What begins with dim promise runs off the nearest cliff into a landfill’s worth of ridiculous plotting and embarrassed actors scrabbling for an ounce of sense in the story. At first glance, this could be seen as one of those family under siege/cuckoo in the nest type of films but The Unseen has clearly lost the keys to the ignition. It is a shapless shambles which corners potentially good actors into some ridiculous situations and tries to sell its viewers one of the most bonkers scripts I’ve ever heard.
The Unseen introduces a smug middle-class couple who proceed to lose their young son in a tragic accident at home. The wife (JASMINE HYDE) begins to suffer from blind panic attacks, and her husband (RICHARD FLOOD – SHAMELESS) begins to believe the son is communicating with them from beyond the grave. Sadly these characters are accidentally portrayed as utterly loathsome, self-centred monsters who treat a passing stranger Paul, (SIMON COTTON – RISE OF THE FOOTSOLDIER 3), like a skivvy and a wanker. They even use their son’s death as an excuse to lord it over everybody in the whole story – or maybe they were this insufferable all along. Makes me think the kid committed suicide to get a way of life in such a terrible family. Their mysterious new friend Paul offers them a free place to stay on his large estate in Lake District, yet they fail to thank him, treat him with any courtesy, and proceed to take full advantage of the poor bloke. On arrival, the husband attempts to belittle Paul, because his wife has left him, and blaming him for the boring countryside. Paul listens to birds through long distance microphones and is further laughed at for just being a sensitive, normal sort of guy. He even goes out to buy them cutlery. The couple fall out and confuse, anger and baffle Paul in the process. I think they turn Paul into a suspicious psycho, he was probably perfectly normal before they entered his world, but no it turns out that he really is a loony with a secret. A unfortunate loony who hadn’t banked on the fact that being a creepy psycho was so labour intensive and maddening. Paul should’ve picked a less insane, less badly written quarry.
The heroine is so carelessly rendered that there seems to be no throughline to her character. She treats everyone like a doormat and their possessions even worse. At least her husband has the decency to drop out of the main story half way through. One minute she is happy and flirtatious, then she is screaming rude things at the poor baddie,snooping on him, and feigning blindness every 5 minutes. Its terrible storyline just frustrates and by the lazy end you are just begging the bad guy to do away with the heroine. That there’s no actual ghost in this film which is also disappointing, as The Unseen trains its eyes on less interesting ideas. The director and writer Gary Sinyor (UNITED WE FALL), has pedigree, and directed the wonderful Leon The Pig Farmer two ages ago, and has since delivered a string of lame, forgettable films. This is his worst by a mile. It’s weird, but not intentionally so. It also leaves a bad taste in the mouth the way it short changes a potentially strongminded female character and makes her a shrill, irritating, bolshy odd-bob. But an unrealistic one.
2 out of 10 – Strange and annoying. Forgettable and moronic. Pity the hardworking actors who must have known they were making a stinker but fancied a few weeks in some luxury holiday house. This should like its title remain ‘unseen’.
Rooney Mara: Mary Magdalene, A Ghost Story, Song to Song, The Secret Scripture, Lion, Kubo & The Two Strings (voice), Carol, Her, Side Effects, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011), The Social Network, Nightmare On Elm Street (2010), Youth In Revolt
Ben Mendlesohn: Captain Marvel, Ready Player One, Robin Hood (2018), Darkest Hour, Star Wars – Rogue One, Bloodlines (TV), Slow West, Lost River, Exodus, Black Sea, Starred Up, Adore, The Place Beyond The Pines, The Dark Knight Returns, Killing Them Softly, Trespass (2011), The Killer Elite, Animal Kingdom, Needle, Beautiful Kate, Knowing, Australia, The New World, Vertical Limit, Sample People, Idiot Box, Cosi, Sirens, Map of the Human Heart, Quigley Down Under, The Big Steal, Nirvana Street Murder, Spotswood, The Year My Voice Broke, Neighbours (TV)
Natasha Little: The Night Manager (TV), Blood (2013), Welcome To The Punch, We’ll Take Manhattan, The Boys Are Back, Mr Nobody, Another Life, Greenfingers, Kevin and Perry Go Large, This Life (TV), The Clandestine Marriage
Tobias Menzies: The Night Manager (TV), Game of Thrones (TV), Underworld 5, Black Sea, Forget Me Not, Rome (TV), The Low Down, Casualty (TV)
Tara Fitzgerald:Legend (2015), Child 44, Game of Thrones (TV), Exodus, Waking The Dead (TV), Five Children and It, I Capture The Castle, Rancid Aluminium, Brassed Off, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, The Vacillations of Poppy Carew (TV), A Man of No Importance, Sirens, The Camomile Lawn (TV), Hear My Song
Compared to your average, underpowered slasher flick, the plot motivations of the characters-in-shorts-director Dan Allen’s feature debut, Unhinged, are baffling and especially dumb. Nothing anywhere in this film makes the slightest bit of sense either.
An American bride (KATE LISTER – FOX TRAP), her sister (LUCY-JANE QUINLAN – THE BROMLEY BOYS), and two of their American pals (BECCA FLETCHER and LORENA ANDREA both from HOUSE ON ELM LAKE) come across a knife-wielding psycho (TOMMY VILES) on some English country lanes en-route to the former’s wedding (why are they American?) This is the least of their worries because after they’ve managed to murder/kill him in self defence and stuff him in the boot of their car, then they run out of petrol and seek shelter in a remote house owned by a highly-strung nutter, Miss Perkins (MICHELLE ARCHER – 12 DEATHS OF CHRISTMAS). Miss Perkins is harbouring a secret – she takes half of it to the grave because most of this film is incomprehensible.
The heroines are divided into two sects – blonde and pure vs. brunette and tainted. On arrival at the house the reclusive Miss Perkins is quick to invite them to stay as the gardener only comes on a wednesday and he can help them fill their car with petrol. There’s no phone signal, no land line, so they are effectively cut-off from the outside world. The house is surrounded by a maze-like woodland full of old farm machinery and the girls are encouraged not to poke about in there. Now with a dead body in the trunk – SPOILER: Tommy Viles character – the quartet decide not to go their own wedding but to stick around to bury the corpse in the woods. END OF SPOILER. Several strange things occur that don’t faze the girls but would faze pretty much anyone else with a brain. Most people would have ran at the first sign of weirdness, ie: Miss Perkins staring eyes and barely reined in madness. But no a missing corpse, a disappearing wedding dress, a monster’s voice in the shed that sounds like a Cornish Freddy Kreuger, that they’re running severely late for a wedding, that one of them killed somebody like they were ordering a burger (the mental burden of this action is never discussed again after lipservice is paid at the time) and also that a stalker in the stolen wedding dress wants to kill them – happily the good guys inadvertently supply the creepy mask for the killer to use. Why hide the killers’ identity when there’s only one suspect? Hmmm.
Unhinged stumbles around in the dark from one poorly thought out scenario to the next, the characters bear no resemblance to real people, as the dialogue scuppers any chance of a sensible resolution or forward plot prepulsion. All that’s left for the cast is to have a screaming competition. And director Dan Allen has assembled some really accomplished scream queens to yell their lungs out. I’ve enjoyed Lucy-Jane Quinlan’s work inCageand The Cutting Room, and like in the former she puts on a fine show here. However, along with the other three in the lead quarter, nobody is really given a chance to shine as the material is so flimsy, badly written and largely nonsensical. Like I said the characters don’t do anything realistic to keep themselves alive. Death scenes are long and drawn out and seem to exist solely for the purpose of giving gore-hounds their kicks, whilst not adding anything cool to the plot. The actress who plays Miss Perkins (MICHELLE ARCHER) is so terrible – all gurns and bulging eyes, she’s overripe and rotten – turning the flick into a parody rather than a tribute or homage. Speaking of which – Unhinged is a remake of an American film from 1982 of the same title that I’ve never seen. Based on this remake, you’ll wonder why Dan Allen and his crew bothered as there’s not a lick of flare or creativity to be found anywhere here. The closing scene is funny, but it’s a long wait for a 10 second joke. There’s nothing fresh or new about this slasher flick, so unless you’re curious because you’re a fan of the original film, there’s really no reason to see this as it is largely redundant.
2 out of 10 – Decent acting from the lead girls is a wasted collective effort because the film is fully out-of-stock of any of the other ingredients needed to make a nourishing horror-naughty – sorry but Unhinged isn’t the one you’re looking for. Tortuous for the wrong reasons.
Review by mRx
Review by Joe Pesci II
Four young American women arrive at a petrol station one night at the same time as a vaguely drunk looking young thug. For reasons unknown, the leading lady gives him some money so he can buy petrol. They go their separate ways. The Americans are heading to a wedding (quite an odd wedding where the maid of honour gets chosen only a day or to before the event – is that usual? – and which seems to have a movable date even though they’re on their way to it). The gang is led by bride-to-be Melissa, with her sister in tow (presumably – the film never actually says they’re sisters – I guess that’s because siblings don’t remind themselves they’re siblings every five minutes – nevertheless there’s a bit where non-marrying sister (Lucy-Jane Quinlan, wasted in a non-role) mentions she’s known Melissa longer than the others which is an odd way of putting it, but that’s the least of this film’s many baffling things).
Next day, or so it seems as it’s now light, our heroes run into the thug again but everyone seems to think only a couple of hours have passed. The thug has a class-based chip on his shoulder and is about to do harm to our heroines so they kill him and hide his body in the boot of their own car instead of leaving or hiding him. Again, this is among the least of the many baffling etc.
They get lost. And the petrol runs out, despite them having only just filled up. But they chance upon a house in the middle of nowhere. An eccentric lady is in residence, who claims there’s no possible help for miles, and she doesn’t have a phone. So the girls decide to stay with her and wait for a gardener to turn up. No-one seems too bothered about the imminence of the wedding. Nor are they miffed by an 8pm curfew. Anyway, that allows the two lesbians in the team to have some time together. Except, immediately after hopping into bed, they suddenly, without any intermediate activity, start exploring the garden because they heard a weird sound outside. Maybe it would’ve made sense for them to hear the weird sound just as they were about to get down to business, but bad editing is this film’s most prominent characteristic.
Our heroines stand about listening to a conversation in the shed between a whispering woman and what sounds like a ghoul from Hell, but which the girls think is, I dunno, just some bloke. During the night Melissa’s wedding dress goes walkabouts, as does a scary latex mask that the girls have because scary latex masks are things Americans take to weddings I guess.
Day dawns. The eccentric woman goes off to shoot breakfast, a task which seems to take all day. Our heroines decide to bury the thug’s body in the woman’s garden. Sadly when they get round to taking him out of the boot – well, you will be stunned, stunned I’m sure, to learn the boot is empty! If only they’d checked before they started digging.
Curiously the vanishing body doesn’t cause much consternation, and almost immediately afterwards two of the girls are having a chat about their personal relationships. Gradually they start to realise all is not well on the homestead as someone wearing the mask and wedding dress starts slaughtering them. Which of our two suspects could it possibly be? The surprise value of either is nil but I won’t reveal it. But it took me quite a while to work out that Miss Perkins might possibly have been so named deliberately.
Nominally a remake of a 1982 film of the same name, UNHINGED is really a (very bad) remake of PSYCHO. Alas it lacks in every conceivable department. It’s so bad I won’t bother saying how terrible it is. Instead here are a few of the niggles that conspire to help bring the film down. I couldn’t work out which country it was set in. Clearly made in Britain (£20 notes and a UK road atlas are seen), at no point do any of the four Americans mention they’re in a foreign country. Melissa checks her messages and go all gooey-eyed about her fiancé despite a maniac marauding about. At one point two of the girls calmly leave the house, then in the next shot they run in horror towards someone (who is now dead) without an ‘oh shit look over there’ shot in between. The end scene is fun but unearned and out of kilter with everything else; these girls have been maimed, bereaved and traumatised.
But if there’s one thing the film was very careful to ensure that it had in spades, it’s scenes of maiming, traumatising and bereaving its female characters. The film revels in misogynistic violence. I’m sure the film-makers’ defence is that it’s ultimately empowering because most of the violence is committed by women anyway, but the only male cast member is bumped off by a bump on the head, whilst the women are attacked by an assailant wielding a shovel, knife, a rake and garden shears (lots of shears). One character is force-fed petrol, briefly asphyxiated, her mouth is sewn up and god knows what else in a scene which goes on forever and which fails to actually do anything. If the scene said anything at all about the characters, the plot or the themes then it might be defensible, but it doesn’t. The film-makers could easily have shortened some of these bits and given us extra scenes which helped, you know, tell the actual story. Instead this is amongst the worst edited films I’ve ever seen with no sense of time, plot, place or pacing. There are, to be fair, a couple of quite good eerie shots involving the wedding dress wearing fiend lurking about. But two half-decent shots and one quite good joke can do nothing to rescue this incredibly unlikeable, poorly conceived, abysmally stitched-together, valueless and (at best) ill-judged nonsense
Director: Michael Apted (Bloodlines (TV) / Masters of Sex (TV) / Chasing Mavericks / The Chronicles of Narnia – Voyage of the Dawn Treader / Amazing Grace / Enough / Enigma / James Bond – The World Is Not Enough / Always Outnumbered / Extreme Measures / Nell / Blink / Thunderheart / Class Action / Gorillas In The Mist / Critical Condition / Firstborn / Gorky Park / P’tang Yang Kipperbang / The Coal Miner’s Daughter / The Squeeze / Stardust (1974) / Coronation Street (TV))
Cast: Noomi Rapace, Orlando Bloom, Toni Collette, Aymen Hamdouchi, Tosin Cole, Matthew Marsh, Philip Brodie, Michael Epp, Makram Khoury, Akshay Kumar, Tom Reed, Adelayo Adayo with Michael Douglas and John Malkovich
Noomi Rapace: Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (TV), The Captor, What Happened to Monday?, Alien – Covenant, The Drop, Child 44, Man Down, Passion (2012), Prometheus, Sherlock Holmes 2, Beyond (2010), The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest, The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009)
Orlando Bloom: Carnival Row (TV), Pirates of the Caribbean 5 – Dead Men Tell No Tales, The Hobbit – Battle of the Five Armies, The Hobbit – The Desolation of Smaug, Zulu (2013), The Three Musketeers (2011), New York I Love You, Pirates of the Caribbean 3 – At World’s End, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 – Dead Man’s Chest , Elizabethtown, Kingdom of Heaven, Troy, The Calcium Kid, Ned Kelly, Pirates of the Caribbean – Curse of the Black Pearl, The Lord of the Rings – Return of the King, The Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings – Fellowship of the Ring, Black Hawk Down
Toni Collette: Knives Out, Velvet Buzzsaw, Wanderlust (TV), Hereditary, xXx 3 – Return of Xander Cage, Blinky Bill Movie (voice), Krampus, Miss You Already,Glassland, The Boxtrolls (voice), Hector and the Search For Happiness, Tammy, A Long Way Down, The Way Way Back, Mental, Hitchcock, Fright Night (2011), The Like Minds, The Dead Girl, The Night Listener, Little Miss Sunshine, In Her Shoes, A Japanese Story, The Hours, Dirty Deeds, About a Boy, Changing Lanes, Hotel Splendide, Shaft, The Sixth Sense, 8.5 Women, Velvet Goldmine, The Boys, The James Gang, Clockwatchers, Emma (1996), The Pallbearer, Cosi, Muriel’s Wedding, Spotswood
Matthew Marsh: Da Vinci’s Demons (TV), Red Tails, Luther (TV), Spooks (TV), An American Haunting, Quicksand, Bad Company, Miranda, Spy Game, Genghis Cohn, Dirty Weekend, Chancer (TV), Mountains of the Moon, Diamond Skulls, The Fourth Protocol, The Monocled Mutineer (TV)
Michael Douglas: Avengers 5 — Endgame, Animal World, Antman and the Wasp 2, Antman, Beyond The Reach, Last Vegas, Behind The Candelabra, Haywire, Wall Street 2, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, You Me & Dupree, The Sentinel, The In-Laws, Don’t Say a Word, One Night At McCools, Traffic, The Wonder Boys, A Perfect Murder, The Game, The Ghost and The Darkness, The American President, Falling Down, Basic Instinct, Shining Through, War of the Roses, Black Rain, Wall Street, Fatal Attraction, A Chorus Line, The Jewel of the Nile, Romancing The Stone, The China Syndrome, Coma, The Streets of San Francisco (TV)
John Malkovich: The New Pope (TV), Velvet Buzzsaw, Bird Box, Mile 22, Dominion (2018), Deepwater Horizon, Zoolander 2, RED 2, Warm Bodies, Transformers 3, RED, Jonah Hex, Disgrace, Burn After Reading, The Mutant Chronicles, Beouwulf (mo-cap), Eragon, The Hitchiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, The Libertine, Johnny English, Ripley’s Game, The Dancer Upstairs (dir), Hotel, Shadow of the Vampire, Joan of Arc, Being John Malkovich, Rounders, The Man In The Iron mask (1998), Con Air, The Portrait of a Lady, Mullholland Falls, Mary Reilly, Beyond The Clouds, In The Line of Fire, Alive, Jennifer 8, Of Mice & Men (1992), Shadows & Fog, The Object of Beauty, The Sheltering Sky, Dangerous Liaisons, Empire of the Sun, The Killing Fields, Places In The Heart
It’s Sadie’s birthday (as the film’s quite terrible title partially suggests*) and her partner Rick has organised a big surprise for her. Sadie’s about to turn 35 but is an orphan who has never known her family, but tonight CillaRick has secretly tracked down her long-lost sister who lives beyond phone contact on a secluded but breathtaking weirdo-populated island in the North Sea. What could possibly go wrong?
Things get off to a bit of an improbable start when a lurker turns out to be Jonny, Rick’s best buddy, who seems to have arrived at a meeting point apparently by teleport. Why he didn’t travel with Rick and Sadie isn’t covered, though it has to be admitted there are so many secrets between these crazy kids, it may be just as well for them to not spend too much time cooped up together. Like spending time together on a remote island.
Alas the island is cut off by the tide, so our would-be birthday gang seek shelter in a mainland guesthouse where things continue to get more improbable. Jonny (whose main character trait is ‘snooper’), finds a video camera in the landlady’s cupboard. Except he doesn’t find it, the actor goes straight to it, almost as if he knew it would be there. If this is a clue to anything that happens later, it isn’t picked up on. So, having supposedly randomly found a video camera he starts recording on it. OK, that’s odd behaviour. What though does he record? Why, obviously he records the oblivious Sadie in the bath. Then shows the footage to Rick. Who he then has sex with while Sadie has a wank. It’s all very rude. (Look, I’ve no problem with the revelation that Jonny and Rick are having an affair, the problem I have is with Jonny nicking someone else’s camera then taping his pal’s naked wife on it. Is this normal behaviour among members of the younger generations?) Then Rick and Jonny watch what’s left of what had previously been on the tape: the landlady (I think) having sex with a tied-up gagged and somewhat reluctant looking chap. If only they’d watched the original porn before putting their own porn over it they’d have possibly learnt something to save their lives. Moral of the film: Don’t tape over other people’s home-made porn until you’ve watched it.
Things get odder as it turns out that Rick, who insisted on doing all the packing, has brought the wrong suitcase, which means Sadie has a choice between the oddly 1980s style party apparel she’s standing up in, and what looks like a net curtain. Why is there a net curtain in a suitcase? This one has kept me up at nights I don’t mind admitting.
Thankfully day dawns and our heroes drive over to the island and the local terrorists unleash a gas into their car. Fumigation apparently. The islanders are an eccentric and seemingly in-bred bunch. Eventually (it seems to take ages despite the island being the size of a postage stamp) our heroes find Corinne, Sadie’s long-lost sister. But no. Sadie knows immediately that they are not related. This deep, primal conviction lasts about ten minutes before she realises that they are indeed siblings and she wants to move to the island to be with big sis and bring up her baby. Yes! She’s pregnant! But who’s the father? (Well, seeing as I‘ve raised the question I might as well reveal it’s not Rick). (What a tangled web etc…) Things get even weirder (not that anyone in the story notices) when Corinne shows Sadie a photo of their mother. Now, Sadie is 35 and the film is set in about 2010 which means she was born in 1975. But the photo looks like it’s from the late 1940s. Maybe this is meant to be a clue. If so, no-one in the film picks up on it. Instead a birthday party goes wrong and Jonny and Rick go the pub in a scene which I think is meant to be eerie and weird but succeeds only in being a bit silly. Then the film descends into a bit of a chase as the truth is revealed and various dooms are met.
Oh, but this could have been an amazing film. If it had been completely different. There are some great shots, and it has a pleasingly bleak look, filmed like one of those miserable Michael Winterbottom films about dreary people in drab towns. The film has some good visual ideas (ambiguous scarecrows, people buried up to their neck in sand, mysterious hooded figures lurking). And the basic outline of the story is sound. Mostly the acting veers between OK and enthusiastic.
It’s just that I didn’t believe a word anyone said, and their every action seemed utterly unconvincing. I know drama is people not doing what they’re meant to, but this is utterly ludicrous. Time and again people say or do things because that’s what the story needs them to do, not because they’d actually do it.
The DVD cover twice invokes THE WICKER MAN, which is a bit cheeky, and (unsurprisingly) the comparison does the younger film no favours. The plot, if anything, does make slightly more sense than the 1973 film (wasn’t Christopher Lee taking a bit of a risk abducting a policeman – wouldn’t that perhaps trigger an investigation of some sort?) (bit of a spoiler there, sorry), but UNHAPPY BIRTHDAY suffers from an enormous gulf between conception and execution. There are lots of great ideas in the storyline, and there are lots of potentially fantastic shots but none of it quite works. I like the film’s ambition – I expect the planning meetings were really positive (that’s slightly fainter praise than I was aiming for), but the film’s good ideas are let down by poor scripting, silly twists and indifferent acting. The skeleton is fine. It’s just that the skeleton was clothed infinitely better thirty-odd years earlier by Messrs Hardy and Shaffer.
* It is possible that the title of the film may be some sort of homage to a song also called Unhappy Birthday (of which I was previously unaware) by the tedious over-rated misery-mongers The Smiths. It’s their 45th best song apparently (out of 73).
REVIEW BY JOE PESCI II – The Knicker Man.
WHAT HAVE I SEEN THAT ACTOR IN BEFORE?
David Paisley: River City (TV), Holby City (TV), Casualty (TV)
Director: Michael Caton-Jones (Basic Instinct 2 / Shooting Dogs / City By The Sea / The Jackal (1997) / Rob Roy / This Boy’s Life / Doc Hollywood / Memphis Belle / Scandal)
Writer: Nick Moorcroft
Cast: Shirley Henderson, Letitia Wright, Isabella Laughland, Ian Hart, Steven Mackintosh, Jack McMullen, Caroline O’Neill, Matthew Steer, Katie Redford, Kirsty J Curtis, Billy Bragg with McKell David and Shaun Parkes
Shirley Henderson: On The Road – Wolf Alice, T2 – Trainspotting, Bridget Jones 3, Tale of Tales, Set Fire To The Stars, In Secret, Filth,The Look Of Love, Everyday, Anna Karenina (2012), Meek’s Cutoff, Life During Wartime, Wild Child, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day, Marie Antoinette, Harry Potter and The Goblet Of Fire, A Cock And Bull Story, Bridget Jones 2, Yes, Intermission, Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself, Harry Potter and The Chamber Of Secrets, Once Upon a Time In The Midlands, 24 Hour Party People, Bridget Jones’ Diary, The Claim (2000), Wonderland (2000), Topsy Turvy, Trainspotting, Rob Roy
Ian Hart: God’s Own Country, Dough, Boardwalk Empire (TV), Hard Boiled Sweets, Morris – A Life With Bells On, A Boy Called Dad, Breakfast On Pluto, A Cock and Bull Story, Rag Tale, Finding Neverland, Blind Flight, Killing Me Softly, Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone, Strictly Sinatra, Born Romantic, Liam, Best, The Closer You Get, The End Of The Affair, Wonderland (1999), This Year’s Love, Enemy Of The State, B-Monkey, Mojo, The Butcher’s Boy, Michael Collins, The Hollow Reed, Nothing Personal, Clockwork Mice, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, Land and Freedom, Backbeat, The Hour and The Times
Steven Mackintosh: Bone In The Throat, Set Fire To The Stars, Robot Overlords, Gold, The Sweeney, Elfie Hopkins,The Scouting Book For Boys, Luther (TV), Underworld 2 & 3, The Escapist, Land Girls, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, House Of America, The Grotesque, Muppets Christmas Carol, Blue Juice, Princess Caraboo, The Buddha Of Suburbia (TV), London Kills Me
Cast: David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike, Jack Davenport, Tom Felton, Laura Carmichael, Vusi Kunene, Jack Lowden, Arnold Oceng, Terry Pheto, Jessica Oyelowo, Charlotte Hope, Abena Ayivor, Anton Lesser, Nicholas Rowe, Merveille Lukeba, Anastasia Hille, Theo Landey, James Northcote and Nicholas Lyndhurst
David Oyelowo: Peter Rabbit 2 – The Runaway, Gringo, Star Wars Rebels (voice)(TV), A Wrinkle In Time (voice), Cloverfield 4 – Paradox, Queen of Katwe, Selma, Interstellar, A Most Violent Year, The Butler, Jack Reacher, Lincoln, The Paperboy, Red Tails, The Help, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, As You Like It (2006), The Last King of Scotland, The Best Man, A Sound of Thunder, Spooks (TV)
Rosamund Pike: Radioactive, The Informer, Thunderbirds (TV) (voice), Watership Down (voice)(TV), A Private War, 7 Days in Entebbe, The Man with The Iron Heart, Hostiles, A United Kingdom, Return To Sender, Gone Girl, What We Did On Our Holiday, Hector and The Search For Happiness, A Long Way Down, The World’s End, Johnny English 2 – Reborn, Made In Dagenham, Jack Reacher, Wrath Of The Titans, Surrogates, An Education, Doom, Pride & Prejudice (2005), James Bond – Die Another Day
Jack Davenport:Kingsman – The Secret Service, Mother’s Milk, Pirates of the Caribbean 3 – The World’s End, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 – Dead Man’s Chest, The Wedding Date, The Libertine, Pirates of the Caribbean – Curse of the Black Pearl, The Bunker, The Talented Mr Ripley, The Wisdom of Crocodiles
Tom Felton:Stratton, The Flash (TV), Risen (2016), Against The Sun, In Secret, Belle, Rise Of The Planet of The Apes, The Disappeared, Get Him To The Greek, 13HRs, Harry Potter 1-8, Anna and The King, The Borrowers (1997)
Laura Carmichael: Downton Abbey, Burn Burn Burn, Downton Abbey (TV)
Vusi Kunene:The First Grader, The Bang Bang Club, The King Is Alive, Cry The Beloved Country, The Air Up There
Abena Ayivor: Machine Gun Preacher, This Life (TV)
Anton Lesser:Disobedience, On Chesil Beach, Endeavour (TV), The Crown (TV), Game of Thrones (TV), Allied, Flutter, Wolf Hall (TV), The Lady, Primeval (TV), Casualty 1909 (TV), Miss Potter, River Queen, Charlotte Gray, The Mill On The Floss (TV)
Nicholas Rowe: Old Boys, Eat Locals, Snowden, Mr Holmes, Da Vinci’s Demons (TV), Dr Who (TV), Seed of Chucky, Nicholas Nickleby (2002), Enigma, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, True Blue, Young Sherlock Holmes, Another Country
Nicholas Lyndhurst: Goodnight Sweetheart (TV), New Tricks (TV), Rock and Chips (TV), Lassie (2005), Only Fools and Horses (TV), The Two of Us (TV), Butterflies (TV)
Cast: Kris Johnson, Simon Cotton, Ali Bastian, Munro Graham, Patrick Connolly, Tim Berrington, Sapphire Elia, Aggy K Adams, Eric Colvin with Ryan Winsley and Chris Simmons
I had high hopes for Nicholas Winter’s second film as director after Hooligan Legacy. Seems like a ridiculous statement but in context his debut was a tough little gangster movie with pace, good performances and proved to be a good calling card for the director and it’s leading man, Kris Johnson (WHO NEEDS ENEMIES). Sadly, this time around their latest one,Undercover Hooligan proves to be heavy work. Johnson, usually a confident actor, who’s already proved to be one to watch, falters with a bad script, and this time delivers a less than cocksure performance. The plot and acting from some of his supporters leave much to be desired too.
Undercover Hooligan follows the first underground assignment for ‘Violent Cop of the Terraces’ Michael Clarke, who has to go to jail for six months just to look authentic enough to get in with some people traffickers lead by Patrick Connolly and his children, played by Simon Cotton (RISE OF THE KRAYS) and Sapphire Elia (VENGEANCE). Cotton further solidifies his rep, at Britpic Crescent, as one of low-budget cinemas biggest over-performers. He doesn’t quite ruin the film, that’s a group effort. Plot holes and character dopiness sabotage a potentially entertaining film but familiarity with this kind of plot arch scuppers Undercover Hooligan in more ways than one. It’s not Kris Johnson‘s only dud, see Essex Vendetta for that – but he’s not the problem in that one.
The violence is a bit sickening and every bit gratuitous, as it was in Hooligan Legacy, but here it seems stitched on to make up for the cardboard acting and tired story. Again it would seem like the word ‘hooligan’ has been wheeled out by the SEO boys to sell a few more units but it’s connection to football or hooliganism is on the thin side, as you’d expect. I look forward to Kris Johnson‘s next appearance, but for Mr Winter the director and writer he’s currently hung at a 1/1 tie-off. Please come back with something better next time.
3 out of 10 – Leaden and drawn out crime non-thriller starring the usually confident and natural Kris Johnson. This time he’s either miscast or unsure about the script as he comes across uncomfortable this once. Simon Cotton overcooks the principle baddy and the rest of the cast set about doing wooden furniture impressions. Underpowered Hooligans.
This low-budget poltergeist movie is the perfect choice for those looking for yet another ‘found-footage’ horror. Or is it? A lot of the footage was certainly shot on a hand-held by characters within the narrative, but as the story also seems to be occurring at the end of the world, who is been left around to edit it? Squirrels?
A precariously happy couple venture to a haunted house on Dartmoor to investigate some supernatural occurences at a remote country pile. The boy, (LACHLAN NIEBOER – IDENTICALS) seems to think that its important to capture a ghost on film before the world blows up (or something). His girl, (LISA KERR) is also psychic and highly strung like most girls in films about haunted houses. Things go bump in the night, knifes get thrown, a voice in the cupboard and icy pipes kick proceedings off, so the couple reluctantly stick around to find out more. Seeing as they’ve come all this way, they may not have enough time to drive all the way home. Several people pop in to help like Robert Daws (OUTSIDE EDGE) as an ineffectual professor of the supernatural. There’s a dinner lady, sorry a medium and a disposable best friend. It’s all pretty straight-faced and reasonaly well-accomplished within it’s limited area.
Is it scary? Yes, at times. It’s rather good at building suspense, but the results and outcomes are regularly disappointing and lead nowhere. An invisible garden seems to hint at the girlfriend’s ability to time travel but the idea is dropped almost as soon as its picked up. The end of the world hook isn’t great either because it doesn’t fit the central story. Why prove ghosts exist when the world is at an end? Why not? But its a clunky match.
The Unfolding is solid if you are particularly undemanding and make a habit of watching this kind of film. It offers the odd surprise but nothing incredible so that you’d recommend it to your friends. Very middle of the road.
5 out of 10 – Well acted by a committed cast, it’s periodically scary but overall it’s business as usual for this over-familiar found-footager.
Review by Matt Usher below
WHAT HAVE I SEEN THAT ACTOR IN BEFORE?
Lachlan Nieboer: Trendy, Identicals, Suspension of Disbelief, Into The White
Kitty McGeever: Emmerdale (TV), B-Monkey
Robert Daws: Poldark (TV), Casualty (TV), The Royal (TV), Coronation Street (TV), Roger Roger (TV), Outside Edge (TV), Jeeves & Wooster (TV)
RISE OF THE ZOMBIE HOOLIGAN FILMS 