bane’s dialogue in particular sometimes hard to catch. Ross Owen Williams also makes a good impression as Richard.

A local spate of suicides (which turn out to be fairly superfluous to the story) in the Welsh village find themselves puncturing Matthews’ dreams in such a way she believes she may have some connection with them.

The storyline is pretty thin (and doesn’t stand up well under close scrutiny), but the pace rarely slackens. That’s not to say this is edge-of-the-seat stuff by any means, but that isn’t its mission. It is a solid, atmospheric slice of rural folk-horror. By opening up the locations, as opposed to keeping things tight as in ‘Theatre of Death’, some of the weirdness that made the earlier film so attractive is missing, and open air locations lessen the control Jones has over them compared to more claustrophobic surroundings, and whereas ‘Theatre…’ created its own world by odd, close-cut angles and sickly lighting, this is more prey to real weather conditions. I compare this to the earlier film so much because so far - along with the gently impressive ‘The Last House on Cemetery Lane (2915)’ - these two projects are all I have seen from the ever growing stable of Andrew Jones’ films. His North Bank Entertainment company produces a regular horror output and despite the results here being good rather than great, there is a definite love and feel for the kind of horror I enjoy: understated, low budget, sincerely played and quietly unnerving.

I love it when a film comes along that changes the perceptions of how a story should be told. Apart from being entertaining in its own right, it shakes up (to a limited extent) the tired, tried and tested mainstream diet of CGI, diluted scares and catwalk model actors with identi-kit personalities. ‘Cemetery of Splendor’ couldn’t be further than that style of blandness. And yet in rejecting everything stale about traditional storytelling, it sadly creates a blandness all its own.

A school in Northern Thailand has been turned into a makeshift hospital to house soldiers who have been afflicted by an unexplained sleeping sickness, which renders them comatose for vast periods of time, punctuated by periods of awakening.

Volunteer Jenjira (Jenjira Pongpas) strikes up a friendship with patient Itt (Banlob Lomnoi) during his few hours of wakefulness. There is speculation that the school was built over a cemetery and the dead are feeding off the minds of the sleeping soldiers. Jenjira also becomes friendly with Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), who claims to have some rapport with the sleepers.

That is about all as far as a story is concerned, and it is stretched far, far beyond interest to fill the 2 hour running time. The frustration I felt watching is that anything else dramatic was not likely to occur grew the further in I ventured. There’s no need for scenes of so little happening to last so long, one after the other. All these elongated moments are deliberate artistic decisions, and so cannot be brushed away by budgetary or lack-of-time reasons. And the film has attracted a mass of critical acclaim – so clearly, I just didn’t ‘get’ it.

The camera is primarily static. People wander in and out of shot just as they would in a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Sometimes you only see the back of a character’s head throughout the scene. In true documentary style, the acting is very naturalistic and the characters very believable. While I would commend director/writer Apichatpong Weerasethakul for refusing to utilise anything traditional about this project, and am glad his work has attracted the commendations of critics, this is so uncommercial, it is sadly deeply un-enthralling.

After Universal scored such hits with ‘Dracula’ and ‘Frankenstein’ in 1931, it was clear that horrifying audiences was big business. Amongst the steady stream of cinematic terrors that followed, a year later Paramount brought us swathes of monstrosities courtesy of HG Wells and his insane Doctor Moreau.

The make-up for the ‘lost souls’ is very impressive on the more subtle mutations, but less so on the more ‘advanced’ experiments. Which brings us to the most vocal, The Sayer of the Law, played by Bela ‘Dracula’ Lugosi (as he is billed, just above ‘The Panther Woman’). Covered in fur, this is the actor that, a year earlier, had supposedly turned down the Frankenstein Monster for fear the make-up would obscure his matinee looks (which is given as one of a number of reasons he didn’t end up playing the role despite being touted for it). The Sayer of the Law would seem to debunk that particular theory.

Lota, the Panther Woman herself, is played very appealingly by Kathleen Burke in an outfit that exposes a lot of flesh for the time. Her growing relationship with Richard Arlen as Parker – a hero not quite as overshadowed by the other characters as is usual in horror films from this era – is interesting, but causes problems when his girl Ruth (Leila Hyams) travels all the way to the remote island to look for him.

Finally, what an actor Charles Laughton was. Whilst time has rendered the performances of some of the actors around him dated and theatrical, Laughton’s Moreau is every bit as convincing and villainous in 2017 as he was 85 years ago. Superbly spoken but dripping with malice, or uncontrolled and snarling like one of his own animalistic experiments, he is compelling at all times. Moreau’s ultimate fate is one of the most unpleasant you could imagine, but horribly satisfying too.

This is a mighty slice of grim and effective cinema. We could smile at some of the quaint make-up effects of course, but Director Erle C Kenton is at his creative peak here. He would go on to direct future Universal horrors, but never does he imbue them with the sense of unease and danger as is on show here. Strange, leering faces loom of out the jungle, misshapen shapes move in the shadows, revealing deformed limbs – or in one case, a solitary hoof – although we are fairly sure that their animalistic fury is directed only at those responsible for their current predicaments.

After all, ‘are we not men?’

Shall I state the obvious? At 156 minutes, ‘The Wailing’ is very long. If it was split down the middle into two chapters, that would at least allow a breather in between acts. Alright? I’ve got that off my chest, so we can move on. Because ‘The Wailing’ is excellent. How is it that this modestly budgeted South Korean horror film, that features only occasional special effects and a cast of actors of varied ages (as opposed to predominantly young and pretty) shows up obscenely financed mainstream Hollywood output as being tired, CGI-reliant and shallow? Perhaps for precisely those reasons.

Kwak Do-won is excellent as Jong-goo, a police officer investigating a series of outbreaks of a mysterious wasting disease in and around his village. Various scenes of violently possessed and afflicted characters illustrate this. When the malady appears to affect his daughter Hyo-jinn, he sees the progression of the disease first-hand. Kim Hwan-hee is a revelation as the placid, loving daughter slowly transformed into a shrieking, snarling fiend – afraid of the shaman Il-gwang (Hwang Jung-min) brought in to exorcise her, and snarling accusatory curses at the father who is trying to save her.

“When you go fishing, you don’t know what you’ll catch. ‘He’s’ just fishing …”, to slightly misquote the reply to Jong-goo’s wearied wonderings as to why his daughter should be afflicted. As to who ‘he’ is – we have to assume the worst. And yet even her transformation isn’t the worst we see.

Jun Kunimura plays the morose hermit who may or may not be behind the witchery, and yet when Jong-goo and Il-gwang dispose of him, the shaman feels that they have done away with the wrong person …

Evocative and effective use is made of location, and especially the elements. On occasions, the atmosphere looks extremely cold, and when it rains, it comes down in torrents. Director Na Hong-jin conjures up a very convincing sense of violent evil within a small community. My only slight issue with ‘The Wailing’ is that, after all that time, there is no real ending – which is something I usually don’t mind at all, but felt this could perhaps have done with some kind of pay-off. Perhaps a sequel is a possibility …

We have time to get to know the characters, watch them grow and share with them their harrowing experiences. Productions like this, when they come along, almost re-write the structure of telling an effective story – so much so that, while over two-and-a-half hours is a long time to concentrate on a film, you certainly aren’t in any hurry for it to end.