Cinema Reviews
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Paranormal Activity
HOW do you turn $15,000 into $100million? If you’re enterprising Israeli-born film-maker Oren Peli, you write and direct a low-budget supernatural horror movie, shoot it at your own house in your spare time and watch as that modest vision becomes a 21st-century Blair Witch Project.
Paranormal Activity is a phenomenon, scaring audiences with its deceptively simple narrative and grainy camerawork, captured by characters as they hunt for an evil spirit in their home.
Various cuts of the film have been screened at festivals around the world, but the version set to terrorise British cinemagoers is a genuinely creepy encounter with things that go bump in the night.
The writer-director cranks up the suspense gradually until we’re almost holding our breath, anticipating the next episode of ghostly interference.
Unlike the recent glut of torture porn thrillers, which slather the screen in blood and entrails, Peli’s film exercises restraint to the heart-stopping finale.
Less is more, and the suggestion of unseen evil in the house is far more unnerving than a blitzkrieg of expensive special-effects – what you can’t see can kill you.
Micah (Micah Sloat) lives in San Diego with his girlfriend Katie (Katie Featherston), who senses a spirit watching over her. Reluctantly, Katie agrees to let Micah capture evidence of the haunting on his new video camera by setting up a tripod in the bedroom to record everything that happens as they sleep.
Footage of a door opening and closing of its own accord is the first sign that something is terribly wrong in the home.
Micah doesn’t take his role seriously, brazenly goading the spirit (“Is that all you got?”), while Katie tries desperately to prevent him from making a bad situation worse.
As the visitations become more intense, Micah invites a psychic (Mark Fredrichs) through the front door.
The visitor leaves quick-smart, sensing that evil has taken root in the house and will stop at nothing until it has consumed Katie.
“You can’t run from this; it will follow you,” he professes sombrely.
Paranormal Activity almost lives up to the extraordinary hype from across the Atlantic, effectively tapping into universal fears.
Featherston and Sloat are compelling, the latter grating on our nerves as much as Katie’s as he foolishly introduces a Ouija board to the house then rows with his frazzled girlfriend, cattily telling her to “go hang out with your friend upstairs”.
Physical manifestations of the malevolent spirit start with a light turning on in the middle of the night, or a shadow moving across the bedroom door.
As the film moves into the shocking final act, Peli pulls out all of the stops to have us biting our nails down to the cuticle.
If you thought you were too old to be afraid of the dark, think again.
(15, 85 minutes)
Nativity!
CHRISTMAS comes early, courtesy of British director Debbie Isitt (Nasty Neighbours, Confetti) and her improvised comedy about the preparations for a primary school nativity play.
Shot without a script as a safety net, Nativity! is a feel-absolutely-wonderful treat steeped in festive cheer that delivers tidings of comfort and boundless joy for the entire family.
The central character’s redemption echoes George Bailey in the classic It’s a Wonderful Life and a supporting cast of inexperienced child actors is irresistibly cute and cheeky without ever being precocious.
Martin Freeman essays another beleaguered loser in love, who tells one little white lie that rapidly snowballs into an avalanche of misunderstandings.
He plays the straight man throughout to Marc Wootton’s demented sidekick, a whooping force of nature who is even more hyperactive than the children in his care.
Pint-sized co-stars can barely keep a straight face as he bounds through each scene like an excitable puppy.
By the time the curtain rises on the nativity play, we’re hopelessly smitten with all of the players and will them on to a standing ovation.
In overcast Coventry, teacher Paul Maddens (Freeman) is a shadow of his former self at St Bernadette’s primary school after girlfriend Jennifer (Ashley Jensen) leaves him to pursue her dreams of becoming a Hollywood producer.
His first attempt to stage the nativity draws a vicious one-star review from the local theatre critic (Alan Carr).
“You’re no one if you’ve not had a bad review off Patrick Burns,” cackles the hack. “That’s why we call them Burns’ victims.”
To make matters worse, mutual friend Gordon Shakespeare (Jason Watkins) is a teacher at the rival independent Oakmoor School, and his production garners a gushing five-star appraisal.
Paul turns his back on the nativity until outgoing headmistress Mrs Bevan (Pam Ferris) forces him to step up to the mark.
To help Paul in this hour of need, he is assigned a deranged classroom assistant, Mr Poppy (Wootton).
With first rehearsals looming, Paul bends the truth in Mr Poppy’s earshot.
“A big Hollywood company is coming here to see our nativity and we’re all going to be famous,” the assistant tells the children excitedly.
Soon, the entire city, including the mayor (Ricky Tomlinson), is abuzz with news about the little nativity play with huge ambitions.
Nativity! is a joy and the 105 minutes pass all too quickly in a blur of laughter, song and heartfelt confessions.
The ensemble cast is excellent, ad-libbing some hysterical verbal exchanges before one of the kids upstages everyone.
“Why do you want to play the innkeeper?” Paul asks one boy.
“Because he’s great. He swears all day,” proffers the lad thoughtfully.
The climactic nativity play is sprinkled with goodwill to all men, women and children, yet is credibly rough around the edges.
Isitt’s film, meanwhile, is a Christmas cracker.
(U, 105 minutes)
Law Abiding Citizen
JUSTICE is blind and by the end of F. Gary Gray’s gruesome thriller, it’s also horribly burned, dismembered and disembowelled as a family man turns the tables on the lawmakers who let him down, with the help of his good friend Semtex.
The moral conundrum that underpins Kurt Wimmer’s screenplay is constantly obscured by graphic violence and relentlessly sadistic revenge fantasies played out by the central character on the denizens of Philadelphia.
His corruption at the hands of an unfair justice system and subsequent quest for retribution are supposed to blur the lines between good and evil, but the protagonists aren’t sketched in sufficient detail to carry the story’s flimsy convictions.
Gerard Butler has evidently been freeze-framing The Silence of the Lambs as inspiration for his performance as the family man turned vigilante.
He chews lifelessly on every cliched line, while Jamie Foxx, as the crusading man of the law who must stop him, is just plain lifeless.
In a deeply unpleasant prologue, brilliant inventor Clyde Shelton (Butler) is at home, playing the doting father to his young daughter (Ksenia Hulayev), when two thugs break in, stab and restrain him and his wife (Brooke Mills) and go after the girl.
Clyde loses the two people he cares most about in this sorry world then, to add insult to unbearable injury, glory-chasing lead prosecutor Nick Rice (Foxx) cuts a deal with one of the perpetrators, agreeing a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against the accomplice.
“Some justice is better than no justice at all,” he contends, caring not a jot about Clyde’s suffering.
Ten years after the worst moment in his life, Clyde enacts his master plan to make Nick suffer just like he did, by attacking his colleagues Jonas Cantrell (Bruce McGill) and Sarah Lowell (Leslie Bibb) and the mayor (Viola Davis).
Clyde even involves Nick’s wife, Kelly (Regina Hall), and daughter Denise (Emerald-Angel Young), so the prosecutor tries to reason with him.
“You think your wife and daughter would feel good about you killing in their name?” he asks.
“My wife and daughter can’t feel anything,” replies the widower coldly. “They’re dead.”
When more people die while Clyde is safely tucked away in a prison cell, the prosecutor and cop pal Detective Dunnigan (Colm Meaney) face the terrifying possibility that their prime suspect has an accomplice on the outside.
Law Abiding Citizen plays out largely as expected, with lashings of blood and gore to remind us that Clyde is a psychopath who doesn’t think twice about gutting his cellmate to pass the time.
The hunt for the accomplice is a classic Scooby-Doo caper, replete with a ridiculous payoff that is impossible to take seriously.
Scenes between Butler and Foxx lack tension as both actors go through the motions, content to let director Gray have his pyrotechnic-laden fun.
Justice is bland.
(18, 108 minutes)
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